Saturday Update! (Patreon)

Hello again! Time for another update!

Last week was very busy!

I had to spend a day and some followup hours getting my restock order organized with vograce- I got my proofs for 5 new hard enamel pins and I've approved them, so those should hopefully be available in a month or so?

After that, I did a bit of script writing for 2 days and got the intro of the game roughed out. [ That's the part where you're talking to Strade in a bar until he kidnaps you ]. I've made some pretty major changes to this phase, I'd say it's longer but more streamlined. Instead of changing how events go, I opted to subtly shift the conversation depending on the new personality system.

The purpose of the intro has changed quite a bit. In the original, it basically just acted to add a bit of story before the meat of the game. But now, its job is to let the player establish their personality a bit before the game really gets going.

[ Ignore the visuals, everything you see here is placeholders to help me work on the code LMAO ]

For the last bit of the work week, I drew up some extremely rough plans for the dialogue box and overlay UI. I also got into trying to code the heart meter- which turned out to be a pretty challenging undertaking.

Because the game is going to be a bit longer, I decided that I wanted to be able to add love points in smaller increments than 1-10, and because of that, I'd need a way to reflect it so that players wouldn't be in the dark about how many points they have.

I also decided that I want the game to have side-sprites, since I liked that approach in TPOF and Strade may be behind the player or off-screen more often in the new script.

Unfortunately, I had to get up to some new coding since the original game actually hijacked the space fo side-sprites with the heart meter.

It took pretty much an entire day of coding and researching, but I managed to create a new heart meter that only appears when Strade is speaking [ despite not being contained in his dialogue box ] and also uses 10 bars placed on top of each other to show the heart value changing in a fun animated way :D

All of those visuals will be tightened up and replaced of course, but the functionality is there which is what I really care about right now ^o^

I was hoping to get a bit further with the writing last week actually, but I got kinda distracted by a leak in my apartment. I thought it was just a small leak under my sink but it turned out to be a leak from the 4th floor of the building and a plumber cut a bunch of holes in my drywall and... well it was a mess. I still got holes everywhere LMAO And I have trouble writing when there's strangers in my apartment ;0;

But it's pretty much sorted. Someone will be around to fix the drywall later apparently. 

Oh! One last thing, I forgot to post a bunch of sketches I did recently, so they're in a post on my pillowfort -> https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/3328776

Despite all the weird challenges, I still think I got a fair amount of work done last week! 💪 I have volunteer work with my old high school all day today though so I might be kinda tired next week ^^; but I will continue to do my best!

Thank you guys so much for your support! I hope you're enjoying the warmer weather <3 Stay safe and have a great weekend!