So last night I bit off more than I could chew by thinking about all the things I had yet to actually implement, including but not limited to "option menu" functionality, saving/loading features, scene transitions when moving between certain tasks/menus, and various graphical things I wanted to change like adding a random range array for the title screen images to randomize which character pictures you get to see on initial start up of the game.

Needless to say, thinking about all of this, coupled with a failed attempt at making some fade transitions, freaked me out, so I had to stop working on the game and bounced out early from my evening of developing...

Only to come back with fresh realization this morning that I need to pigeon-hole myself a little more when it comes to focusing on specific tasks, and remind myself that working on a game comes in waves and stages, and I'm not going to figure everything out at the exact same time. It made me realize that it's things like that, overwhelming yourself when developing or working on these kinds of projects is likely what turns a lot of people away from game development. There's a reason 99% of games are made by a team.

So this morning I decided I was going to work on a task that had me excited since the day I thought it up, which was having what I call "character slides" show random character images on the initial title screen each time you start the game up. I had trouble with the code, and the concept, couldn't find the right terminology to look for tutorials or help, so the idea kind of just sat there until, this morning, after 2 hours, I finally managed to figure it out, which is demonstrated in the video I've included! So I'm excited! It's small things like this that really make me happy with what I'm doing, even though a lot of it (coding specifically, grrr) can be real troubling and confusing.

When I started coding, I learned C++, which I find 100% easier and more straight forward to use because of how it's much more direct of a coding language. The syntax was easier for me to understand, and I figured out a lot of the strings and terminology quickly because of how they were named. C# is a learning curve.

Moving forward: For the sake of having a demo out before I'm elderly, the option menu and load/save function will be something I work on sparingly . There likely will be no functionality to save or load a game for the demo, nor will there be any options to change in the options menu. There will be clear warnings about this not only when the demo is available to download but also in game when trying to access these areas/menus.

Next I have to figure out how to carry a variable over from an in game menu selection to various scripts to ensure that the player only has access to specific options when interacting with the rest of the game. But that's a project for tomorrow morning.