Progress Report 9/15/2023 (Patreon)

Hello again, everyone! Here's what I got done this week:

• Adjusted the look direction of all relevant eyes
• Added shading to all relevant eyes
• Exported all base body drawings into individual sprites
• Re-exported the base body sprite with the new nose position and with the ears invisible
• Added 1 eye sprite to the customizer

Oh baby, one down! Just 101 to go! :,D

In all seriousness, this week was slow, tedious, and above all else, tricky. 102 sprites is not a small amount, after all. I had to be careful not to bloat my game with gigabytes of empty sprite space, I had to make sure everything stays organized in the file structure, and I had to make sure the sprites were relatively easy to add into the game itself.

Fortunately, my drawings were (surprisingly) so small that even being lazy with it would put me at a couple dozen megabytes for something like the eyes. That was quite a huge load of my mind!

That left me with organization and ease of implementation to figure out.

Long story short, a LOT of trial and error ensued and I'm basically just winging it with each category. The ears, pubic hair, emotion effects, and beauty marks are all individual sprites; the eyebrows have three separate sprite sheets, one for each thickness; the mouths are individual sprites placed in folders for each mouth type for organization, and that leaves...

The eyes.

Oh, the eyes.

...

OH THE EYES!!!

These things single-handedly cost me 3.5 hours JUST TO PREPARE THEM FOR EXPORTING. Don't get me wrong, it was 100% my fault. First, I undid my work to move the irises and pupils for each eye, then I realized I'd forgotten to add shading to the eyes, and then, the most painful moment of all... I realized I had set up everything without separating the left and right sides of the eyes. That's important for heterochromia, you know.

Toss in the fact that I'm making the pupils and sclera (whites of the eyes) colorizable as well, and baby, you've got a stew going! A stew of nightmares and deadlines and salt!

I haven't even mentioned the sprite sheet situation! Ohoho! Let me just put it this way:

This is the folder for the ears. It was the first one I did and I hadn't gotten my bearings yet, but all in all it works.

Notice those two files at the end, there? Those are save files for the drawings. Consider each of those a separate "set" of drawings with lots of layers that each needed exporting. In this case, I separated all of the left ears from the right (although in hindsight, I realize this was an unnecessary step).

This is the folder for the eyebrows. At this point, I'd established a bit of a system. Nice, neat and tidy! I even got them all exported from a single save file, which made it nice and easy!

THIS is the eyes folder! Looks organized as well, right? Well, it is. But there's a terrible secret lurking within here. Something sinister...

The "Saves" folder. You know how the ears folder had two of these? You know how each save file contains multiple layers, and each layer needed to be exported as a separate file?

Yeah... The eyes required thirty one.

THIRTY ONE!!!

Needless to say, this was a long... tedious... grueling process that took a good chunk of time. But I did it! I have 31 eye sprite sheets now! Haha! Ahaha! AHAHAHAHA!!!

Also this Spongebob meme took me some time, too.

AHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Anyways, sprite sheets are done. I've even thrown them into the Godot file system. All that I need to do is add them into the game!

...Is what I'd like to say. I've got some UI to add to the customizer, and some code to update concerning the eyes and their new components. Please send Taco Bell for moral support. ;~;  I'll see you guys again next week!