Development Log: August 17th (Patreon)

Build: PreAlpha Stage 2

    Hey hey, it's Miz here once more.

     A bit of a late update, but we’ve made a significant amount of progress in the past few weeks! We’ve managed to achieve many of our major goals, along with the study of new systems, such as Spine 2D animation, Substance Painter + Designer for our development process. We’re proud to show off some of our progress with the almost fully complete Dialog System and Animated Sprites!

     So for the Dialog System, we were able to find native support for Spine Pro with an alternative version of Godot 3.5, which allows us to use our Animated 2D models to function at peak performance and efficiency. Without this support, the models would have to be done as a slideshow animation, which would have created significant problems with high quality and smooth animations, such as character image arrays that have sizes being over several Gigabytes, which is completely unreasonable for the quality. But with luck, and some proper documentation, we managed to get it to work almost perfectly.

     Also we have been doing some additional writing and world building in the world, since we have decided to continue to expand the world and characters, allowing us to be able to work on more and more content later down the development of this project. Since we would like to continue developing more of these types of games in the future, having done the work to create a more consistent and interesting world for the potential future ideas and content (which is good for everyone since content is king and Miz has big ambitions to make this project expansive).

     Aside from that, Q has been focusing on working on the 3D assets and textures for the project, and putting his current project on hiatus, but we will get back to that side project in a future date. He will be focusing on laborious and time consuming work of 3D models and textures, which will be much easier on myself as I continue finishing up the writing/programming/2d art/animations in place of also doing the models, which will cut down much of the development time. Albeit, it will still take a significant amount of time, but we will keep everyone up to date throughout the process! But that's about it for this update, check out some of the screenshots and the video of the demonstration of the dialog system and stay tuned for more updates!

Check out the Dialog and one of the animated characters in the following post! Thank you and enjoy the rest of your summer! Until next time…

Miz and Q Out!

- Miz

Changelog and Updates:

- Dialog System Completion (80%)

     - Auto Text Mode Completed

      - Log Window Completed

     - Expressions/Outfits Sprite Changer Completed

     - BG Changer Completed

     - Emoticons Completed

     - Spine 2D Native Animations for Live2D Models Added

      - Live2D Animated Sprites! Animations for each character will be implemented!

      - Towa’s Test Live2D Model Completed!

            -  5 Unique Animations with 20 custom expressions and 5 custom outfits!

      - A “Touch” Feature where you give head pats the the characters and a feature to make their assets “bounce”

- Concept Map of Manor Backyard Designed

- New 3D Assets being made for new areas, such as the Town and Outdoors areas

- Godot Engine Update to new Version (Godot 3.5)

- 3D Assets and Level Design

     - Additional Textures for the Manor Created

     - 60+ New 3D models created

Current Progress:

- Writing the Narrative and Dialog for the Prologue (15-20% complete)

- Dialog System Completion (80% complete)

     - Choice Functionality

     - CG Scenes and CG Mechanics

     - Cut Ins

      - SFX for text and Animations

- Working on Completing Pandora’s and Luna’s Sprite Art (90% complete)

- Converting 2D sprites into Spine 2D animated characters (1 of 6 characters complete)

- Designing two new characters, Maid Servants and Esme the Witch (50% complete)

- Fixing Camera with Player Character Controller (may not need to fix)

- Polishing Character jumping motion (May remove jumping altogether)

- Designing the remainder of the Inner Manor (60% Complete)

- Replacing Placeholder textures with semi-final/final textures (being worked on)

- Finishing 2D Assets (CGs / Character Designs)

- UI Systems and Assets (40% complete)

Project Milestones:

- 3D Models for furniture objects inside the Manor (60% Progress)

- Functioning Doors

- Scene Lighting

- Textures (15% Progress)

- Menu System

- Save Point System

- Chibi Sprite Designs and Animations

- Animated Sprites and CGs

- Events and Sequencing

- New Manor Areas (The Manor's Garden and Outdoors)

- Scene Changing Mechanic

- Multithreading for faster load times

- Texture adjustments for faster loading times

- Main Gameplay Mechanics

- Player Abilities

- Potential Minigames/Combat

- Ravenwood Forest (Zone)

- New Characters

Screenshots: