Development Update #29 - Gallery #3

Hey there guys, I'm here to report the development of the game again. I know the updates aren't as frequent as I wanted, but the more complex this project gets it takes more and more time to complete.

First of all, I want to say thank you to all my patrons, thank you for staying with me, helping me and testing the game, sending reports, etc. You guys are amazing. Just a quick reminder, now each tier has a personalized message so, every time you change your tier, you'll get a specific thank you message now because you guys deserve as many thanks as I can give you. Thank you.

Now, about the development of the game!

The gallery is a pretty complicated piece of work, but every time I spent weekends trying to figure out how to give you guys the content you deserve, how to lock it if needed and specially how to make it use as little resources as possible, after all the game can't take like 40GB, it's a visual novel after all!

I can say this now: The gallery is like 52% completed. The "Bonding" scenes are almost the same code as the Background gallery, and I will only mess with it when I get my hands on some Bonding Pictures.

The Character Gallery is, on itself, 50% complete. Don't confuse it with the entire gallery (the 4 sections on its entirely), I'm speaking here about the Character Gallery. While the Background Gallery is fully functional, I still need to develop the "Lock" key for that, and I hope I can do it soon because I already figured out how to add the "Lock" to the Character Gallery! I feel pretty smart after doing what I did, but I won't get too specific here. What you guys need to know is: The thumbnail of the Gallery on itself is now, done. This means I need to apply the lock (not now, but it can be set at any given moment) and create the "Show" image. To do that though, I WILL need to make another chunk of code, and this will take another while to figure out, and by seeing the gif below you can see why:

As you can see, we have 10 buttons, that will show the selected set of characters, but these values change every time you click on another button.

I need to figure a way now, to give Godot the correct path for the character now, and the character is split into two images on my game: Head and Body. So yeah, every time you change the section, you're actually seeing two images put together. This cuts 60 images down to 14 per character! And also makes the code way more difficult than I wanted it to be!

Anyway, I won't say anymore here, the next step is to show the BIG version of the character when you click a button, and that's what I'm gonna start work right now.

Now, about the Day Editor:

I'm with Qt Creator installed already, and I will start working on the design of the window first. However, Qt uses C++ as the main language and I'm a bit rusty on C++ right now. It's been quite some time since I used the language even if I do love using it. So I'll finish the character Gallery first, then I'll upload the alpha 1.7 with it, if possible with the locks working on both Characters and Background Gallery. Then I will go to Qt Creator and I will make sure to update you guys on the design of the new Day Editor.

I want to make the design to work the best way possible since the entire project for the old Day Editor was lost in the coding hell right now, I can't keep working with a broken editor. And to write the days manually on a JSON file, it's not possible. So, after the gallery, I'll spend some time working nonstop on the editor, then I'll go back to the Karnal's third day after it's done I will use the new editor to add the texts to the game, and so on.

It will take some time, but fear not!  While I'll be working on the Day Editor, Wagner will be working on the remaining artworks for the game before starting the bonding scenes, and I will be releasing those new artworks here for all tier 3+ patrons. And any unfinished work he sends me I will put for every tier 2+ patrons since he stopped working with sketches, I can add those here anymore. However I will add from time to time, unfinished content here in the place of the sketches for every tier 2+ Patrons! 

I hope you guys have a good weekend! See you guys.