Development Update (Patreon)

Greetings! 

First, have some eye candy from 0.8's scene :)

Okay, on with the update! 0.8 is moving closer to completion. Since I last checked in, I've gotten quite a bit of work done on quests for the next release. I've also spent a lot of time doing revision work on the H-scene - both the narrative and the images. Rereading it, I thought the write up may have been a bit lacking, so I decided to spruce it up a bit. I also noticed a number of discrepancies in image colors between my two monitors, which led me down a rabbit hole of figuring out how color works in digital images.

As I may have mentioned before, I recently moved over from Mac to Windows as my main development platform. I've been fairly pleased with the transition overall, but one of the big differences I've noticed is the way images appear between the two operating systems. Color is pretty important to the look I'm trying to achieve in my images - I've opted for a very stylized, anime-esque aesthetic in the character designs, and I've always tried to make colors a bit saturated to accentuate the cartoonish feel. Now, on the Mac, images looked a little different between my two monitors, but on Windows they look a lot different. This led me to investigate why - and to try to figure out how the images appear to my players.

I made a rather long post about it in the Discord, so check that out if you're interested, but the tl;dr version is that almost all applications on a Mac take into account the way your monitor reproduces colors, but many applications on Windows don't - including the Windows UI itself and apps like Windows 10's picture viewer, which you'd think would strive for image quality. RPG Maker MV does appear to correctly manage colors, so hopefully it looks the way I want it to in game! I would like some feedback, though - do the H-scene images look colorful and pleasantly saturated? Oversaturated? A bit drab? Please let me know what you think in the comments, I'd find it really helpful!

By the way, this color issue I'm talking about is only really a problem if you're using a monitor that can reproduce more colors than 'standard' (sRGB). Otherwise you probably won't notice much difference between images that are correctly color managed and those that aren't. If you want an image viewer that correctly manages color on Windows, I've found that IrfanView can do so if you download the plugins and enable color management in settings. Anyway, on to the development status!

Development Status

Planning ~ 100%

Features & Mechanics ~ 0%

To do:

• Create character view feature
• Add help menu
• Write FAQ
• Add transmogrification

H-Scenes ~ 95%

To do: Revise image colors

Other Art ~80%

To do: Create renders for character view in menu

Quests, Events & Writing ~ 40%

Testing and Bugfixes ~ 0%

My focus for the next week is to continue getting the quests and writing done. I'll continue working on that until it's complete, then pivot over to the remaining art and feature work - that'll give me a bit of time between the writing and editing which will hopefully let me see it with fresh eyes.

Feedback Wanted!

 I'd like to get your input on a few things! 0.8 will introduce transmogrification, which will let you make your outfit look like another outfit you own (this lets you keep the best combat stats while still looking the way you want). That opens up a lot of outfit possibilities, and I'm wondering what sorts of outfits you guys would like to see! Please let me know your ideas in the comments, and I'll create a poll next week and implement some of your favorites in an upcoming release!

As I mentioned above, I'd also like to know what you think about the colors in H-scene images (viewed in game, not in Win 10's image viewer!) Are they too colorful? Not enough? I'm going for a saturated, Overwatch sort of look, but I don't want it to look like I'd taken buckets of neon paint to everything.

That's all I have to report for now. I'm going to get back to writing - thank you for your support!