Had trouble winding down last night, so I spent a little time expanding the pickup/delivery system in #bHopper and putting a new build up at https://lovemakeshare.itch.io.

Now, every pickup location has a menu of orders, which are assigned randomly to the pickup object. When the player picks up the object, a new notification pops to show what it is you've picked up and what the initial value of the order is. (Setting up a dynamic timer system to make sure that notifications didn't get hidden prematurely if two overlapped was a fun challenge!) Soon enough it'll also have a delivery confirmation with the name of the person you delivered to (and a star rating?).

There's also now a countdown timer associated with the pickup, to add a little bit of urgency. It's more generous than the delivery timer, to give the player time to try and purchase ammo, repairs, or pay fines, but it still lights a fire to get to the new pickup location. It's a little buggy - I reduce the time available for pickup/delivery based on the score multiplier, to add some escalation to the difficulty, and sometimes that means a 0 or negative time available, which isn't fair) - and I am using the same list of available orders for every pickup location.

But there's more UI, there's a more consistent (if still very unfinished) design, and there's more gameplay to deal with, so I'm happy with this update!

#gamedev #indiedev #solodev #cyberpunk #retrogaming #devlog