What's been done? (TLDR)
- Succesfully put the expression build in the game
- Still needs some final tweaks based on stats (to look out underwear section ;) )
- I have revamped all the old variables with still need to go change these in the original script (Put on hold in favor of combat)
- Combat is FINISHED!
- Sorta, the base has finally been finished so now it's just some tweaks (damage numbers, art positioning, etc)
- DAMAGE NUMBER EFFECTS ARE FINALLY DONE! (This was a huge hassle, more on it below)
- Created a wave system for testing purposes
Time for the details! Most of my time has been spent on finishing the base of combat so we can get a build out for the testers and patrons. Keep in mind though, this isn't the final product, this is merely the beginning. The timer still isn't in, not all companions are in and there are A LOT more enemies and cool moves =3
As for the player wardrobe. As a distraction from combat I quickly threw it in the main game and it fully works. I do however still need to add some of the player based stuff, like the lock on the underwear and a check to see which items you own. (The expression build just reads out the images from the folder so Newman can drop in new images himself and see how they look in-game)
Now to go a bit more in-depth on combat and the damage numbers issue. Ren'py wasn't made for this, it's a visual novel engine at heart. I knew this, but I also knew that with coding there is always a way (well, almost always at my level xD). In Ren'py you can add text the normal way (as dialogue) or you can turn it into an image. However, it doesn't fully get treated as an image and this caused some issues with the dynamic positioning (Making it appear on the target). The second problem is with how screens and images work, if you call upon and image or screen that already exists it will either overwrite or edit the one that already exists. I got it fixed though, with some help (Many thanks to Remix from the Ren'py discord =D). The damage is getting thrown into a list which is cleared after combat (now worries, Ren'py can handle big lists =3) and we are using our own programmed class to handle the positioning and fading of the numbers.
So what's next?
I'm currently thowing some code around to future proof it a bit more and have it more centralized. I still have 2 low priority effects left and will probably have to play a bit more with the timing and positioning on some of the effects and animations.
As for the game, the new script and locations still need to be added and I need to double check all of the old variables since I have changed a ton of them when I worked on the expression build (wardrobe). This all is pretty straight forward though, nothing too challenging and should be done fairly quickly =3