Dev Blog #62 - For The Visually Inclined

Greetings everyone!

2019 is truly a year of change for The Company. We've moved to a proper project management system, upped our documentation game, embraced some pretty major design changes, and, most importantly, started numbering development blogs! But seriously, today's going to be a nice, meaty update that should particularly appeal to those visually minded individuals. Read, "Most People".

Update 6.1 and 2019 Roadmap

Let's get right to it, shall we? First off, I've finally taken the time to visualize update progress in a slick little info block...

Like it? The intention is to update this info at least twice a month, though in the short term I'm going to be updating it weekly and seeing how that works out.

As for the information itself, it's actually a lot better than it looks. There's been a workflow shift away from "just writing" to sitting down and mapping out events "then" sitting down to write. Just about every detail concerning the content and features going into Update 6.1 have been planned out, and implementation will move rather quickly. My goal is to have the update released by the end of April.

Next week I'll be detailing the new content coming in Update 6.1!

I also mentioned a roadmap. Well, that's because I've finally built out a proper roadmap that I'm happy to share with everyone.

This should give everyone a pretty clear idea of what's coming over the course of the year. If anything changes in terms of general timeframes, it will be reflected in the roadmap.

After the impending Overview page renovation, both the update progress block and the roadmap will be kept on the front page.

Artwork Revision Preview

The artwork feedback survey from a couple weeks ago proved to be incredibly helpful in both confirming many of my thoughts (good and bad!) about the art direction, as well as nailing down specific problem areas and helping us work towards solutions.

With that, my artist and I sat down and went to the proverbial and also literal drawing board, taking the things that worked from the initial character run, and moving forward with something cleaner and more modern.

I'm really excited to finally start sharing what we've come up with!

The decision this time around was to start with Ava and Dakota since they currently have the densest amount of content in the game, before moving to the MC, then coworkers. Today's reveal will show off Ava in-engine, followed by an explanation of how the system will work moving forward.

Without further ado...

Not bad, right? We've gone back and cleaned up the lines and colors, resolved character proportions, and just improved the quality overall. Now of course art will always be subjective, and we'll never have everyone on board, but what I'm showing off today is exactly where I want to be with the artwork moving forward. I can't wait to show everyone more as it develops!

So let's get into some technical bits.

Every character is being designed roughly the same way, as a layered paper doll, which can be updated dynamically as the game progresses. What this means is that every character will have:

• A unique resting pose for dialogue (seen above)
• 7 facial expressions with varying head positions for variety
• Full-body outfit options such as Ava's maid and office outfits
• Visual additions such as Ava's collar or Dakota's doggy ears
• Dialogue box portraits will update as well to reflect mood and outfit
• Scenes, as seen above, can be built on the fly with 1-3 characters on screen at once

This, of course, does not include static event scenes (CGs) and "action" images for more intimate interactions.

So that gives you an idea about "what" is getting implemented, in terms of artwork, but not "how" it's getting implemented. This particular initiative will begin after the comment system has been finished and will involve a few fundamental changes to the image structure of the game. Here are the key points:

• The current image directory will be reorganized and pruned
• This means less images overall, as well as a smaller image pack
• The remaining images will be renamed and standardized
• The default image pack will include an image manifest file, linking image file names to image variable names within the game
• Every unique image listed will allow support for multiple files, more on that below
• What all this means is that anyone looking to make their own 3rd party image pack will have the means to do so in a straightforward manor, needing only to include their image manifest file so the game knows what image files to use
• Official documentation for creating custom image packs will be provided once the system is in place

Make sense? Basically, custom image packs will be a thing in the not too distant future! Oh, and the point about how multiple image files can be associated to a single image? What that means is that you can assign an image like this...

"PennyOnDesk": ["PennyDesk1.gif","PennyDesk2.gif","PennyDesk3.jpg","PennyDesk5.gif"]

...and the game will by default select one of the assigned filenames at random to display with the PennyOnDesk image is called.

That's it for this week. Please join us on Discord this Saturday (3/16) at 5:00pm PST for our first ever live Q&A! Until then, thank you all for your continued feedback and support!