Status Report 22

Hello everyone.

I know it may be that we seem to be missing, but rest assured the work has never stopped.

We're very close to finally the next release, so we'd like to share with you, everything we've built into this new version.

Before showing you everything, it's important to remember that I had to deal with a problem that was out of my control, especially with regard to knowledge of python and how python talks to renpy.

Making a game with a free roam layer requires a little more understanding about the tools, this makes development a little more complex.

In Our Home, we have two forms of progress, the MC's progress, and the secondary characters' progress, where the player will go to an MC or secondary characters route event, each secondary character has its own life, its own challenges, and not everything is centered on the MC, of
course, the main character of the plot is the MC, but it would be crazy to condition the whole life of a secondary character only to the MC. And no, here I am not referring to the secondary  character having sex with other characters, none of that, we have to understand that not everything in a story is sex.

He will have a partial participation in the lives of the characters, and may or may not have some kind of relationship with the characters.

The problem I went through was precisely interspersing these secondary missions with main missions, considering that my primary code was not correctly predicting this type of situation.

And with that came several other problems that I had to solve, always trying not to break the previous save.

Fortunately, the save from the previous version will work correctly, but the save from version 1, the presentation version that ends in the heist, will not work in this new version.

The other problem I had to deal with was free roaming in the middle of an event, be it main or minor, so I had to develop an easy way to deal with that, where the character can navigate any building, even when inside an event. , but in an automated way, where naturally you can continue the event or continue in free roam mode. (At this stage there is no warning about exiting free roam mode, because the player will be able to rollback as soon as they realize they have exited free roam mode, but maybe I will implement a warning in the future.)

After whining my problems to you, let's move on.

- The game once again underwent several changes in its interface, I really wasn't very satisfied with the layout of the game, this is something that bothers me a lot, so it was practically completely redesigned, using a style called glasmorphism, now the elements of the game don't look like a Frankenstein everything is more harmonious.

- We have completely corrected the character's interaction with messages to other characters, so that now everything works correctly, giving the user the freedom to send messages whenever they want, as well as respond to messages as they want, without having to force the player to send a message before continuing playing, in addition, we corrected the behavior of the message list that previously forced the player to always scroll through all the messages to see the last one sent, and of course we completely changed the messages interface.

- While we're talking about the cell phone, we completely redesigned the cell phone, recreating practically all the screens from scratch, so that future implementations would be easy to manage.

- Still talking about the cell phone, we added the camera function to the cell phone, which takes real pictures, this way the player will be free to take pictures while playing, and you can take pictures of any moment of the game, and use these photos as wallpaper of the game.  In the future we will use this resource for other purposes, to complement some mission, where the photo you take will not be a pre-rendered CG, but something more realistic.

- Still talking about the cell phone, we added two more apps, where you can have quick access to the secret image gallery and also replays of scenes by character.

- Talking about replays and scenes and gallery of secret images, we inserted in the game, in specific places, secret images that can be found in free roam mode or in specific events, giving more activity to the player, while he is browsing the game.

- We have completely fixed the game's inventory, creating another GUI, and also fixing some issues.

- We have implemented a resource for hints, where it will be possible to quickly receive a hint which step the player needs to take to continue the game, which will work as follows. (1 - The game will show events related to the main progress as a priority.)

- We also developed a screen with information about all the characters who have already had a relationship with the MC to the point of having their phone number in the contact list.

This screen will present basic information about the character such as name, what he likes and what he doesn't like, and this will be important for making decisions in the mc within the game.

In addition, it presents a small text that shows how the MC sees this character, in addition to a list of hints for missions with this character.

- Talking a little bit now about non-programming. We completely redesigned the lake, which is an important part of the game, the lake looked very artificial and square, now it looks a little more natural.

     We also made some changes to the map, which will not be visible in this version.

     In addition, we built 2 new environments, a small apartment where the character Juliana lives, and also a house where Emily lives, these places can be visited in the next version.

     We made several corrections to characters, from appearance to corrections to clothes, hair, character names.

- We saved perhaps our big change for last.
We know that language in a VN game is very important, and we received some feedback about the dialogues in the previous version, so we developed a feature where the player will be able to report dialogue errors while playing, regardless of whether it is the original language or a translation. In this way, the player reports an error when he finds it, and we will be able to analyze and correct it for the next update without the need for an external platform.
He will even be able to write a suggested change for the error found.
This will bring more quality and more languages, as with this feature we will make the game available in many languages, and players will be able to report bugs in their native language.

I thank everyone who follows and cheers for the success of Our Home, thank you for your support. I'll be back soon with more news.