Week 11 — Please Remain Seated

Passengers can now seek out company and chat with the captain, while Barrba has accidentally discovered a new way to travel.

What changed

• Conversations have somewhere to go. Passengers now approach an available conversation partner instead of relying on a chance encounter. They stop and face each other while chatting, recovering their social need along the way.
• The captain can keep you company. When no other passenger is available, travelers can approach the captain between tasks. That gives solo trips a way to satisfy social needs, and the captain’s panel now shows who they are speaking to.
• The cabin has more chatter. Passengers gained speech sounds to accompany their conversations. There is also a separate option to turn those sounds off.
• Paul’s panic can capture an audience. His new panic mechanic makes nearby passengers stop what they are doing and become enthralled. Their needs keep falling while they are distracted. The behavior is implemented, with animation and sound work still to come.
• Smoother trips and menus. Completed passenger challenges are no longer offered again, the challenge menu handles three passengers correctly, and trips no longer get stuck when the captain joins the boarding queue last. Scrolling menus also no longer zooms the camera.
• A little extra polish. The spaceship gained an animated thruster, while passenger payouts and preferred trip lengths received a balance pass.

Best moment

This week’s highlight came from a bug: if Barrba panics while sitting on the sofa, he chases after his escaped opossum without leaving his sitting pose.

He simply floats along behind it, seated and apparently committed to staying comfortable throughout the emergency.

The opossum already makes enough trouble by escaping and stealing food. Watching its owner pursue it on an invisible chair adds a whole new level of absurdity. It is a bug, but it earned its place in the devlog before getting fixed.

Next week

• Finish Paul’s animations and sounds, giving his new panic behavior its proper presentation.
• Work on the telelogger system for telemetry and logs, making it easier to understand what happens during play and investigate bugs.