Post-demo improvements & future changes

Hi there !

As the Game Jam from AmalgamAsh was, obviously, with a final deadline, the first release (wip / prototype) of Manteca suffered from various issues.

Some were known, other were found while other GameJammers playtests.

The Game Jam is finished, still, I kinda get used to that pace of work on the game, and I might be get addicted to it.

Here's the list of improvements & bugfix that are coming for Manteca : some are done, some are scheduled, some will require for me to ramp-up on some skills I don't have right now.

• Graphic improvement & optimization
  • All exterior buildings were processed with InstaLOD. They're better for the eyes, they're supposedly lighter for the game engin, and it will improve the whole experience  ☑
  • Blue leaves trees on Decatur Street Center were fixed (their texture configuration was a it messy ☑
  • Rocks on the banks of the Mississippi have now a more stone-like texture ☑
  • ToDo : split St Louis Cathedral model into smaller ones and reimport them
• Bugfixes
  • The tree models used on 4 maps were guilty of triggering the 3D crash error (despite allowing to continue to play the game). They were remeshed & corrected ☑
  • The target of a teleport event on Chartres Street center was changed ☑
  • The display management of the "Souvenirs" events (codex skills on the menu) was changed (wrong copy/paste of a template event)☑
• Improvements
  • WIP : main character running (& some other) animations
  • ToDo : complete the introduction messages (about the game, about the AmalgamAsh, finishing the credits section)
  • ToDo : fix non-animated characters imports (for unkown reason, some characters from CC3+Mixamo had color issues on SGB, and I had to import then as static objects after FBX > OBJ > FBX black magic conversion)
  • ToDo : fix Seliana x Laureen 2nd meeting event (Seliana is 1 case too high compared to Laureen)
  • ToDo : fix police car over the wall & cop standing on his car

These are my priority in order to have a "clean" demo.

Still, before releasing it totally, I want to add some content to the demo, to stick more to what I had in time :

• New content (desired, all in "ToDo" for now)
  • Include ready-but-missing-from-the-Jam-demo characters & related places + cutscenes
  • Include more generic mob characters to make New Orleans more lively
  • Create dialogs for generic mob characters
  • Improve travel from map to map (highlight of teleport events, map system, NPCs giving orientations, signposts, etc)
  • French translation of each dialog & text event
  • Switch "Souvenirs" skills to multilingual mechanics

I think I'll probably do a mid-release with previous told bugfixes, then a new release with these improvements.

And we're talking about weeks of works. My summer's gonna be pretty busy.

But, I mean... so far, so fun !