Woohoo, I'm back!

Got caught up with work that I could barely make any progress in the last few weeks. Now that everything is settled (hopefully), I'm back to working on "Tracking" again, which means there is a new update:

Update #7: Mail Inbox Save/Load System

Instead of building a whole save/load system for everything, I guess it would be better if I make different save systems for different features in the game. Starting with the MailMe inbox. 

Problems

For someone who has just started learning Unity for not too long, I was struggling with how to build a system that could at least keep the emails persistent through different sessions. And so I decided to hopped on YouTube to search for some tutorials, and joined some unity-related forums to ask for help. 

- Email data would be cleared whenever the inbox is closed. So when players receive an email, its email data will be pushed to the inbox, which will handle how the email is displayed and presented to players. However, as soon as it is closed, the email data would vanish and the inbox is rendered empty.

- Some important emails are duplicated. Since the important emails that serve the main story plot are handled by a separate system, their trigger point is unstable and would spawn an email twice or even more, depending on how many times players "accidentally" activate it. 

- Notification sound glitch. Apparently, since the trigger point is unstable, it would spawn a new email and every time a new email is spawned, the notification sound would set off. But even if I manage to stop the triggered email from spawning, the sound would keep on ringing still. 

- Save system became unstable. For my attempt of creating a basic save system for the email data, I managed to have it loaded the saved email data. However, for some reasons, it only loaded ONE email data while the rest failed to get pushed to the inbox.

- Read/unread state of emails is unsaved. Not really a significant issue but it's annoying. 

- Email data is saved, loaded but not visibly. This happened when I tried to "upgrade" my save system so that it could record the read/unread status of each email. Weird, annoyingly weird. 

Solved?

In simple words, all I had to do was to have all the email data saved into a json file and get it loaded up whenever the inbox is opened (but it's not that easy for a beginner like me, life is hard 😭). I managed to get my save system working:

- Email data is grouped in a list and handled by another separate system which will record the email data that is pushed to the inbox. The recorded data is checked for duplicate to prevent it from spawning more than twice. 

- Another system is added to handle the loading. So to make the matter worse, I divided the whole thing into two parts: one is for recording email data, and the other is for loading the saved data. Might need to utilize them in the future some way, somehow. 

- Read/unread status is now recorded as well. Not really a significant issue, but got it fixed anyway. 

Conclusions:

- The save system needs to be tested for a few more days before I can move on to the next part of development. 

- At least it's stable as of now. I will work on utilizing the system more. 

- Other save systems in the future might have to be saved into a different json file...? 

Thanks for reading!

Update #6: Email Service

Alright, this one was fun to make, simply because I wanted it to behave like a real-life email service (despite sometimes it's a bit frustrating when things didn't turn out the way I wanted.) 

I have done some research on the interface and whatnot of Google's Gmail back in the 2000s era. I'm not trying to replicate their whole layout or anything; I just want to have a glimpse of how things were back then and then design the UI that best suits the aesthetics of the early 2000s email service. And voila, "MailMe" is created! 

MailMe is one of the basic websites that are introduced to players when they open their internet browser, and it serves a crucial role in directing players to access other websites. Why? Because they will need an email address to receive OTPs if they wish to log into some specific websites.

What can you do with MailMe (as of now):

- Login and Logout (you won't be able to create new accounts as I find that distracting and unnecessary for the main game story, so... yea.)

- Check your inbox: both new and old emails will be presented in the same inbox, you can't see your sent emails, though.

- Reply or compose a new email: You can now either choose to reply to anyone in your inbox or compose a new one to send to a new address outside your inbox.

- Write whatever you like: NPCs will reply. In most cases, NPCs will reply to your email. However, their responses are limited; at some point, they will stop responding. 

- Receiving OTPs through MailMe: Forgot your password? Wishing to create a new password for your accounts? OTPs will be sent to your inbox, just for security reasons. 

I'm still figuring out how to implement the triggered emails as players progress further in the game, but right now, I want to focus on finishing the basic functions of the game before adding any layers.

That's it for now! The next update will be a lot more fun :D

Wow thanks a lot for the kind offer, I'll keep you in mind when needed!

Update #5: Delivery...

As I was doing some research for the game, I stumbled upon an idea: delivery services. And here we go, a delivery service provider is born!

The logo is fugly as hell, I guess a rework on the logo is guaranteed, but let's just wait until I finish everything else before circling back to this. The original name for this business was "Deliveree", which I liked a lot (though it's not too creative though :D ). But then I learned about a delivery firm also called Deliveree in real life, so in order to avoid any troubles (duh), I basically doubled the vowel and made it "Deliiveree", a name which goes against my crucial principle of naming a website: concise and memorable. 

So... What can you do with Deliiveree?

Book a shipping for your parcel, of course 🎊

You can fill in the forms with whatever you like, pick any names for the sender, a.k.a. yourself, or the recipients, it doesn't matter. What really matters is the recipient's address, you won't be able to send anything if the address is incorrect, which works in the same way as most real-life delivery services nowadays :D The shipping fee will be calculated based on the parcel type you choose and how heavy it is. While I do know that it's supposed to consider the distance to calculate the fee as well, since I haven't designed a city map for the game, the distance is currently unavailable to be measured, and besides, I don't wanna stress myself with the pricing so I'm gonna skip it. 

Aaaand...You can choose who will pay the shipping fee, it's either you  (sender) or the recipient. And if you wish to pay for the fee, you can either choose to pay with cash or a credit card, which will be provided to you in the game.

Note:

Since this website is not really crucial to the main story so the other features related to this delivery service shall be limited in a way that it won't distract you from the main objectives. By the time you're reading this, I've already finished another website and will be posting about it next week ^^

Update #3: Logos!

I was feeling stuck with the layout of the new websites, so I turned to something more interesting: designing logos. In order to make the corporations in the game look more...believable, I decided to give them some "professional" identities. 

I did hop around finding inspirations, looking at some real-life firms for reference, and testing out with some fonts and ideas (these logos are mostly letters and random symbols; choosing which font to go with is probably the hardest thing). While I would not say that I'm great at designing logos, I think it's safe to say that these look somewhat believable, to some extent. What do you think?

There will be more but I'll save them for another day, when I get stuck with something else, again.

Update 4: New Website Added!

Every puzzle-solving game needs a "hint system", which will come in handy when players get stuck at some point. I was also wondering how to add one into my game without making it too obvious. Besides, the main story of the game mostly revolves around a stolen laptop, it would not be convincing if players are able to get the "hints" too easily as well. 

Then this came to mind: a note-sharing platform. Something like Privnote in real life, where you can write a note and share the link to your note with others. The notes will be "destroyed" after being read. I guess I'll just do the same, and to add an extra layer of inconvenience, I'll encode the hint and make them spend a few more seconds decoding it 💀 Sometimes the hint will be somewhere else instead of inside the note, sometimes it will be just a decoy. 

Apart from acting as a guide, this platform can be a means of communication occasionally. A really fun fact is that players are able to create notes as well, and they can send the link to any NPCs (though receiving a reply is uncertain).

Again, I don't want anything I've created so far to be one-time used.  So in some cases,  some specific NPCs might require players to communicate via this platform. But I can't say for certain, I might think of another use for it in the future. 

That's it for now. I'll be back with more websites...every week? 

Maybe there will be more different tools for specific activities, such as a water bucket to water the plants, a shovel to remove the dead or sick plants before they spread the disease to the others, etc.  The shop might need some categories for seasonal plants, tools, fertilizer, etc. I didn't see the inventory in the video, but the gameplay is solid and the style is so adorable, I really love it! These are just my suggestions, you might already have the same idea already 😄
Keep it up!

Update #1: The game page is live!

Well, I decided to create a page for "Tracking", you can visit it here.

It's nothing much there, but I will add more as it goes. Good news is that you can now have the first glimpse of the main plot, though I'm still in the process of finalizing it :D Thank you for spending time taking a look at the page!

Update #2: New website added!

I'm being extra productive lately, so I decided to work on this. The mechanism is pretty simple, it's the UI that takes a lot of time to put together. 

A brief introduction of the new website added: a "cipher". You might have already known the "Caesar Decoder", which is a shifting cipher that is used to decode encrypted messages by replacing letters in the source text with those further down the alphabet. But I guess that it would be too lame if I just, well, deploy the whole thing into the game. Besides, it would make the whole experience...less immersive, so I decided to tweak it up a bit: 

While the Caesar cipher functions with a fixed "shift" value, the cipher in the game will determine the shift value based on the total letters in the source text. The longer the text, the greater the shifting value. At first,  a great shift value tended to mess up both the source text and the decoded text as they did not match one another, but after several tries, I finally nailed it.

With this slightly tweaked cipher, the experience becomes more immersive (mostly because I don't want people to crack the puzzles too easily by using any other common ciphers ^^)  

What's next? 

Well, the core gameplay also requires players to decode/encode messages, therefore, I don't want this cipher to be a one-time tool. Other variations of it will be scattered throughout the game, players are required to discover them to crack more advanced puzzles in the game. That's it for now, thank you for reading! 

that's a great idea actually :D I'll put that onto my to-do list 

Introduction

"Tracking" is a slow-burn puzzle-solving game where players will engage in an online investigation of the disappearance of an unknown woman. 

The core gameplay will focus on collecting clues, decoding messages, and hacking databases to exploit information that would benefit the investigation. If you're familiar with screenlife thriller mystery films, then you can tell that this game is my attempt at recreating such cinematic experiences :D 

What the game has so far

Desktop UI

All of these are subject to change in the later phase of development. 

Windows UI & Features

- Double-clicking can open a window, which you can then drag, maximize/minimize, and close.

- Windows can also be hidden on the taskbar, which enables you to reopen the tab again.

Functional Web browser

- The internet browser has been updated with fundamental functions, and some basic websites (search engine, email service, etc.)

More websites will be added later on, some of them are easter eggs, the others are for the main story.