Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As I keep completing missing features, the release of the Supermodel Snapshot prototype feels so close that I can taste it. It won't be long now.

All the effects and transitions during gameplay are now finished, putting an end to the painstaking work I've put into this part of the game since December. There are still things I could add or tweak, but such obsession over detail isn't necessary at this stage of development and would only get in the way of the prototype's release. It's been long enough since I gave you something new to play, and I don't want to prolong things more than absolutely necessary.

In addition to the effects, I finally got around to adding the elusive win/fail conditions that the game needs. Until this week, the game would not recognize that you had won or lost, so when I tested it, I would have to keep track of this myself. That is no longer the case. The moment you win or lose, the match ends and brings up a window that tells you how you scored. This window still needs some work before it looks good enough, but it works, and that's the critical part. I will continue to tweak this window until it looks good enough.

After that, the number of unimplemented features in the prototype is low. The following things are still missing:

• The music. The core gameplay theme is almost done and only needs to be finalized, while the main menu theme hasn't been started yet.
• The main menu. I want to blow your socks off before you even click the New Game button. Making the main menu look good is how I make a good first impression, and I won't waste that opportunity. I have a ton of ideas for what I want to do with it, but I think I have landed on a solution that should be relatively simple but still very impressive. Stay tuned.
• A tutorial. While the full Supermodel game will have an extensive, interactive tutorial (fingers crossed, anyway), the Snapshot prototype doesn't have to go that far. I intend to add a brief rules introduction using Ren'py's visual novel engine, so I don't foresee any challenges creating this.

And that's basically it. With these three features and a little more polish, the first version will be in your hands. Can you tell I'm excited?

Until next time!