Progress Update (Patreon)

Almost all of my work this week was coding and writing. I'll get back to renders very soon - originally I was going to do a lot these last few weeks but upon realizing I'd need better hardware for a decent chunk, I decided to focus entirely on writing and coding for now instead.

I got the majority of the phone system done - what little is left will need a bunch of icons and images finished. Everything you see in these screenshots is placeholder only, and not what I'll use. I just needed something there to check it as I worked.

Last week I finished up the minigames - this week I just tweaked all the numbers and systems for them. Whenever you get a chance to play them, you can ignore them, or play them for as long as you'd like. With the word minigame, you can keep playing it, and every time you win you earn 15 credits. For poker it's a bit different - you'll directly gamble your credits each hand. (5 credits per hand). If you win, you can win big - up to 1k for a royal flush! (Though most winning hands only award between 5-50, the big hands give massive rewards). Be careful though - it is possible to lose all your credits!

Speaking of credits, I worked out the base code for the credits shop. When you open it up in the phone, you'll see something sort of like this (Like I said - all images are currently placeholder while working on code)

(Hey, those images look familiar). If you've already bought, or can't afford an item, the cart icon turns red. Otherwise it's green, and you can click it to purchase the item. Doing so pops up a confirmation box like so:

It'll give you a chance to confirm, and tell you exactly how many credits you have left after the purchase. Confirm, and the price changes to SOLD! - at which point the image appears in your image gallery.

It works the exact same way for phone wallpapers. Speaking of which:

Any wallpaper you've purchased will appear in a wallpaper section - you can set them at will to whichever ones you've acquired. Some will be gained naturally through gameplay, others can only be purchased via the credits shop. Once you've set it:

It's now applied every time you access the phone. One other note about wallpapers: Whenever you own one, and go into the wallpaper section (previous screenshot), clicking on the image will bring up a larger version. (Not quite full screen, but close).

the image gallery on the phone will work in a similar manner.

Any renders you've acquired for the gallery will appear in it. Clicking on them will bring up a full screen version. (clicking anywhere on the screen will dismiss it and return to the previous screen). Any you haven't yet purchased will remain blacked out.

So now the phone is almost entirely done. The only things left to do for it are: Replace all the placeholder images and buttons with actual ones that will be used, create all the renders and wallpapers, and create the bios and music player sections. Those last two will wait a while - bios will be one of the last things done, as it's going to wait until ALL of the writing is completed, and music will be one of the last things done overall, since it will require most of the music be set for the release - and that tends to be one of the last things I do. (I tend to pick it out slowly as I'm working on everything else, but I don't finalize the track list until the very end).

Coding some of this stuff took a little bit longer than expected, but that's because I attempted to make it somewhat modular - that is, easy to expand upon in future releases.

Next on the list: Main menu design/layout, and coding all of the free-roam mechanics. The main menu design will happen sooner, the free-roam will wait a bit - because I haven't done it before and the first time is going to be a bit difficult, I'm going to do it in tandem with creating the renders for it. The first time around will be a bit slower process, but once I've done it once I should have a much better handle on the flow of it all, and be able to tackle it all much faster from then on. I have three planned for the first release, so I'll work on the smallest one first, and go from there.

I also have some work to do on the fonts for the game, but again I expect that to be a slow process I work on gradually as I progress. So for now, it's mostly a ton of writing for another week or so. My goal is to have the entire prologue+CH1 script fully written before the new PC arrives. Since 99% of the prologue is done, it's mostly just CH1 I need to work on for a bit.

Speaking of writing, I got quite a bit of that done as well. The prologue is fully written at this point, and I hope to really get into the renders for it towards the end of next week. Ch1 is progressing - Everything up to the first free roam of Ch1 is written at this point. Still quite a lot to go, but definitely making progress. So far we're up to 11k words total, and I'm probably just barely past halfway- or possibly not. More on that in a later post. Still, this is going to end up being a fairly sizeable release, which was my goal, so I'm happy about that.

I also got to work building some more environments. I have two more for the prologue to build (and one that's about half done, that needs to be finished), as well as 4 main ones for CH1 that need to be done, as well as finishing up a pretty massive one I've been working on. It will by far be the biggest one of the entire game and will require quite a bit of work still, but at least I have the basics of it done so that's good.

By the way - if you're wondering who the woman in the image I've been using as a placeholder background while I code all of this stuff - it's Samantha, the MC's mom. And FYI, she is 100% completely and entirely off-limits. Sorry, but there will be none of that here. (Also patreon REALLY doesn't like it, so there's that).

Next week I'll have a lot less screenshots, since I'll be focused mostly on writing over the next week, so instead I'll be talking a little a bit about some of the characters. (Not too much - I'm saving most of it for the game!)

So until then, have a great week!