_Artemis Status Update

{i}*sigh*{\i}....welp, the beta test of the game returned more bugs than I expected. Of course right where I assumed. _Artemis features an app that the protag uses to navigate during certain sections of the game. My first attempt at it was obviously quite successful (It was only about 10-15 lines of code. I only had two locations on a single floor to code and that was months ago when I first written that part. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I got to this part of the project.... I put off this event because it was pretty huge and wanted to finish the main story then come back to it. So I went from my single floor, two room minimap. To this gargantuan, 5 story, 3-4 room per floor, many variable checks as you interact, etc. Basement, 1st and second floors are a little barren but was by design for chapter1.  Anyways, when my tester came back with the results, ha....it was a buggy mess. HOWEVER! Over the weekend, I did a major overhaul of the app. I'm still learning the ins and outs of renpy. So I took a gander of my original code....

After serious contemplating of what I intend this code to do, I realized I could simplify it a lot and was able to turn several hundred lines of code down to a little under a 100 lines. I also setup the code to prepare it for future updates. This was so I don't have to mess with the app (majorly) when using it for future chapters. Honestly, I'm pretty proud of it. However, that was just one bug squashed. Albeit my biggest one. The remaining list of bugs to correct are just many small things. Things like correcting incorrect name tags, wrong images used in certain scenes, small list of re-renders and the like. I'm going to take advantage of the fact that this is my first release of a VN ever. No one is technically waiting on it right now. So I'm going to push the release to...

Haha....for a second there I almost gave a tentative date.... I will start getting in the habit of NOT giving approx dates until the only thing that is holding back a chapter release is a golden image test. Meaning, bugs reported by testers have been crushed and the game is playable from start to finish. Last thing I want to do is pull a CDPR on everyone!

take care all,

- digi.B

(jk, that game was great)

 PS - Here's a render from an early on scene of _Artemis.