Dev Update 20/06/2020 (Patreon)

Update time!

The typo hunt continues! I've gotten feedback on the tech demo from more players and have been doing what I can to address the issues. I've also finally got the dialogue export-import system to where I could send AWolfe a full transcript of all the games dialogue. This should make finding and fixing typos and other text errors much simpler. I've also reedited some of the games intro according to several players' feedback. It's still a bit on the long side, but it should be more engaging now.

In addition to that, I spent some time this week writing up the first date for "ballet girl". These first dates are proving difficult to write. I have to both find a balance between branching dynamic narrative, character and plot details that have to be mentioned, and finding the right voice for each girl. So I'll still be working on that next week. It's gotten into decent shape so far, but there's a lot more needed. Of course, the minute I start writing, It opens the flood gates for cool ideas to expand the mechanics of the dates system. I'm doing my best to ignore them for now to avoid feature creep, but it's nice to have a list of cool optional features for later in the dev process.

One thing you may have seen elsewhere was my little experiment with shaders. I won't bore you with the tech stuff, but basically shaders are a very efficient way of getting cool effects and animations into the game. For example, the static version of the girls outline and selected states required the creation and use of 3 different images for each girl (which takes more time to make and increases the games file size). The shader based solution below took about an hour or two to create, is shared between all the girls (with a simple color change), and has the added benefit of being lightly animated with a small bloom effect. Otherwise known as looking that much cooler :)

Old static version:

New shader based version:

I know this looks like a small feature, but it was a way for me to learn and practice a new technique while taking a welcome break from the difficulties of writing dialogue, and I really like the way it turned out. I already have plans for other parts of the game where this technique can be useful. More on that probably in next week's update.

Have a great week!