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