PANOPTICON 0.2.11 - UI & SETTINGS OVERHAUL

PANOPTICON has a new look!

After over six months of work, I am thrilled to finally bring you a brand new UI and many quality of life improvements to PANOPTICON. While this update contains no new story content at this time, this was a huge undertaking for me that I feel has massively improved the overall quality of the game. PANOPTICON was in desperate need of a more functional, thematic UI as well as many accessibility options, and now it has both. Much of this work has been doing what should have been done when I first started working on this project, and I think now the writing of the story itself will go much, much smoother.

NEW FEATURES:

• PANOPTICON has a new look!
  • Implemented a proper main menu with continue game, new game, load game, and settings options.
  • Created a new sidebar layout for ease of access to saving, loading, exiting to the main menu, and changing settings while playing the game. The sidebar can be stowed and unstowed for player convenience.
  • Implemented custom buttons, logo, etc. 
    • I know most of this doesn’t seem all that impressive, considering Twine offers almost all of these features natively without any additional coding. But getting it all to work while having custom formatting was difficult and I need everyone to understand that getting this working was a big deal for me to do.

• PANOPTICON now has a wide variety of options available to the player. These can be accessed from both the main menu and the sidebar during the game.
  • Change the font type: Pick from one of three font types to change the font in the body of passages and menus.
    • At this point in time, titles and subtitle fonts are not able to be changed. This was partially because implementation was so difficult and I was worried about formatting issues. That said, if there is a high demand to be able to change titles and subtitles as well, I will look into implementing that as a new option in a future update.
  • Change the font size: Make the font smaller, larger, or even larger. This applies to all text.
  • Change the UI theme: PANOPTICON now has two immersive, sleek themes to pick from! Operator (default, dark mode) is a theme inspired by the original look of PANOPTICON featuring dark colors and olive-green accents. Analogue (light mode) is a new theme that pays homage to pen and paper in a game about being on a computer.

    
    

    • At this time, I am NOT planning on implementing more than one alternative theme, due to the complexity of the implementation. However, I am accepting feedback on the existing themes to help me adjust for accessibility concerns. If you have feedback, please reach out.
  • Disable the typing animation: You can now toggle the typing animation on and off.
  • Fullscreen: Play the game in fullscreen with a new toggle!
• Refreshed the save/load system and menu.
  • The save/load menu is now functional, and featuring a customized look that matches the rest of the game.
  • Autosave has been implemented for PANOPTICON, allowing players to resume their progress more seamlessly. Autosave automatically saves each new passage to the first save slot. Autosaves are disabled on menu and intro passages.
  • Save slots are automatically named after the tags on passages, to help you track them.

• Added a credits page
  • The credits are now accessible from the sidebar any time during play.

ALL CHANGES:

• Special thanks to Manonamora for writing the <<typed>> macro, allowing for the typing effect to be enabled and disabled. I wouldn't have been able to implement this feature without you!
• Removed defunct features.
  • Removed the journal.
    • Most of the journal functions can be accessed via the Operator terminal at the end of each day, and it feels more thematic for them to be available only then. I felt the descriptions of the terminals weren’t specific enough to be helpful as a reference, either. Overall the journal was just a huge headache for me without enough benefits to the player, so it’s gone now.
  • Removed the undo and redo buttons.
    • With the implementation of a better save screen as well as autosaves, I felt there was no need to include these features any longer. 
• Links no longer change to reflect that they have already been clicked on once.
  • THIS IS NOT ACTUALLY A FEATURE I WANT TO REMOVE, I simply haven’t been able to make the visited link class work. I debated waiting to release this update until I fixed it, but it seems like such a small feature that I decided to forge ahead without it.
    

Thank you so much to everyone who has read and continues to read this game. I am absolutely ecstatic to be able to finally push out this update. If you've read any of my update logs from the past months, you'll know that I took an involuntary hiatus at the start of the year. The truth is I've been dealing with some immensely challenging personal issues as well as struggling with my mental health. Returning to work on PANOPTICON (as well as my other interactive fiction projects) has been a huge turning point, and I'm excited to celebrate this new milestone with you all. I've been working hard on giving both the itch page and the dev blog a facelift to match the new look of the game too!

I plan on taking a short break to deal with a period of high business at work, but then I will continue work on chapter two. It was about a fourth of the way done when I began working on the UI overhaul, so hopefully I will have the new chapter out by the beginning of next year.

Thank you to everyone who has read, commented, and reviewed this game! Please feel free to say hello on my dev blog at any time.

Version: 0.2.9

For a more updates about the state of the game, general information, or a chance to contact me, head over to my interactive fiction blog on tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/panopticon-if