Developer Log #6

Today I'm going to talk about why spelling variables right and versioning correctly is important!

Usual caveat applies, there may be some slight spoilers to Chapter two but I will try to avoid that. Chapter one will be spoilt, but at this point I won't worry about that.

This will probably only really interest those who enjoy the development side of things, but that's what these logs are all about!

Okay, so, story time with Cenc. As I'm drawing towards the end of the development cycle for Chapter two: part one, I have started to play test how the variables work from Chapter one into Chapter two.

I started with the extremes first, that is the 'good husband' route and then the 'bad husband' version. All was fine following the good route, being supportive and pushing away any obvious advances from other women, I chalk this one as a success, if a somewhat one-sided story.

Then I started being the naughty boy. Now, some background. I have several versions of Dreams of Reality. Chapter one is the version that was released to the public, I then have the main version which is what I work on, and then a backup once a week in case the worst happens.

I'm speedrunning through the first chapter and I notice something isn't quite right. The scene where you choose for Louise to stay with Sebastian and end up with him making a pass, did not trigger as it should have. In addition to this, she ended up catching the MC at the club with Cindy even though she is not supposed to!

I'm sure you can imagine I was perplexed by this. Digging into the code, I identify the variable "s_kiss" but instead of a lowercase 's' it is an uppercase. Every subsequent mention of this variable is lowercase, hell, all my variables are lowercase.

This would be easily corrected by adding the following code to Chapter two:

if S_kiss == True:
   $ s_kiss = True

That fixes that, however, it means anyone playing the 'bad husband' route would miss out on a few additional scenes, some of these provide context to Louise's actions. Hell, I make reference to them in Chapter two!

So I was left with a conundrum: I could release a patch for the game making the correction, but this would effectively mean anyone wanting to play that route would need to restart the entire chapter. As a player of VN's myself I know just how bloody annoying it is to have to replay a game to correct a Dev's mistake.

Well, I do not need to release the patch, and here's why.

Once I identified the issue I used WinMerge to compare the current version against the released version of Chapter one. Therein the real problems started. There were 78 differences. There should have been 2.

Oh dear...  After a number of expletives, I worked my way through the differences. It wasn't a straight copy from one to another, since it appeared I'd made some changes to the released Chapter one, and then other changes to the current Chapter one.

Eventually I worked my way down to the variable in question. In the released version of Chapter one, it's set correctly with a lowercase s. I'd spent two development days tearing my hair out over this. It would seem that soon after release I had made some corrections to the released version of Chapter one (in error, I suspect) and since then I had made additional corrections to the current version of Chapter one, and seemingly mistyped the small s to a capital S.

The moral of this story? Check ya variables and versioning! Once I updated the current Chapter one to where it should be, I ran through the bad husband route again and all turned out as it should. Running both routes has highlighted something, however. Keeping Louise sweet, but being naughty with the ladies is a lot more fun.

I'll be working on the images for the respective reward tiers this week for releasing at the start of next month. I'll also be putting up a poll next month for supporters to vote on.

Stay safe,

Cenc

Here's an image of Captain Picard facepalming, because this is exactly what I did after all of the above.

Sometimes this is the only response