28/10/2023 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

Summary

• Finished all of Noel's Ch 9 scenes
• Started on Raif's Ch 9 scenes
• Other art things (look below)
• Other Stuffs (™)

Ramble

Hallo. Time for this week's devlog everyone.

Writing

This week I finished up with Noel's Chapter 9 scenes and have started on Raif. I have his scenes outlined out in pretty significant detail (with some narration and dialogue written out) so at this point I just have to write out the actual narration and dialogue. Then on to Yren.

When I started working on the Ch 9 content, I forgot this is the first love scene for the characters. Ha ha. Love scenes are always a bit tricky. 🤣

So that's been fun. 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Still hitting my word counts (sometimes *just* hitting the minimum but I'm hitting them still). Anyway, I wrote nearly 7000 words this week. 💪

Art

Okay, last time I mentioned that I was working on art related things but I didn't go into much detail. (I don't think. I have a vague memory of discussing this but I can't find that post anywhere so maybe I dreamed it.) 🥲

Some people (mostly those on the server) will know that this is a reference to me working with a colour slider to try to colour Wil's skin tone and hair colour.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a promise for a colour slider. This is a discussion about my attempts to work with one. There are kinks to work out and if I can't make it look satisfactory, I will not be using it.

So let's back track and discuss customisation just a little first.

Customisation is hard. Whether it's recolouring or redrawing, it's hard. Recolouring something (like hair) is less work than having to redraw it in a totally new style, but it's still work. All told, I probably spent 50 hours just recolouring CGs in Gilded Shadows. Then extra hours to save 21 - 30 individual files for each CG, name them correctly, then code them into the game. And even more time to test them all.

The main reason Wil's colours are so limited in When Stars Collide is that I chose to add body types, face shapes, and hair styles as options. This means that I will be spending more time redrawing options for CGs which means I logically have to reduce the time spent recolouring. Hence, you get 3 skin tones and only 2 hair colours. I've never been happy with this but it was necessary for me to be able to handle the artwork.

Enter...a colour slider.

The way a colour slider works is that you render the art in grey scale, set a colour range, and then the code mathematically extrapolates the individual colours available to the player. This means that you don't recolour the images *at all* - all the recolouring is done entirely by mechanical means through the code.

The thing about colour sliders is that I have never particularly considered using one because in my past experiences, they seemed to flatten out the art significantly, removing important colour variation in the shading and reducing highlights.

Even if the art still looks fine on its own, it would be a problem for CGs because the MC would look incongruent with the rest of the artwork.

Some of you may be familiar with a programmer named Feniks - they've worked on a lot of games including Our Life and OL2 and are responsible for the cool features in those games.

Feniks has been releasing a lot of various dev tools and one of these is a dynamic colour slider that allows additional flexibility for recolouring behind the scenes.

They are also in the process of adding even more functions to the colour slider so I have been experimenting with it. And I've had pretty good results. Probably about 90 - 95% similar to the results I'd get recolouring manually.

But it's not perfect yet. There are still a few hang ups and things that aren't looking as good as I need them to, so I'm not completely sure I'll be able to use a colour slider. 90% is good but...not good enough when Wil's image has to be placed next to manually rendered love interests in CGs.

The benefit if I can make it look good is that the player will be able to choose a wider range of colours. Instead of three colours, you'd be able to choose any colour within a set range.

And I'd be able to set up a slider for the hair as well so you'd have access to more than silver and black.

But there's no value if there's a noticeable difference in either quality or style.

I have been spending a fair amount of time trying to code this, experiment with it, and tweak the artwork so I have the highest chance of success. Meanwhile, Feniks is also tweaking the colour sliders (not for my sake - they just happened to be working on it at the same time I was trying it so we've been going back and forth a bit regarding bugs and stuff).

The current state of affairs is that it's working pretty well with a few minor issues we are trying to work out. If we can get those problems (a couple of which are deal breakers) fixed, then I could potentially implement colour sliders for Wil's sprite and CGs in When Stars Collide. The customisation page would look like this (rough mock-up):

If not, I will continue to recolour manually and nothing will change from the current set up in the snap shot on Itch.io. It's a big MAYBE at the moment...

But this is something I'm experimenting with at the moment.

Other

I mean, the colour slider/shader also fits in the category of coding too so...LoL

I have also given thought to game guides and walkthroughs as this came up during the last ask session (I think it was the last one.) It would have to be set up a bit different than the backer guide for Gilded Shadows and Changeling since I intend to release WSC in episodes. But I want to plan ahead so I have it ready by then.

It would be nice to have a template that would make it easier to add to the guide episode by episode. 

And I really want to decide in advance what stats or info to include for the backer version.

Anyway, planning and brainstorming are technically work. So...🤣

Upcoming

• Still working on residual GS stuff. This will continue for a while.
• Writing

I will have one distraction less for the upcoming two weeks and I'm really hoping this means I can focus a little better on writing and maybe (MAYBE) finish chapter 9.

I am still on track to finish the draft by the end of December but, always, my goal is actually to finish early if I can. Just don't know if that is going to happen the over abundance of Real Life (™) I'm having at the moment.