Progress Summary (Late June)

Hey again everyone, I'm back to post some minor updates & progress on what I've been doing over the weeks.

Similiar to earlier this month there isn't a lot to post, but I'll try to show whatever I can regardless.

Short Summary + Info

Coloring / Model & Animation Work

-Finished shading and modeling a couple of the characters needed for EP1

-Started preparing and coloring the next ones

Script Work

-rewrote a couple more scripts needed for EP1,

Braixen Tamagotchi Work

-started writing the scripts & lines needed for the Tama

-replaced some of the sketches used with a proper model & animations

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There's honestly not a lot that happened as coloring & modeling still took me quite a bit.
As before I don't think it's worth updating these kind of things but I don't want to

let you guys sit in the dark/wait for new information either.

Just know that I'm quietly working in the background and actually finishing stuff off one at the time.

I've realized that I've been rushing things too much a couple of times now and slowed down a bit when it came to work on the Braixen Tamagotchi & Sara (the Players childhood friend in the main game).

Keeping to myself and simply focusing on the work definitely improves the quality a lot and I hope that this will actually be visible in the end though.


Starting next month (July) I will actually have a lot of time to work on the game again and can use a proper time plan to not only work on the game but also do some random animations again. (Lopunny is waiting for a while now)

So let's look forward for those and hopefully have something proper to post at the end of next month!

Some more details, spoilers and the usual rambling

I've been hoping to have finished most of the models needed for DM Episode 1 by now but I'm still not quite done.
I've finished enough to add everything into the main game though so starting this month I will work through each DM Scene and make it 100% playable, working on it one at the time until Episode 1 is finished.

This way I can put out somewhat of an daily progress again too since I can post whenever one scene is done.

Model Work
There isn't much to say or show here since most models finished are side characters that are neither important nor have special features/poses to show.

There's the ruffians that have their skeletons finished but no actual animations yet
(so all they can do is kinda idle around in different random poses) and...

 ..the one filler Pokemon I've decided to add for some reason.

I'm working on finishing the other few side characters too
and actually started working on a lot more than I wanted to initially.

I'm not sure which ones are actually going to end up in the game though, so I might end up not finishing them at all.

I'll most likely make this decision when finishing the scenes those characters are in since that will reveal if it feels strange to not having them shown in the first place.

Sara's Model

This was probably one of the bigger parts of the model work needed for EP1.

Physics Preview            /            Test Expressions/Animations

Sara's model is build and works similiar to Fia's/Braixens model but I actually knew what I was doing this time around.

This not only made it a lot easier but a lot cleaner looking as well, which is kind of shame if you think about who the main character is supposed to be.

It did show me that I at least learned some stuff while doing all of this though so if I ever have the chance I definitely know how to improve Fia's model.

As you can see in the preview I've already completely finished the skeleton and added physics, a couple of animations and simple functions needed for the game.

Similar to Braixen's model you can also change the outfit she's wearing directly on the model so adding newer ones for the later episodes will be no problem either.

                                                Clothing Test (Somewhat NSFW)

I'm going to try keeping up this quality for the coming more important side characters, but it's definitely going to be less important.

Script & Tamagotchi related stuff
While I did a lot of work on the models I've also did quite a bit of programming in the background.

There's a lot of thought that went into the different Tamagotchi systems and most of the message box related scripts in the main game have been replaced by now.

Something I'm a little bit stuck right now is adding chat lines and other responses for each different natured Braixen and how I'm actually going to use them in the end.
I'll take my time with those and update you properly when the whole system is done though.


I've made some additional UI stuff, finished the naming screen for both game start and first Tama use.

(Don't mind the unaligned background, that's just a placeholder xD)

I'm gonna ask you guys for suggestions for the random names later on btw,

so Patrons will be able to have their own or OC Names added to the list. :>

A lot of other scripts are mostly functional and there isn't much to show yet, If you're interested in the save menu and that kinda stuff though I'll definitely update you on that too.

Lastly I've replaced some of the early Tama sketches with the proper model and made/added some proper animations to it.

I thought that it would be cute to be able to pat/scratch your Braixen in different locations and have each Braixen have it's own favorite spots, which is probably gonna look somewhat like this.

I'm planning to give pat scenes and similar Tama stuff it's own more detailed model in the future,

for now it's using the usual DM Braixen Model though.

But this is pretty much all I'm able to show right now...
As mentioned before I'm actually skipping support for this month over on Patreon again, nobody needs to worry about though.
Patreon is not my main income/job and although it does help me pay for the servers/software and tools needed to work on all this I would simply feel bad having anyone pay for something I'm not satisfied with myself.

When I feel like I've done enough for myself and/or need the extra funds I'll definitely put it back on.

For anyone that is bothered by this (I have been asked for my paypal/etc a couple of times) I'm thinking of adding a simple donation button somewhere if that's something you want.

Just know that at the moment simply reading through these kinda posts and following what I'm doing is enough support to keep me going already!

I hope this was informative and/or entertaining for some of you guys and I'll see you around with my next update in hopefully ~2 weeks!

Stay healthy and have a good time everyone,
Dark~

Progress Summary (Early June)

Hey everyone, first of all I'm really sorry for being so quiet over the past few weeks.

To keep things honest I haven't been feeling too well lately and combined with having had a lot of stuff to do after moving I didn't get to work on DM as much as I wanted to.

I still tried to get as much progress as I could. It's a bit all over the place though and there isn't much to show because of it..

I'm still gonna try to give you somewhat of an summary of what I've done over the last 2 weeks/since release of the h-Scene though and show whatever little thing I can.

I'll start witha smaller summary, then go into some details below with my usual rambling.
I'm gonna try to make it readable since I tend to be all over the place, just let me know if I forget/need to fix something though!

 Progress Early June Overview - Work on DM Episode 1 & Braixen Tamagotchi

Coloring / Model Work

-Flat colored side characters and prepared textures for model import

-Started building models with flat textures

-Started shading side character textures

Script Work

-Started rewriting some of the scripts needed for Episode 1 (saving, menus, message Box related stuff, etc)

Braixen Tamagotchi Work
-Build groundwork for Tamagotchi and for adding it into DM-EP1

(Drew/Build simple UI, added time progression and added first few interactions, added needs, affection system, mood system, custom Braixens possible natures and first few traits, etc...)

Summary

Most work finished over these two weeks was probably Tamagotchi related.

That doesn't mean that there was no work on DM at all since the coloring/modeling part might look like it isn't a lot, but probably took about the same amount of time I used for everything Tamagotchi related.

Preparing the textures for use in Live2D/the model software simply takes me way longer than what it should, which I'm really not too happy about.
Which is pretty much why I alternated between Tama and Model work each day.

I'll go into more detail to this further below though as this was just somewhat of an short overview.

I really hope I can get more stuff done over the other half of the month since work didn't start too great at the first half, but we'll see over the days...

Sorry again for the silence everyone, but now some details for everyone that's interested in those:


Coloring / Model Work Summary

This was the main objective for these last two weeks but really didn't turn out as well as I was hoping for.

I decided that it would be best to do outlines and flat colors for all of the side characters needed for EP1, then prepare those flat color sketches as textures for the model and simply replace the textures with shaded versions later on.

Reason for this was that I would be able to immediatly start work on the models as well and use them inGame for testing and Bugfixing before even having to finish the shading.

This way I can swap between shading, scripting and modeling over the days while not having to do everything in one go.

This went all nice and well until I realized how slow this would be for progress updates on the blog/discord though.
Work has pretty much been all over the place, having a bunch of flat color textures, half-baked models and "useless" inGame scripts that I would be unable to show off.

I've already started shading on a couple of them but again not enough to show off anything as most parts/textures will just look random and out of place without the finished model putting them in place.


One of the bigger characters of the game (the players childhood friend Sara) however is already halfway done, which was a big part of the model/coloring work that is needed.

With around 80ish Poses and at least 3 different outfits she uses inGame (only 1 in EP1) she has quite a bit of textures which had to be colored, shaded and prepared.
The picture on the right being a couple of the hands and smaller parts used, for example.

Altogether I won't be able to show of the proper side character models for a bit longer, but the ground work is done as all of them are already split and prepared similar to Sara above, only needing a bit more shading and skeleton work in Live2D until they're done.

So let's hope I'll get all of them finished until end of the month, I'll definitely focus them over the Tama for the second half...

Script Work Summary

There's not much to say nor show over here.
I've started rewriting some of the default scripts and functions that were used by the older demo in attempt to make the game less buggy and modernize everything a bit.

This will hopefully fix loading times for some people while also making game freezes less likely.
It's definitely gonna look and feel better, that much is sure.
Until I've drawn proper UI's for the new stuff to use though there won't be much to show off.

Something I ran into when working on the scripts though was the "problem" of where to put Braixen customization in the main game.

While there will be some occasions where you can change Fia's look through decisions you make, I've never quite thought about how to "immersively" add the customization without interrupting the game flow.

Which is how/why I got to the next point...


Braixen Tamagotchi Work Summary
While the main idea for customization was a simple "Style" button in some menu and the possability of Fia changing stuff by herself at random, I felt like adding some parts of the Braixen Tama to the maingame would actually be a cool idea.

Not only would this add some more minigames and fun stuff to do with Fia inbetween story but also give you the oportunity to immersively go to the hair dresser with her, buy her clothing or maybe even unlock some secret/special events in the future.


For now there isn't much to see or show since most of the work done was UI/script/thought based.

For now I made all the groundwork needed to build the rest around it, starting with a simple time and action system, moods that change your Braixens behavior, needs like hunger and sleep, a couple of traits and lastly a nature system that defines your Braixens general character.

I've already talked about most of this stuff over here were I talked about the Tama Ideas/Plans:
https://in-dark-waters.blogspot.com/p/living-with-braixen-tamagotchi-thoughts.html

Just as mentioned over there, the actions available change with the time of day and affection you've build with your Braixen so far.
Actions in this example being the morning ones, with low affection as it's shortly after Fia started living with you. (Preparing breakfast, petting and chat)

Depending on your Braixens nature, current needs, traits, affection and general mood she will then react differently on each of them.

This is all pretty much scripted/prepared already so all that's left is adding some art, different text responses for the different natures and random events to give some variation and make the whole thing more exciting.

Right now everything's still using placeholder graphics, so there isn't much I can show yet.
Debug messages and hit boxes are all over the place, and a lot of simple reactions like this one while petting for example will be in sketch only for now.

It's still fun to see Braixen react and change moods to everything you do though, so I'm pretty excited to be able to share the Tama at some point.

If anyones interested in the technical details to any of the things I've added so far just let me know because I'm having a lot of fun putting this together. (Although I probably should have focused coloring/modeling a bit more than I did the Tama ^^")

Tama's Implementation into the main Game

While there's a lot of people that would love to have this kind of addition to the game there's probably just as many that would be bothered by it showing up.

I want to be clear that this will not be a main feature of the game that needs to be used, but rather an optional way for you to take a break from the story and simply spend some days playing with Fia instead of progressing.

You won't be forced into Tama/Sim mode, nor do you have to do it to progress or get all of the different paths.

Just to be sure I will also add an option to completely turn it off so anyone that doesn't care can simply enjoy the story without even being asked to enter tama mode once.

Besides adding the Tama as an additional option inbetween the main game I will also add it to the end of EP1, where you can swap into an endless Tama mode where you can keep playing and train/befriend Fia until the EP2 Update is out, where you can then end Tama mode and progress story as normal but keep all of the progress made in it. (affection, clothing bought, etc) 

I took quite a bit to put all of this together and probably made a big deal out of the smaller stuff like always, but I hope that some of you enjoyed that bit of my rambling like always.

I will keep to myself a bit longer over the rest of the month and try to finish the things needed for EP1 so I can give a proper update in 2 weeks again.
For now I'm sorry for the long silence (and probably the upcoming one), but I'll do my best to post on discord whenever something big gets done.

For my supporters over on patreon, I'll probably end up skipping this months support/payment again since it didn't go too well so far, but we'll see how far I'll get over the next couple weeks first.

Thanks for staying around everyone, I hope you all have a nice week. <3