A new year, a new build (Soon™)

What’s been done?

BenX

• Made the first full test build for Newman
• Redesign of the show_character function
• Crawling out of bug hell

Quite a short list this time round I know, but part of it is because when I finish a test build for Newman he’ll go through everything again and notice minor mistakes we missed before. Or.. In this case, since it’s been a while and I did some re-coding (and Renpy did some refucking) there were quite a few more issues than before. Like the built-in code I used to hide the UI during pauses, suddenly doesn’t work anymore.. Thanks Renpy =D

The other part of it is because I entered homestretch mode for BenX. I have the bad habit of locking in when something is almost finished. So I was going 120% at BenX to finish it up quickly and then go back to Ecchi Sensei when the BenX dust settled. But sadly, while I could see the finish line, turns out there was more than one lap.. And by that I mean, that while the content is there (minus the new combat cause we made some changes), as I said before, there’s also a lot of bugs. Some of it cause Renpy went full retard, some of it cause I changed something and it appeared to be fine and some of it because I started something a year ago and forgot to finish it =D.

So yea, the list looks short but a lot has been done. And a lot more needs to be done..

BenX
I’ve already talked about the issues a bit, but I felt like still having this BenX bit and going more in-depth on some things. Like the show_character function and Renpy’s weird handling of dictionaries..

In Shagworthy I added a doll tracker to this function, basically just a list with the names of the characters on screen. This is so I can more easily hide all the dolls at once, sometimes we want to have them hide with a dissolve effect but the functions also resets certain variables (like the arms and expression extras like the drop and sigh). And while using scene will hide the dolls as well it wouldn’t reset any of their bits so the next time I’d call the doll again, it would still have the expression extras.

As more characters require clothing items to be flipped when their model is flipped (Think of the 10 on Ben’s shirt), I decided to tag on the name of their position transform so that the game can tell whether they’re flipped or not. Now the only issue is.. I decided to use dictionaries for this {character : position} so I can easily access the position by using their name. But as it turns out, Renpy doesn’t like dictionaries and when you roll back it doesn’t revert the changes to the dictionary.. This basically means that there can be characters showing up (or not) at times when they shouldn’t…

There were also issues with hiding the UI when the game is paused and I’ve had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get close to how it was before. Replacing 1 check with a bunch of checks in several locations.. But oh boi, took me a while to settle on that, as Renpy was shooting down everything else =<

What’s next?

BenX

• Implement Gwen’s new magic system and UI
• Make sure Combat still functions as intended
• Bug squashing

Ecchi Sensei

• More optimization

Creative

• Blender
• The usual stuff

With the homestretch, breaking my foot and life.. I kinda completely dropped any kind of schedule that I had going/planned. So.. Gonna try starting that up again. Alternating days between BenX and Ecchi Sensei, but also spending at least 1 hour on Blender stuff every day, cause at the moment.. I’m not really learning much, as I only sporadically boot it up =<

Not going to bother with separate sections this time as most of it is the same as before. Was hoping to have combat done for BenX already, but yea.. Too many bugs in the main build for that T.T.. And not much work has gone in Ecchi Sensei and creative shit so those still stand as well..

Let’s hope there’s more change in this section next report ^^.. Whenever that’ll be.. Cause.. If I do it at the end of the month.. Then.. That’s only a week-ish.. That’s not a lot of time.. So.. Uhm.. We’ll see? xD (Will probably be in 1-3 weeks)

May this year be a fruitful one!
A free Akanoes (as my cast was removed this week =D)