[The Hive] Pre-production #19

Latest batch of work on The Hive!

I've been toying around with Renpy this week. Since I have zero programming skills, it's pretty intimidating to learn  programming language, even basic, but it seems less hard that was I was afraid of.

For Menus and general User Interface, I tried to do it on my own, working a bit on the titlescreen you can see above but realize that I would loose a lot of time doing it by myself.

So I'm getting some programming help! A patreon nicely offered help some months ago and it would speed things up with the UI work.

I reworked a bit the ingame menu (top bar), there will be a menu screen (folder icon), a save screen (save icon), a relationship screen (heart icon) and an inventory system. This is still a mockup, I don't have anything implanted in the game yet.

I've gone for a very simple/cutesy design for the UI to match the feel of the game. Even for stuff like there was some trials and errors before coming to something nice.

I like Renpy for the liberty it allows, so we'll try to have a gallery where pictures are added once certain scenes play in game.

Something else I'd like to have is an inventory system where you can combine objects together to advance in the game, like in old point and click games. If it's not possible, we'll go for a regular inventory but that would be less fun.

The last addition to the game will be a relationship screen where you can track  the progress of your relation with different characters and the state of their regression.

Clicking on the pictures will lead to a character panel. The text is just a placeholder for now.

I also took some time to find sound fitting for the game. 

Had to bought some licensed music for visual novel so that should sound nice. For the sfx, there's enough leftovers from Perpetual Change.

Next time, I plan to work on some new outfits for Lola and Maddie!