Sleepy Time & Sunny Day Jack Report 05/10/23 (Patreon)

Hey there Sunspots, it's time for our weekly dev report again! Things are starting to come together really nicely, so we hope you enjoy this report on Sleepy Time & Sunny Day Jack!

(If you're a Kickstarter backer on the Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack campaign, this is largely the same info!)

Sleepy Time Jack

Version 0.33 Is Now Up! Grab it at the usual itch.io page~

Changelog:

• Textbox rendering issue resolved this time (I really hope so)
• Expressions added to holiday lines
• Help text centered properly
• Header colors in GUI screens changed to purple

To-Do:

• Center the images in the Help screen...
• Translate new lines related to the Birthday input into Spanish
• Begin Japanese translation

This one isn't a proper content update quite yet as we weren't able to implement the Spanish translation since we were busy investigating the say screen error that many of our Android players had reported after entering their birthday. The error looks something like this:

Exception: The say screen (or show_function) must return a Text object.

Both Mole and I were confident that changing the Save Directory name from "SleepyTimeJack-69" to "SleepyTimeJack_69" would solve the mysterious textbox rendering issue related to the Rimouski typeface change as default, as this should have essentially made Sleepy Time Jack into a "new game" without any existing persistent data. And it did work for most of our Windows players! Though, admittedly Android (and any mobile phone OS) stores data in a strange manner, so it may have to do with something in the package name or... honestly we don't know.

So, as a forced fix we're trying to implement, we put in a quick splashscreen that won't affect load times.

What this does is that the first time everyone loads up Version 0.33 of Sleepy Time Jack, this splashscreen will automatically switch the persistent.typeface variable to be RImouski, just in case it is still somehow set to Bubblegum (which is now only being used for Headers in the UI). Players can then continue to use Rimouski or switch back to Kinto if they prefer.

We do hope this resolves any lingering issues left with the textbox not rendering properly by default 😩 Do let us know if any bugs do occur in the Bug Reports thread.

Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack

Story Outline Progress

As many of you know, Nick was not part of the original trio of love interests, and with his inclusion we've had to change the way the game is formatted. Biscuit, our Narrative Designer, has this to say:

I'm currently restructuring the story in a way that makes it so that player's decisions have as much impact as possible. Almost every decision has multiple levels of impact, such as future dialogue referencing actions the player has taken, to even possibly taking you to a whole different ending that might be funny, might be cute, or might be a little bit more scary, it all depends!

Every scene gives a whole different kind of vibe depending on player choice. You might get a more angst-y scene, you might get one that tells you more about your favorite character's past, or one that is more fanservice oriented. Points will be awarded per decision, with the game rewarding you with much more intimate scenes if you commit to a single character during your run rather than spreading multiple favorable decisions towards other characters.  Finally, the game is being structured in a way that has multiple endings per character, with a few hidden, fun endings if the player manages to achieve some tricky sets of conditions!

Every choice has tons of consequences to maximize replayability, player input and exploiting multiple angles per character. For example, some decisions during Ian scenes highlight Y/N's struggles to accept him back into their life. The pain of loving him regardless of everything he's done, trying to forgive, etc. Meanwhile other decisions lead to showcasing more of Ian's fragility and constant effort to win them back, a genuine attempt at redemption to try and atone for what they think is an unforgivable mistake.

That's the kind of story I'm going for! I hope you look forward to it.

Unity Demo Progress

After everyone's input on the new sprites, Sauce took another stab at them and we're finally getting them into the game!

Terra's put together the Layered Sprites in Naninovel so all the characters can emote properly. Along with that, she's been customizing  the rest of the game screens for a cohesive look to go with the nostalgic VHS feeling we want to capture with SDJ.

Along with GUI customization, some quality-of-life features have been added. Some of the added features to look forward to are:

• A settings menu with a master volume adjustment along with independent volume controls for music, sound effects, and voice.
• A tips menu that will provide additional Sunny Day Jack lore,with descriptions unlocked during gameplay.
• An image gallery.
• A save/load system that also includes quicksave and quickload functions.

Most of the core demo script has also been plugged in with the  background changes implemented, and the Frozen Yogurt minigame is coming along as well.

That's what we have this time around! Next week, we hope to have some more Gallagher Mansion goodies, and maybe something else to share as well. Please look forward to it~