existence log VI: revenge of the productivity (Patreon)

man i s2g i have been meaning to make a post of stuff for like Several Days in a row now and every day i have just ended up being so busy with actually working on things and have  been so mentally dead by the end of the day that i just couldn't

which you know, that's fine i guess. going at this hard. frankly i hadn't done anything but work for the past like four days before today which i am proud of but also recognize is not super healthy?

curse you, ingrained ideals of over-valuing productivity.......
but i've also just been excited to move things along
i appreciate that you all are more patient with me than i am with myself

every time i release something... i wouldn't say anything dramatic like, it changes  the world.
but it does change my world dramatically each and every time, and i am missing that so much. 

let's get back to it.

9/13:

• made more tiles!
• realized that said tiles cannot be used in rpg maker becuase i forgot how rpg maker works.
• its ok i can still use them in the parallax stage
• implemented Heresiarch class ability:
  VERACITY: Increases damage by 1 for each successful hit on a target.
• made Veracity skill icon: (will be shrunk a lot in game but this is what i have on me rn)
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• making the ability work? very easy. making it update the player's display with how much damage each next hit will actually do? yikes. but i eventually got it.
• did another testplay. realized i broke everything.
• fixed everything*
• *actually like only 2 things. 
• encountered a fun bug that can displace the cursor in the skill menu:
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• ...it's fun because it also creates more skill cursors:
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• fixed a bug that made the AI take control of the player's units.....

9/14:

• more tiles
• mapped the next segment of our last map
• made idle animations for our last combat model
• encountered an unforeseen issue where apparently there is an upper limit on the size of textures that we did not know about. and we hit it. spent quite a while trying to work out a way around it. 
• turns out that the texture was 1.11% too big. 1% !!!!!!!!! why!!!!!!!!!!!
• added a method so that we can position battlers in the summary screen per combat model  so we can be sure that everyone is spick and span in center frame
• adjusted all of our battlers' positioning
• perry fixed a bug with AI, where aggroing a group of units wouldn't actually aggro all of them in the same turn sometimes

9/15:

• some music stuff
• some tile stuff too.
• worked with marcello a bit to figure out how to add controller-type option
• ended up having a roller coaster night and was forced to just kinda take a self-care day, among other things...

9/16:

• more music stuff
• mostly became a catch-up day after previous, worked a bit more with cello on controls, crim finished another sprite, and falcon finished karus's expressions
• so got all of those in game
• merged some back-end code that had gotten messy across a couple different plugins
• began implementing a method to properly call faces for the HP splash (top left thingy) from character's expressions
• fucked everything up cuz of preloading issues and apparently i was tired and stupid
• perry saved me thanks perry

9/17:

• finished adding method to call faces and position them
• by the default positioning the hp splash just showed a portrait of every character's chest at first. apparently it was really trying to be a japanese game.
• positioned everyone properly (eventually. after realizing i had X and Y swapped forever haaaaaaa.............)
• added some non-temporary graphics to placehold for units who don't have proper portraits and never will
• this is the splash thing btw, before i finished positioning:
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• ....and this is what's actually going on if we don't put on the masking. i just think it looks silly:
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• oh yeah there's karus's new face in a bubble ig.
• edited our fonts to add  □  and △  symbols for PS controller UI displays
• finished animations for the last combat model! personally i think they came out awesome, possibly the best out of any so far. i'd post but we're keeping that one secret :3
• added commands to be able to create glowing cells over map objectives/stairs etc for clarity
• fixed a bug where the summary screen would show skills on the non-skills page when rotating through characters

9/18:

• fixed a bug that caused sprites in the summary screen to desync from the rotation wheel
• ...and created a bug that caused armatures to stack up on the right infinitely
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• fixed that eventually too. mostly. perry had to clean up after me again :///
• reversed unit rotation controls in summary to be more intuitive
• added code to jump to whatever unit we close the summary screen on, like FE does
• perry added a function for us to shutdown combat visually early for tutorials and speed and stuff 
• went looking for some sound effects to use for elemental hits
• found a cool pack that was a good quality large batch for pretty cheap!
• did not realize that it was being sold by epic games.............
• suffering ensued:
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• h
• edited fonts to add symbols like the start/select buttons and xbox view/menu buttons into the text
• also fixed a bug where the square and circle buttons were... uh....
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• tiny.
• but we got it:
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• marcello finished adding the controller support into the UI elements so it adjusts to what controller you have! and set some framework so the same is true of your keyboard settings. 
• filled in said framework so UI shows what button you've chosen to bind rather than the default
• spread that code everywhere possible
• tweaked UI positioning for the above displays to center better regardless of character length
• added in the combat-stopping function mentioned above and realized it was breaking animations too >~>
• made a combined sprite for when Glasya and Lynnoe are together:
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9/19:

• added in sounds for each element's hit
• falcon finished star's expressions! went over them and added them into game
• fixed the combat-stopping error before and found a new one that closed the game whoops
• found out that the game was closing because it was just trying really hard  to close the combat scene after battle ended. and trying to do that too hard, uh, closes the window. whoops.
• added combat stop thing into ranged and melee combat to speed them up in case a player wastes all of their attack chances early
• did another testplay to make sure everything was in non-destroyed condition!
• fixed a couple early crashes but nothing too bad

9/20:

• marcello's testplay!
• one crash due to the last night's changes not saving, one new one because of preloading glasya and lynnoe's new sprite, that was an easy fix
• he didnt finish cuz he got killed-o'd but he got most of the way through without too many significant issues 
• it is nice to have more than one other person have played it now tho <3

at this point the general idea is that we'll keep adding content and QoL improvements and having the team test play it one at a time as i gather feedback and make changes.

and eventually i will run out of team members to test the game.

i wonder where i can find more people to test.................