dev diary: memos and menus (syrup 2) (Patreon)

i'm still on my syrup 2 kick. i want to try to make a WIP build sometime in the next couple months. but yeah, anyway, i started drawing the different memo paper!!! here's what it looks like ingame:

hehe, it swaps out based on the title you have equipped... they're turning out so cute. i've drawn about half of them now, but i might add more titles later, so there will be even more paper! i wish i could make some of these real... syrup 2 stationery sets.... <3

because i was annoyed that you have to go into the game menu to change your title (and therefore it's easy to forget to ever change it), i've been working on updating the hub menu to be more useful...

top is the old version, bottom is new:

from left to right, it's battle level, amount of items you can gather, alchemy rank, party&skills menu, status screen, and objectives. underneath those, it shows your current title and lets you bring up the menu to change it. everything has tooltips when you hover. also i think having it show the item amount for gathering is a lot more useful than knowing what gathering level you are, so i'm glad i changed that.

the way the hub menu used to work was that if you clicked anywhere on the bottom it would bring up the status menu, but that just meant i never clicked it and always forgot to look. having onscreen buttons for all the sub-menus feels way better.

the other thing that was bothering me about the old version is that because the character names were inside the little info box, it would stretch out to be really really long when you had butterscotch with you. i need the space on the right to have descriptive objectives, and that's harder to do when less text will fit there. now it's not an issue!!! this should make translation a lot less of a headache when it comes to that as well.

btw here is what the objectives button shows you!

it records the list of sidequests you've completed!!!! now you can load a save and have a better idea of what you haven't done yet to ease you back into the story after a long break... gotta keep stuff like that in mind for a 10 hour rpg (i imagine this game is gonna be like 10 hours by the end lol). not everyone sits and plays the whole thing all at once... idk, i've had the objectives menu in here for a while now, so maybe i already mentioned it, but the completed list is new.

i also updated the game menu again to a layout more suited to what this game is:

i think most rpgs do a setup like this, but the main ones i was thinking of were pokemon and atelier sophie. hoving the buttons shows a tooltip at the bottom so you know what everything does. (please ignore the cheat tab, that's just my debug menu...)

oh... oh gosh i almost forgot, i also updated souffle's menus..... though i guess he's not in the demo that everyone here has access to, so i'll just hold back on that one for now. i'm glad i had a lot to talk about this week, BUT I'M NOT EVEN DONE YET...

story updates

so, right now, syrup 2 is broken up into 8 chapters (wow just like treat). i've written up to chapter 7. there is a lot of side content i'm doing right now, like letting you meet cassia and make cookies for her. i'm finally introducing mint, a character i designed 2 years ago now. she's the chocolate twins' cousin, and yesterday i wrote like 2 scenes where the twins start alluding to her--it's kicking off a mini arc that will eventually lead to a choice for a bad ending...

omg i should mention by bad ending i don't mean treat style bad end!!!! it'd be more like the syrup 1 bad ends!!!! depressing if you think about it but not soul crushing or anything. the bad ends i have planned for syrup are much shorter since most of them are just, losing to certain story bosses (like in disgaea....)

so yeah other than that i'm working on putting nyapeta city in. it's a place you unlock through butterscotch/toffee's sideplot, so there's nothing to gather or battle there, just story content and a shop. i'm hoping to finish this area and then make a build. that's why i'm guessing it'll be sometime in the next couple months... idk if i will finish all the art but i'm trying to keep going with the script and new items and stuff.

everything's going well! my anti-anxiety meds have made me so poweful!!! feeling very relaxed and able to tackle everything at a reasonable pace!!!!!!! hope you guys are all had a good weekend too :)