Small update on sprite visuals! (Patreon)

I was going to hold off and add this to the next news post for June sometime next week, but since I'm currently working on it this weekend coming up. I figured sharing it now would be a good time to give some insight on what is going on. ^^

So in our most recent update 0.11 that released on May 30th, we did a major sweep through the engine and adjusted a lot of visuals. The major thing was taking sprite expressions and not only downsizing to a more reasonable set number of 20-24 expressions per character.

But we also converted these new expressions to be downsized on their file size, but sadly with that. We have noticed some minor issues that's been addressed that show some expression changes clearly have some issues with shadows or other odd differences happening.

This might not even have been noticed by some, while it might even seem like a minor detail and one that isn't really important to some. We're trying to make the game as professionally polished and smooth as possible, even while still updating the game. The least we have to polish and fix up later the better in my eyes, as I do balance a little tiny fraction of time in fixing up visual issues.

Okay so what does all this mean?

I found a better way to display the sprite expressions without having any slight differences between each expression on shadows or what not. The method in which I'm using now is making use of photoshop to naturally resize the sprite expressions down to what they're used as in the engine. (incoming engine talk prepare yourselves!)

So currently, the expressions in the engine work like this. Taking Miki for an example, she has 22 expressions, so 22 images just for her school uniform. (other outfits have less expressions used, to save file size room. Making use of only which key expressions are used for a given scene. Aka if Miki isn't angry while in a swimsuit, there is no reason right now to have that in the engine.)

Moving on, 22 separate images and these images are their original aspect size. Let's just say it's 850x2000 for this example. Now while that is big for the engine, add in the fact the file has been converted/compressed. It's not so huge even with that, then in the engine when adding Miki to a scene. I adjust her size from 850x2000 to 410x1075 for this example.

Now you might be thinking... "Are you stupid?! Why wouldn't you have resized the actual images in the first place?!" >.<

I can admit that it's what should've been done naturally, but once I did the compressing on it's own. It seemed more than enough to fix the file size issues, but then the visuals suffered for this too.

So what is happening is this, with photoshop. (I'm no photo expert nor claim to be) I am using their image resize tool which scales down the natural aspect trying to keep the quality of the image nearly 100% to the original. Then to help speed things up, I automate batch the expression folders from their original untouched "850x2000" for Miki's case, to have the new ones come out as "410x1075"

Now with doing this, I have tested these new downsized expressions in the engine and thankfully it helps in 2 ways.

number 1: No longer will I have to adjust the aspect size for characters when they join scenes, as they'll be exactly the correct sizes I use for each character in the engine.

number 2: When lined up next to the original expressions that weren't downsized by default. I can see no quality loss at all or anything that makes them not look right. It's as if I did simply as I'm doing, it's as if the original unfiltered expression images are there just downsized to a natural aspect that didn't lose quality. If anything possibly 1% if even that in quality loss, but I've compared the images side by side, layer on top of layer and I see 99% the exact same image.

(keep in mind the game aspect is 720x1280, so stretching to fit 1080x1920 screen or higher might not look perfect. But I personally have a 1080x1920 monitor and while it does look better in it's natural 720x1280 aspect. It can still look okay with 1080x1920, above that I couldn't say.)

[It is possible once the game is fully complete, we'll look into a upgraded version of the game that supports higher computer specs. It might seem silly not to offer 1080x1920 as the default for the game. But we're trying to keep in mind some people who play vn's or lighter games might not be up to date in that sense. We've had people still running 32 bit systems asking why they can't play the game, so we want to do some further support in the future to branch out more. Mobile support, browser support, full HD support and support for 32 bit systems if we feel it is needed.]

With all that said, this will be something that will be part of the public version of update 0.11 and featured in update 0.12 for supporters. The reason we're offering this visual change to sprites to the public version of update 0.11 along side update 0.12, is simply that it feels best before our kickstarter launch and for our public fans to do this.

It'll give the public no misconception on the visuals seen for the game. With that said, there is still a lot of new stuff exclusive to update 0.12 for supporters only. <3 Our next news post will further update on what is still coming along being worked on and what is ready for the release, so please look forward to that! ^^