Side Quests Complete

November 22, 2019

It took longer than I thought it would, but I’ve just finished putting the final touches on the final side quest in Sleuthhounds: Cruise. With that, everything that players can do in the game that produce a positive result – as opposed to those actions that result in a “that doesn’t work” type of response – should be done. I say “should” because with all the different characters and all the different story threads there may still be a few loose ends or small actions that I missed here and there.

Ferreting out those places where pieces may still be missing or story threads don’t quite align will be the next step in production. This will consist of several rounds of testing of the game and various branches within it to make sure that (a) everything works as expected and (b) the story and character arcs are sound. Depending on what, if anything, I find this will likely take the next week or so to complete.

Once this round of testing is finished, production on the game will diversify significantly. It will be possible to work in earnest on the following tasks (some of which I’ve already started to varying degrees):

  • NPC Dialog Scripts – It will be possible to pull out all the dialog lines for the non-player characters and get them ready to be recorded. Naturally, once ready the actual recordings can commence.
  • Final Room Backgrounds – I’ve intentionally kept the room backgrounds as rough pencil sketches throughout development so that if any given puzzle or scenario needed the layout of a room to change it would be an easy thing to accomplish (which indeed happened on multiple occasions). Now that I know what all the scenarios are, I can finalize the layouts of the rooms and draw, colour, and light them properly. Expect new screenshots to start appearing soon.
  • Character Animations – As room layouts are dependent on puzzles, many of the game’s character animations are dependent on room layouts. Once the final room backgrounds start falling into place it will be possible to also create the character animations to fit those rooms. Expect to see some of these (where they’re not spoilery) to start appearing soon too.
  • Sound Effects Recording – Sound effects typically result from animated cutscenes. As the character animations get integrated in place the sound effect requirements will also become apparent. Once I’ve got a good list of the effects needed I’ll be able to stage some recording sessions to get the sounds needed for the game.
  • Journal Scripting – As with the previous Sleuthhounds games, Cruise will have an in game journal that records important story and character details, a To Do list, and a tiered hint system. All of these elements can now be brought into the game and will serve as a double-check that everything that’s needed puzzle and story wise is, in fact, in place.
  • Non-Op Scripting – It should now be possible to do all of the positive actions in the game, those things that advance players’ progress in some way. However, there are other actions that have no result, such as attempting to pull a light fixture off a wall. These need responses too, even if all they are is, “I can’t do that.” These will be done in conjunction with finishing the room backgrounds.

All in all, things are looking quite good for the game, even if it did take longer than expected to get to this point. The exciting thing is that moving forward from here the progress being made will be a lot more visible and blog worthy.