Development Update #17

So here I am, exactly one week after the last alpha release to talk with you guys about the next alpha, the 0.11 alpha.

First of all, thank you so much for your support. Thanks for some of the answers the last upload got about bug reports, I was able to fix some sad things happening on the game. There's a lot of changes for the new alpha, and those changes always brings more bugs with them. That being said, I'm probably gonna make the 0.11 alpha public for you guys on a week or two from now on. Those changes are way too complicated to put into the game, and since I've finally finished the last day for Karnal and Wagner, with the exception of the PLOT route, of course, I decided to make some necessary changes to the code. 

Of course, there's no sense if I say this to you guys and don't say what exactly changed, so let's talk about the changes, okay?

First of all, Code related Changes:

I had to redo the entire character-sprite set of stuff from the ground up again to fit the new design of the characters portraits. This will actually make the game some bytes smaller since instead of having 30 images per character I can have only 13.

Another big change was the Credits and Changelog menus. Before I had to go inside the game, check the labels there and actually change the text there. I had to remake the entire code again, to make it easier for me to edit that information on a file outside the game. That made edit, add and update information on these windows more easy and customizable as possible! It's still impossible to justify text on Godot, and it seems they will never implement this feature on the engine, which is sad, but we'll have to deal with weirdly spaced texts on the ChangeLog Window.,

The rework of the Portrait system comes with some complications: I need to fix the JSON files that store the DAY data. Instead of searching for "Karnal-Clothes-Happy" now the document needs to hold the information as "Head" : "Happy", "Body": "Clothes". It's two information not only one since the files are now split into two pieces. This means the day editor needs to be reworked and that's what I'm working here, and it'll take some time for me to have enough free time to actually fix the editor, and as long as I can't finish this change on the editor I can't edit stuff on the Day files, so, no new Day for the next Alpha.

But it's not only coding that I'm working this week. I also felt the game had a lack of identity. If you make a quick search to the most successful Visual Novel games, you'll find that all of them had a unique user interface, that would reflect the idea of the game. Like Camp Buddy having those wood custom windows, and Dream Daddy having a bubbly interface with a lot of animation. 

I don't think animation on the interface would make the game better, it's something interesting but not something I think it's necessary to give this game an identity of its own. But Just Friends became bigger and more than just a Mini Visual Novel. It will become a full-fledged visual novel coded from the ground up, and it deserves more than a simple UI. The problem with the previous UI was: The color scheme didn't match the colors chosen to the game. In case you never noted, the Blue-White-Pink colors of the title screen aren't there for nothing. First I always thought the color Pink was amazing, for some weird reason people here associates Pink with girly stuff, but I think it's a color that represents so much more in so many ways. It is a beautiful color at least in my eyes, and even in Japan, it's a color that's associated with the masculine than the feminine. What I want to say here is: If you hate pink because you think it's a girls color, please, just like me you like guys, so let us all be better human beings and stop labeling colors. But with all the sincerity in my heart, I just thought, "hey why not Pink?" and it kinda worked and since Pink and Blue and White ate theme colors for this game, the UI could not be black and white. It was too... Simple. So I've got to work on new UI for the game, and I can show you guys some of the work done here.

- The new Dialog Box of the game.

I also had to fix the Credits-Log-ChangeLog windows. They were all different from one another, but the game has an auto-scale for any resolution in real time, and these windows would never re-scale themselves for smaller screen resolutions. So I had to redo them and make a lot of new code for them to work, the result, of course, is that all of these are now the same window. I had to make a class named "Window-Text" so now every time you check the Log, the ChangeLog or the Credits, you know it's a "Window-Text" class being called over there with the same layout. This will also make the game more consistent since the game shouldn't have every single menu different, we need consistency here.

- The new Log window inside the game. 

With that in mind, every single button on the game will change, every single window should follow the same pattern, so I'll be releasing the next alpha only when the entire game is renovated with the new UI, I would hate to play a game where everything is bright and shiny and one window was just black and out of place. 

- A preview of what's done already.

There's also a lot of bugs I'm finding with these changes, and for anyone who's having trouble with being stuck on any of the current window-text parts of the game, this will be fixed on the next alpha. Thanks to Marvol for showing me specifically that problem.

Oh and the last thing I was working on before my PC started to cry on me yesterday:

- The new Save-Load window is now done too. I had to rework on these like, twelve times until It was good enough. But I was only satisfied yesterday. I'm also working on the buttons, you can see on the background there, but there's some Pixel-Stuff I need to redo BEFORE I can put them here, and you guys will understand why I didn't soon.

Now let's talk about some other things:

I'm thinking about adding an e-mail for you guys to send BUG-Reports on the game, but I don't know how to do it yet. I don't want to do it like the Suggest Messages, because I would have to make a LOT of things outside the game, such as making an entire webpage just to get this info and show to me on a good way. Since it's mostly text and print screens, an e-mail, especially for that, should be enough. But, I would love if I find a way to make the game open your e-mail to send me the bug report instead of you looking to the e-mail info and typing on your client manually.

I don't know if I can pull it off, but I'll try this. For now, any bug reports should be done on the Release post for that version.

There are also the new images for Wagner. Since I can't give an exact date for you guys about the new alpha and there's another reason I'll tell you at the end of this post, I'm pretty sure some new portraits will be added to the patreon. I was talking with Wagner and after paying him for the next batch of characters, we decided to make Mutt portraits instead of finishing Karnal's. The reason, of course, is: I prefer to have the new 13 artworks for Wagner before I write any more days on the game, especially with this new calls for the sprites. At the moment the game asks for two variables for Karnal but only one for Wagner, so that should be changed as soon as possible. So as soon as I get my hands on the new design for him I'll be posting here on Patreon with the watermarks, of course.

Ah, the In-Game Gallery will be added someday, I just need to think on HOW to add them though. And every single bug fixed and changes to the game are being added to the Change Log in real time since I can just edit a thing outside the game. (The Text Editor inside Godot is not a practical one).

Now: About the Day System.

I know it's difficult for you guys to understand what are B route, S Route and A route. So I'll try to explain it here. Putting it simply, the Day consists of Routes, every time you reach the end of a Route you're redirected to another one. This process is so fast you would never notice unless you could read the Day file.

Every time you answer something, the game will take you to another route related to that answer. That's how the game always know if you answer that Mutts are Awesome, Wagner should be happy and say something good to you in return with a beautiful smile. 

But with the Days becoming bigger, and with the game being pretty much "Open World" for you, you can actually have two or three days in sequence with Wagner, and then find Karnal on the fourth day. This could bring a problem: If it's the first time you talk with Karnal, you can't just know him on the fourth day. To deal with that, I created the -Letter Route System-. Basically, I make the game check for how much points you have with the character associated with the Route you've got into. If you have no points, you never met that character. This will lead you to a route named: 1st Encounter. This only happens on the second Day forward. 

If the game checks you have points with that character, two things can happen: The first one, is that you're redirected to the Second Encounter Route, and the second thing that can happen is that, if you have at least half of the total points for the last days with that character, you'll get to access the route named "Third Encounter" and that one can only be accessed on the third day forward. The 3rd encounter has a slightly different dialog than the second encounter, but it does make the characters talk about the day before. That was the way I found to make the system work a little better with so many Days going on. Since the game is focused on you trying to know and keep only one character's route (there's no meàge route here guys, sorry), you can only access all the good dialogs with that character if you give all of your time to him and make the right choices. 

This way I can let you play at any stage you want, in any order, you will never have to unlock any areas in the game, but to unlock the good stuff you need to at least have a good number with that character.

That being said: since every day can be a 1st time day, I need to write the entire route just like if two guys have met for the first time, but at the same time I need to make them consistent. The dialogs must be interesting for a first encounter, but it also needs to be consistent for a second or third encounter. To make things balanced, however, and making you as a player, to feel you're having progress on the game, the A and S routes were made.

The entire Day is called B route. So every dialog that needs points to access (The game will ALWAYS go to the route that matches the higher points you have) have the name of A or S route. An A route is a route that comes from an A-type-Answer. And the S route, is a route that comes from an S-Type-Answer. Every time you make an S or A answer, you gain some affinity, and that affinity is added to the system. After that, the game checks if you have enough affinity to access the better route for that answer. There's still no F- Route, so no bad answer will lead to a better or worse route. And, in the S-Type-Answer, if you don't have enough affinity to go to an S route, but have enough points to go to an A route, you'll go to what I can S-A route. It's an A route written based on the answer you did, so I can keep the consistency. It would be weird for you to answer 'You're hot', and since you can't go to the S route, you go to the same A route as "The day is beautiful today", you know what I mean? I need to keep things consistent, so I need for every set of answers, to write at least 3 more routes after the four B-ones.

Bellow you can see a little chart I did to try to explain how things work with arrows instead of just complicated words. I hope you can understand that because I can't get more technical than that without making you guys start thinking I am crazy. Just understand that there's more than just text going on, and the math sometimes makes me crazy, believe me.

-Diagram for the day. - Attached to this post if you need to download it. - Note that the Diagram has a little issue with the explanations of the B - Type Route. B - Type is related to the current route, on the S type answer, there's a B-Type route related to S answer. All the others B-Type routes are related to its own type of answer, so each B-Type route has a different content. Sorry for the lack of information there.

Now, the last reason why the new alpha will take a little more time:

My Pc just ran out of fuel. That means it was almost dead from some time now, and I had to borrow some money from a close friend to buy the new parts for my PC, after all, I can't work if I don't have a new machine. However in my country, for some weird reason, even the cheaper pieces for you guys, cost more than a minimum wage here. I've found really weird prices like AMD Ryzen 5 1600 costing the exact same price as an I58400 for example. Of course, in the end, I've found a good price, but just the CPU is more than I earn so I'm grateful to have such wonderful friends close to me who believe and trust in me to help me with this. If weren't for them, I would have to stop to work with this game, and I have to say: I love to work on it. It's such an amazing project, and every day I come to Patreon just to check if you guys need something, it feels me with such joy to see you guys are here, waiting for news and supporting the project. Thank you, really. But the truth is: I would have to stop working on the game since my older PC was like: Burning a VGA overnight with the PC turned off, sometimes not even turning on. It came to a point where I was worried my HDD would just stop working because of those energy overflows the motherboard was doing. I had an I3 3220, it's quite difficult to find a cheap but good motherboard for that CPU.

So yeah, the pieces just got home yesterday (it was just after I finished the new save layout), and I'm pretty sure between working on this project and outside it, paying Wagner for the amazingly well done and help he gives me all the time, and paying for these pieces I'll have no life for some time. But now I need to fix everything, assemble the new pieces, reinstall my Windows, and little by little reinstalling everything, Godot included. 

But don't worry, the game project is intact, and I keep a backup of it, so in a few more days, I'll be ready to go back to work. 

Well, I guess that's all that I have to tell you guys, now I'll go back to finish installing stuff missing from my computer since I still have a lot of things to do here before I can go back and continue with the game, but take note that every single picture here was made yesterday, so everything here is fresh.  This little pause to fix everything up with my workspace just started yesterday at night and it'll be done in two days - worst case scenario. After that I'll finish the last things I need on the UI and then I'll go fixing every single bug some of these changes are creating. 

So please I hope you guys enjoy your Sunday and have a nice week, and as soon as I have the next alpha done, I'll be releasing it here.

PS: The suggest Correction was not working before, but it's working now. Sometimes I forgot that I need to edit the Game and the Server who gets the info you guys send me. I'm making preparations to make this less than a problem for me soon, making this system more stable. But if you try to send me a correction on the most current build and an error message appears, please, report it with a Print if possible. (I Don't know if Patreon let us do that though).

So, see you guys soon!