338 - EXTRA!! (Patreon)

DURING this week while I was working on the challenges I decided to document the process and was taking pictures of my screen every now and then. Today while editing the pictures for this post I realized that talking about the process I went through while working feels even more tedious than working itself, which did fell REALLY TEDIOUS.

I EDITED out a lot of pictures, but there are still quite a few left, so try to stick with me for this report if you can. Although I will totally understand if you won't be able too. When you get too bored just skip to the end of this post, I won't judge you.

 ANYWAY, to start off I used Photoshop to create a placeholder mocap of every challenge icon position. After that I imported that mocap into the game. After that I had to create the icons themselves.

AFTER I WAS DONE, I imported the first icon into the game only to find out that I forgot to resize the JPG files properly before saving, which meant I needed to create all those icons again from scratch.

IT TOOK some time but I was finally done and was ready to start adding them into the game.

THE CODE I had to write to make the icons clickable is not particularly difficult, but (you guessed it) is rather tedious. Also even though copying some bits of code from PT did help me save some time it also introduced a few bugs because some variables had different names in PT and QT.

AFTER THAT I imported all the icons into the game and everything was working well until I realized that there was actually no space for the final challenge because I did not account for the space the EXIT button takes.

THAT MEANT I had to go back to the mockup and try and figure out a way to locate the icons differently... Maybe change the overall number of them? Maybe change the size? It is all so tedious...

EVENTUALLY I decided to cut the number of the icons and leave the lower row completely empty. After a while though I started to really hate it. First of all the empty row looked dull and boring, second of all I wasn't sure that 21 challenges was enough.

AT THE END, I decided to compromise and just reduced the original number of the challenges by 1 to leave the room for the button.

AFTER THAT, the really tedious part of the work had begun. I had to adjust every icon manually to make them align with the mockup background. Basically I just had to change X and Y, reload the game, see if it fits, rinse and repeat.

AFTER I got the #01 icon right, it got a little bit easier because all the next ones in this row had the same Y value.

WHEN the second row started I took the X value from the upper row, but still had to figure out the Y one by trial and error. Oh, and I had to use a calculator every now and then to make the whole process a bit less tedious.

WHEN I was finally done with that the game crashed. Apparently I was still missing some of the icons, so I had to go into Photoshop again and create them.

AFTER that I was finally done. All the 27 icons were in the game. Clicking any of those icons would crash the game though.

AFTER THAT there was a lot of coding, copy and pasting, and coding again. It was all very very very TIDIOUS.

MY GOAL was to create at least 1 fully working challenge and after that I could copy it multiple times later, making the necessary adjustments.  FINALLY I got to the point where I was able to start importing additional assets. I had to dig up original PT PSD files for this. It also took a lot of time because I had to create the screen, make sure it displays properly and blah-blah-blah... Good Lord! If you are still reading this, I salute you, brother.
AFTER THAT I had to dig up my notes to be able to start working on the actual contents of the challenges themselves. 

I TYPED the challenges into the text editor to be imported later into the game.
REMINDER: I cut a lot of stuff from this report that I present to you, dear bro. Several days of work is documented here. -_-

AND AFTER THAT while I was digging through the game files adjusting variables, I play-tested one side-mission scene and a strong urge to illustrate it took hold of me. My original plan was to not add any new illustrations anymore, but I just could not resist. After all, I don't think I ever had any regrets about putting too many drawings into a game.

I CAN'T show it off without spoiling things, but it turned out nicely and I can't wait to color it and put into the game. That is the plan for this week: finish this drawing, finish the challenges and move on to the true ending scene.

That is all. Thank you for your support, bros. I will see you all next Monday.

-Aka-