Dev Diary, February 24th, 2023 (Patreon)

I saw a question last week about the music and if I would use artists from the LoF soundtrack in u4ia. I'm having talks with a few of those artists, and they will be included for u4ia with new songs. Although, for the most part, the new game will have music from artists not connected to LoF.

For actual progress, I've spent almost all my time in Ren'Py. My head and eyes are adapting to the more complex scripting, and all in all it's fun to expand a bit upon the normal 'dialogue and choices'.

My current render-queue has finished rendering, but I keep adding some renders here and there as I transfer the script into Ren'Py.

I've completed the main UI parts, and there's a preview below (gif bonked the quality, but you get the general idea).

There's still a lot to do in Ren'Py apart from the actual dialogue/choices/scenes game script. This week I'll continue to work on those. That includes a new gallery for the collectibles (you should be able to spot one of them below), a new phone with new apps, a new replay feature, and finalizing the roam system.

The reason I'm spending a bit of time on this is that I know that from the moment episode one is out, I'll have my hands full rendering for several years and would like to have the main focus on doing that.

Oh, and before I forget. You do not have to worry about the phone out of the roam events, and it will have a better notification system.

I did mention earlier that I wanted to include UI art/fonts/screens for 4k screens, but I had to abandon that. As you can see from the images below, changing the resolution will give me quite a lot to adjust. And while it's technically possible to make a 4k version of the UI, it would be both time-consuming to make, and very demanding on your system to have Ren'Py resize every image on-demand while playing. My time is better spent elsewhere.

To end with some non-development stuff... Today is exactly 7 years since I got pretty much the worst phone call I have ever gotten. So we're doing our yearly tradition of gathering the family and walking over 'that bridge'. Can't believe it's been 7 years already, but it's all about getting together, with the good memories, and good stories to share in good company. And last but not least throw 'her' a pack of cigarettes over the railing just for the quirkiness of it (she was a smoker). One of my biggest fears was that she would be forgotten by all as the years passed. Thanks to you guys, she won't. That gives me more reason to smile than you'll ever imagine.

Take care everyone, enjoy your weekend, and stay safe out there.

// Drifty