Dev update #4 (Patreon)

This week I decided to focus on organizing and visualizing scripts, choices, branching, and variables. As well as completely rewriting my code. You might be not really interested in reading this, but I still want to share it with you.

The reason I decided to do this is that I faced some serious problems while writing scenes for this update. You see, when I was writing the intro I didn't think how hard it would be to track choices and variables. I'm still learning how to organize my workflow to be as efficient as possible and to have a good understanding of what I'm doing and what's happening in the game. As I've never developed a game before, I have no clue how it should be done... So I took my time to try out different options to see what works for me. And thankfully, I've managed to do it. Before that my variables and branching were only in code and on paper which was a nightmare to orient and track. Now it's well organized with smart links and other cool stuff. Here's a small example of how it looks:

Of course, it's not finished, but it does its job and now writing and coding ALL future updates will be much easier. 

While doing this I also realized that I need to completely rewrite my code for Intro. Again, the reason I did this is that I realized how important good code and rebalancing are. And if sometime later I'll decide to change or add something, you won't see this horrible message "Save's won't work. You will need to start a new game". Thanks to other devs who helped me to write smart functions, now all in-game choices would be saved, and I can change their impact on the story and their value. Without the need to start a new game. This is very important for future development and your experience. As a result, I completely reworked my code and rebalanced the Intro. I've also changed ambiguous variable naming. I refused from alpha/beta variables. Now it's "depravity" and "virtue". These two variables will shape the nature of MC. Some decisions still might not be quite appropriate for this naming, but I don't want to flood the game with hundreds of variables and make it a nightmare to track and code. These two are enough to do what they need to do. Besides with new functions, I can use a combination of flags as a condition for some events which is awesome. 

All of this stuff is under the hood, and you won't see much difference in the game. But this is my first game and only first update. And I'm building a strong foundation for the future. To organize my workflow and to prepare my code for future updates. Now when it's done, I won't have to return to this and can focus on the most important parts of the work. All of this has done to speed up the development and to make the gaming experience better. Especially after months, when the game will get pretty big, the work I did right now would save me days. Literally!

All right that's all for now. I still worked on scenes and renders this week. But as I was pretty busy with this stuff we don't have much increase in numbers. I also still have to create the second wallpaper with Octavia and Olga for level 5 agent and president tiers. But I think I'll focus on this on Sunday because I'm fully immersed in work on the scene in Phoenix Academy right now. This one is pretty heavy for my PC, and it takes time to rework all characters and environment to decrease all textures and geometry. I definitely need more VRAM >_<

Have a nice weekend and stay safe.

mr.moonmi