12/02/2022 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

12/02/2022

This Week's Summary:

• Worked on background animations
• SFX
• "Mini" CGs

The Ramble:

Hey everyone! Let's jump into this week's round up.

As you all know, I'm kind of on the final checklist of items for game release - a list of 11 things (many of which are multi-step, of course).

This week my focus has been on adding some subtle BG variations and going through to identify what additional SFX are needed to liven up some of the scenes. I've also been toying with an idea for a sort of mini CG for the love scenes for a while and started putting that in place.

Of course, the love scenes already have a CG but it's early in the scene and I wanted something non-graphic for later in the scene as well. I've been racking my brain for what to do and finally came up with an idea that does involve more art - but really simple art I can finish quite quickly.

(Example: I started yesterday with 1 sketch. And ended yesterday with 2 completed CGs and 4 additional sketches. These are not difficult to do. They're essentially just close up of hands.)

Originally, though I was calling them "mini" CGs, I was thinking they'd probably be the same size as full CGs but looking at them full size, I think they're probably going to be more impactful as true mini CGs that are shown at a slightly smaller size and as more of an overlay that doesn't completely cover the scene below.

So I also worked on those this week.

As far as SFX go, so far I really don't have a very long list of needed effects. I still need to go place all the sounds in the routes but it looks like I already have most of what I need, which is great.

And finally, BG animations. So. . .

I've had a whole list of animations I wanted to try:

• Light beams in the vivarium
• Light beams in the caves in Lance's route
• Twinkling stars for a BG in Caissa's route
• Light flickers in a couple of places (already in the game)
• Rain (already in the game)
• Lightning for the sand storms
• Water sparkles for a BG in Lance's route
• Fire flickers for a scene in Lance's route
• Flickering alien symbols for one particular BG
• Flickering lights for the ruins
• More flickering lights for the ruins (I have a lot of "ruins" BGs Lol)
• Maybe some pulsing/flashing lights for a lab BG
• Smoke for a BG in Jack's route
• Shower steam for all the shower scenes
• Flickering neon lights
• Something for Lance's greenhouse
• Then maybe some glowy "psi" effects

A lot of these are in the "try it and see if you can make it look good" category. Especially some of the light flickers or things like lightning. I'm quite photosensitive so anything that hurts my eyes will not go in the game. I gave myself a migraine working on the lightning so that one has been marked off the list.

Some of them are also so subtle that it feels pointless to keep them in (like the water sparkles for the wastes - it's just not that obvious that it's even there.)

So far, though I have gotten a few of them to work out well, and I think they add a lot to the BGs where I've put them.

I still have a few more that I want to work on getting into the game, though. I'm not terribly familiar with Renpy's "Animation and Transformation Language" so there's a lot of trial and error on how to code the animations. For those not familiar, most of the simple animations you seen in renpy games will be coded animations - not actual gifs or movies. Movies are supported but are often unnecessary and will add to your game size by a lot. Gifs are unsupported despite that they seem like they'd be a good option for the sort of short, loopable animations you see with VN backgrounds.

So instead, you code the animation in the game using the animation frames, basically. Its not too difficult with simple animations - it just sometimes takes some trial and error to get the speed and things down.

Anyway, that's what I mostly worked on this week.

BG animations and SFX are actually the two biggest features on my remaining list. A lot of the other things are things like:

• Fix a typo on the flowchart
• Fix a typo on Morgan's profile
• Fix a typo in the official guide
• Update Lance's image on the title screen (it shows his old hairstyle)
• Update one of the buttons on the extras screen that shows Kauri
• Add a credits sequence + music
• Finish up the content guide

Just to give you an idea of how close we are. . .these are the kinds of things I'm actually working on at the moment. Along with testing, testing, testing, testing, correcting, and more testing.

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

This is an example of what the "mini CGs" will be like.

Upcoming Week:

Basically all the stuff mentioned above. I showed you my to-do lists basically. So that's the stuff I'll be working on until it's all complete! As you can see - it's just a lot of really minor polishing things.

Once those things are done then it's. . .testing, testing, testing....and more testing.

I'll see you all next week! 

~Esh