Development Update #46 - Next Alpha release date.

Hello, there guys, it took me an entire month but I was able to fix bugs, and add the new stuff I needed to the save system, and even fix the screen positioning of UI stuff such as the Gallery and Credits. 

I am working on some very specific animations, but they are kinda tricky. 

The way the Animations works is like this: They grab the position of the Character and change it, so if the character is "zoomed in" on the screen, and I try to do a Jump, it will reset the positions to Y = 0 since the normal Jump animation starts with Y on 0. Why is this a problem? Well, when a character is zoomed in, his position and scale change a little, a Scale will make the character sprite bigger, but the central point will stay the same, meaning his head will be, well, out of the bounds. To fix this, once the animation starts, the Y position is lowered to 500. If I play a Shake animation, that's fine since the shake moves the X left and right, but the Jump moves the Y, and the Y on the animation starts on 0. Can you understand the situation? 

So, I kinda need to code in, both on my JSON Editor, and on my Day Reader (in-game code) to recognize a lot of animations that are the same but with the extra values, such as 'Jump-Zoomed', for example, where the Y starts at 500. 

There are other animations I wanna do too, such as Move left to Right, Move Right to Left, I noticed that I have a Leave animation, but I don't have a specification, usually, the character will leave a pre-determined direction and that's it. But if I put, Wagner from the Left to the Right, right now his sprite would just "teleport" from one part of the screen to the other.

I can, and I already did, for example, on the Fourth Day, made Wagner's sprite leave the screen and then enter it back, that is possible because there is an animation for entering, and one animation for Exit. But there isn't animation for "moving from left to right, right to left, left to center, etc", what I am struggling with is that these names are kinda big so I need to think about a name that won't make me wonder what the animation does when I use it, and that's not that big.

Not only that, I need to test every single animation to make sure they work and don't conflict with ANY screen size. 

That's a very demanding thing I'm working on now, and I'm sure I'll have it done eventually, but I think after I have all these variations of animations, the only animation I will need is the "Eyes opening/closing" constantly, I'm already seeing is I can get some "frames" for the eyes with Wagner, he's working on a lot of stuff so I need to be patient.

But having those animations done also means that I will have to re-work every single day so far to add them. Makes no sense if you play the game, and the characters only start to moving around after the 4th day right? 

This means reading each dialogue from each route and deciding if I should add or remove an animation there, for example.

That's a thing for the future, I'll be working on those animations little by little since I'm at the end of the month already and I have some pressing things I need to do, such as closing the alpha, creating the Monthly Month message, and right now, disserting this Development Update. Today is 00:24 09/29 and tomorrow is the last day of the month, I won't be able to finish those animations AND close the alpha. And thank you guys are a must for me, as long as I have less than a hundred Patrons, I'll be able to pick every single name and make the post without troubles, but it still takes time, so yeah. There's also the need to add the new patrons to the game and all that.

So, with that said, I'm working now on the Monthly Thank Message, this post will be up on day 30. The next alpha will be posted probably on 10/04, Monday. After that the next Pool will be added for Tier 3 and 4 patrons, so please don't forget to vote on what you want me working, since I fixed most of the bugs and issues the game had up 'till now.

And now, finally, lemme talk about some issues I need to find a workaround: I'm also thinking of putting sound effects in the game, by doing that I need to program a new slider on the options menu for Sound Effects, make sure the game-System-Data is saving those configurations and all that, I also need to add the option for sound effects on my Json Creator, make sure it's saving the information, making sure the save system is also SAVING the Sound Effect information so when you load a game not only the music but the SFX is playing too, there's a lot of little things that need to be coded on the game if I find the correct sound effects. That's another thing: I need to find Royalty-free Sound Effects, after all, I can't go buying them, I need to save to buy music for the game eventually, if possible. So, the animation scavaging section with every single day will only be done when I also add the new sound effects to the game, that's why even if I'm working on animations right now I won't just go around poking the days and adding them because I will need to add these SFX effects to the dialogs too. And let's not forget that there are two kinds of Sound effects, the ones that are playing constantly, like crickets or other sounds, and the ones that are there for the story such as when a character makes a bad joke or realizes something. So, you can see how complex it can be, and I do need to code that. I won't lie though, it's good when we can mix between writing the story/coding the game, it makes my mind work better.  

But that's it for this Development Update. The date for the next alpha with the fixes are set, there are things I still wanna do but I can't right now and I thnk you all deserve more story to read. If Wagner is able to finish any of the new artworks he's working on for the game, I'll be posting for Tier 3 patrons as always. 

And, here are some gifs of the testing I was making for the character animations and screen positioning and all that:

I hope you all have a wonderful week, and let us all continue to work hard to be safe and happy, right?

Thank you all for your support, I hope you guys can still be here next month to help me, don't forget to follow me on Twitter (@yekkusu), where you can check from time to time some small updates for the game, nothing much though so don't worry.

Thank you all again, and we'll be seeing each other shortly.