12/01/2024 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

Hello everyone! Time for this week's updates!

This is showing up very late in the day because certain people who live in the same house as me can't not interrupt me non-stop while trying to write up these updates. I won't name those people but you know who they are. (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

Summary

• Corrected a few more errors (mostly typos in the bonus scene)

• Made some slight alterations to some of Wil's outfits and how they're set up in the code

• Set up the music cues through Ch 5 and Ch6

• Finished Yren's final CG for Ep 2

• Started on Noel's final CG for Ep 2 (and the last CG I have to do for that episode)

• Fixed an annoying issue I noticed in some of the CGs that include Wil

Art 

So this week was mostly focusing on art and trying to complete the remaining Episode 2 CGs.

I managed to finish up Yren's CGs and I have to say this was probably the most labour intensive CG I've done so far due to Wil's pose. Wil is facing forward so you can see most of their upper body as they look down at something in their hands.

It was really useful to do a CG like this to compare the amount of work to CGs where Wil's upper body is cut off or mostly obscured.

But definitely being able to see their chest from the front and with their face tilted down meant doing a lot of additional work. The hair required additional layers instead of just the one or two layers I could get away with in other sprites. 

And honestly it was just a much more complex CG.

It was useful to see, though, because the chapter 5 CG must, out of necessity, show Wil as well. And it's good to use this first "couple" CG for everyone to learn what is doable, what is too much work, what is just the right amount, etc etc.

Coding and Other Stuff

One of the things I did this week was slightly change how some of Wil's outfit files are set up.

This kind of gets into some complex coding stuff but I'll do my best to explain it mostly right. (LoL)

The way sprites work in Renpy (at least how I do it) is that they use a function called "layeredimage" - this essentially is a way of creating a composite image (an image made of multiple other images) that is layered in a particular order.

In my case I have things like:

Sprite head

Sprite face parts

Sprite body

Sprite clothes

Renpy basically layers them in this order to create the image yo usee in the game.

Now, for all the sprites the face parts are also in layers - eyebrows, mouth, and eyes. And the clothes are also in layers - pants, shirts, coats, accessories, etc.

This allows me to do things like mix and match features for different expressions or outfits. 

You can create a group in the code - let's say for eyes or for pants...and all the eye shapes and all the pants go in those groups. The benefit is that the character will never be able to apply two of any group at the same time. This means you can avoid weird glitches like the character having two sets of eyebrows all at once.

In theory.

You can also set certain attributes as default which does things like prevent characters from showing up naked if you forget to state which outfit they're wearing upon showing the sprite. Or without a face. Or without hair...

It's a little complicated at times when you are including customisation in the mix but it's really cool.

Early on I had set up some of Wil's outfits as a complete outfit instead of breaking them into a top and a bottom - and saved the image files this way.

The issue was that this was causing Wil to be layering certain outfits in a weird way. For instance, Wil was wearing their default shiny pants under their pyjama pants when I tried to have Wil wear their PJs.

This is because, since the PJs were a complete outfit, they weren't in the "pants" group. I ended up putting them in the shirt group, I believe. But....this meant that Wil always wanted to wear their default pants. Even though technically there was a pair of pants attached to the shirt they were wearing as a complete outfit.

I think when I originally threw some of the outfits together for testing I just wasn't thinking long term so I set them up in a stupid way.

It's not visible in the side image but was definitely visible in the choice menu during a choice in which they were still wearing their PJs.

I essentially just had to go back and re-save certain outfits as separate pieces, then adjust the code to use those pieces instead of looking for the old complete-outfit images. It wasn't that big a deal - it was just one of those things that I didn't plan for well early on.

I also coded Yren's CG...which in turn led me to notice a problem with all the other CGs that have Wil in them. 

Basically I just mis-numbered the bodies in the image file but that meant changing the file names of a ton of files. It wasn't too bad for most of the characters but if you recall, I was experimenting with the best way to set up the hair files, which have to take into consideration the shape of Wil's head/face and Wil's body. And there are two hair colours. At the minimum CG with Wil in it will have 16 hair files. 

But the only ones that will have that few are likely to be CGs from the front or from the back. Which is.........honestly not that many CGs. Most are going to show Wil's face from a profile or ¾ view. And from there, the amount of necessary files are going to go up in increments of 16 every time. 

Most of them are going to have 32 or 48 hair files. But Asher has...144. This is because I was trying to see which style of hair set up was less annoying (spoiler, they're both annoying in different ways but I think naming that many hair files is marginally more annoying than babysitting the photoshop layering).

Anyway. I had to rename every single file that has the body numbers in the file name. So all of Wil's actually body files (4 per CG with Wil in it), all of Wil's clothes files (4 per CG), and all of the hair files. ┗( T﹏T )┛

Fortunately it was actually only for 3 CGs that I needed to do this. Noel's isn't done, Yren's was named correctly because that's how I realised I numbered the others wrong, and Raif's shows Wil from behind so it didn't need it.

But oof. That was a lot of renaming.

HOPEFULLY I DIDNT BREAK ANYTHING. awkward laughing

Upcoming Week

This week I will be finishing up Noel's CG. It should be a little less complex than Yren's CG due to how Wil is standing and where it gets cut off. So hopefully I can finish it in due time.

With a bit more coding and testing that will wrap up Episode 2. 

As soon as I can, I will update the Early Access version and plan to release Episode 2 publicly.

My goal is still to do the public release between the 19th and 22nd of this month.

Most likely I'll spend at least some time coding in some minor things in Episode 3 as well just to get a bit of a leg up on that one. But that will only be when I'm resting my hand.

I admit that...having to take such care and move through the art so slowly due to my hand is really frustrating. I'm used to being able to draw for 6-8 hours a day with small breaks.

And I cannot do that any more, which is really disheartening. The art takes so much longer because at the first signs of pain (okay....I'll be honest....not the FIRST signs of pain, usually. I know, I know) I stop drawing and rest my hand. I'm trying to be careful not to worsen it...

But that means working so much slower than I'm used to and I really hate it.

Whenever I'm tempted to ignore the pain and power through, I remember those months I worried I would not be able to finish the art for Gilded Shadows and it makes me choose to be responsible. But...

I admit I get frustrated a lot while dealing with this. Chronic pain sucks.

And feeling unproductive because my hand hurts makes me feel whiny and stupid. But...I know it's better to be cautious and thoughtful about my limitations than push myself and damage my body beyond help.

Still.

Taking a week for a CG is just...meh. It makes me cranky. >=( 

Anyway. That is all for this week. I shall see you all next week when hopefully (HOPEFULLY) I will be done with the last CG.