Devblog #89 (Patreon)

Hey Wizards! Shady Character One here!

You know what? Last week I felt that I am slacking off. I think most of this was due to the fact that I have been battling with Steam support, since they just cannot approve my Steam page for more than three weeks now. You know that feeling when you set a goal for yourself and don't feel like it is worth progressing in other directions until that goal is met even though you aren't really hindered in any way? I think that was mostly it. I do hope that this whole deal with Steam will resolve soon and give me another boost to my motivation. But also, maybe because I have written several events in the last few weeks and I am still waiting for Shady Two to finish artworks for them, so I felt like I don't really need to progress there either. I don't know. But what I know is that this isn't good. And these are the times when one must instead focus and look for things that need to be done instead of looking for reasons not to do anything.

There is so much more that needs to be done and written for the game. Trial of Might took me almost half a year to plan, write and code, and I have two more Trials to go. I don't want the development to drag for years and years. So I sat down and started planning the Trial of Mobility. It is still in the early stages, but I think I have the general framework down, and I don't need to wait for Shady Two to start writing it. The players won't be able to see the event for a while, yes, but it will definitely speed things up down the road.

I also finally started working on the gallery. Yeah, I know, I've been talking about working on it for a while now, but I never really got anywhere. But this time I actually sat down and laid down most of the groundwork. Which turned out to be easier than I expected since Ren'Py actually has most of the functionality needed for a gallery built in already. It makes sense if you think about it. This functionality does have its downsides, since it isn't really suited for the way we were approaching early development. Specifically adding the events without artworks in them, and then filling the blanks as the art was ready. But the approach I had in mind before had its own downsides of a similar nature, but it would also be much more time consuming to implement and maintain, so I will go with the in-built solution. Maybe I will even be able to finish the gallery for the next update. That would be good, because locked and unlocked images would be a good gauge for the players to see if they have more work in front of them and promote exploration.

Well, I guess that's all for me, and we can move on to what Shady Two was doing this last week. And, oh my, do I have something to say. Shady Two was on fire lately. Working on concept art and in-game artworks. Actually her productivity is one of the factors that made me reevaluate my own recent approach. And also why I actually decided to finally get the gallery going. Because her artworks are worth being seen more than once per playthrough.

If all goes well, you will get that opportunity next week, just around the time of my next devblog.

Until then, Shady Character One, out!