Maintaining the momentum from last week's update, I have posted the newest available version, v0.0.1.2. Look, I don't like how long these version numbers are getting either. Like a one sided romantic relationship,  I simply didn't want to commit to v0.0.2. The changes were too minor and back-end to pretend like it's a major addition.

I was actually lucky enough to get some initial play-testing from friends, family, and helpful online strangers. The majority of this update was focused around their feedback.

Changes : 

•  Graphical changes.
  • Grass. First feedback I got was from a fellow game developer on twitter, (check him/her out here), regarding the grass's inconsistency with the rest of the games sprites. I agreed and had it in the back of mind previously as a to-do, skipping it mainly because I was intending on drawing and adding some better foliage objects. Once they were in place I re-vamped the sprite, shifted it's hue, and changed the amount of vectors drawn and it's randomness. See attached screenshot. It's still not where I want it to be just yet, and causes a slight bug I will list below, but will be acceptable until I get to the polish state.
  • House Location. More feedback from a familial play-tester that you can mostly see in the same screenshot mentioned previously. The house has been shifted up to the top of the room to eliminate the need for outside room boundary camera adjustments, distracting elements outside and above the house, and cutting down the resource costs of drawing the grass. This is slightly similar to how Stardew Valley does it and is a much needed improvement. I was too stuck on the idea of re-creating my old house perfectly that I couldn't see how well it functioned.
  • Asset Creation Tool. I cannot explain to you how frustrating it is spending hours on a computer trying to something that doesn't like like it was drawn by an absolute potato. I never understood why I could code core mechanics within hours but drawing a simple bush would take days. My solution has been Pixel Studio for Ipad and a <$2 el-cheapo Stylus. See attached screenshot of the Tree I drew in less than an hour. It is ridiculous the amount of detail you can get once your step outside of your own head and adopt the "less is more" mentality.
  • Other Minor Graphical changes, mainly off center sprites.
• Objects
  • Added Trees and Bushes as child of Entity Parent. Interaction code is roughly in place but will not be finalized until an Axe type equip-able exists.
  • Sink as child of Entity Parent. Simple, click to turn on click to turn off. This is mainly in place for the first cutscene, after which with the loss of electricity or manned pumping stations, tap water will no longer be accessible.
• GUI
  • Poison. Poisoned code was in place and active but there was no visual cues for it. See attached screenshot. Now the Health App will show Poisoned as a status effect and give a notification similar to when other stats go low. Player also shifts into a green hue but will look better once I draw my own character model.
  • Time. There is now a setting in the Phone's Settings App that can swap between 12-hour or 24-hour formats. This was a simple change due to time overhaul listed below.
• Mechanics
  • Time Overhaul. The way the game previously handled time was abysmal to say the least. It basically was a counter within a counter within a counter within a counter. Minute > 60 then add to Hour, reset Minute to 0. Hour > 24 then add to Day, reset Hour to 0. So on and so forth.... It actually roadblocked me further from doing an Advance Time script that was intended from the start. Basically the same way how the Vehicle object calculates fuel used based on distance traveled, I wanted time costs to be included in that ( ie, trip is 24 miles away then advance time 24 minutes). With the previous way, I couldn't easily add small portions of time. I forcefully set the time on a broader scale but ran into big issues crossing over 60 minute or 24 hour thresholds. Now the time calculates off of total minutes passed and writes a string of hours, days, months, etc off of that. This has made the Advance Time Script work perfectly and has already been implemented in the bed, ie click on bed sleep for 8 hours (to be added further to). As a side-affect, it has made creating a setting to swap between 12 or 24 hour clock format incredibly easy.
• Known Bugs
  • There is now a slight hiccup when loading a room with lots of grass objects, likely due to a simultaneous running of the World Data Load code and the vector drawn grass. This delay is barely 1-2 seconds long and should be dismiss-able when the room transition or fade in/fade out comes into play.
• Legal and Developmental Processes
  • Finished my LinkedIn Page and successfully got the attention I needed to stroke my own narcissistic ego. Thank you to those who gave me the attention I was begging for, you know who you are.
  • Working on Indie Fund budget to determine feasibility and subsequent pitch.
  • Apparently, my state requires a Business Privilege Tax to be paid for registering my LLC. So I basically paid a tax for the "privilege" of running a business in the state. On top of the employment taxes I pay as a "privilege" to work in my particular which is on top of the employment taxes I pay as a "privilege" to work in a particular city. Grand total of $15, so there was really no point in you reading this part other than hearing my incessant "dad-bitching". Why are you still here?