longlivetheprincess

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

It's yet another week that has been all about the music, I'm afraid. The track I've been working on is still not done, though it's so close that we're talking only hours of additional work before I can wrap it up. The track is complete from beginning to end, needing only a little bit of polish for the transitions before I can mix and master it.

If there's one thing I've learned (or re-learned, anyway) since I started working on the soundtrack for Supermodel, i...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

There's no preview this time. If I keep showing you new cards for every progress report, there won't be any surprises left from the rapidly approaching release of Supermodel Snapshot 2.0. We can't have that. I'll probably preview some other stuff instead, but at least for this week, let's just focus on the progress itself.

And, well, it's been a mixed bag. This kind of thing happens with creative works, and my work has been all about creativity this week. As m...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

This week, I finished almost all the functionality for opening booster packs. This includes all the graphical bells and whistles, the audio, and the experience of seeing each card revealed one by one dramatically. I want booster packs to feel special, and I feel like I have achieved that with what I've made here.

The game still lacks functionality for handling the inevitable situation where you are supposed to draw a card of a specific rarity but already own a...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

We're back to seeing good progress again. This week, I finally finished testing and bug-fixing all the new cards, including adding a card ability that I had completely forgotten to implement earlier. As far as I can tell, all the cards now work the way they should. Are they balanced, though? Probably not, but that will be your job to test. ;)

After finishing the cards, I moved on to the next important feature for version 2.0: Booster packs! You will earn a ran...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

Hooray, the card art for all the new cards is finally finished! Phew! The artwork might be small, but it still needs to be created. I prioritized creating my own renders using in-game assets for most of the new stuff. However, I also resorted to AI-generated artwork for some concepts, just like in version 1 of Snapshot. 

With the artwork out of the way, I could return to testing, bug fixing, and balancing the new cards. It takes a lot of time to not only ...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

Everything that goes up has to come down again, apparently. Around the time of last week's progress report, I got hit by a stomach bug. While I thankfully didn't get outright sick, I was still left physically exhausted and mentally drained by the ordeal, and I didn't get better until the weekend. I did my best to catch up, but you can do only so much.

So, what did I do? Well, I added some more card art, meaning that there are now only 5 cards remaining. Almost...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

Let's begin the progress report by looking at this week's preview card: "Burst of Inspiration." This card introduces two new mechanics to the game that were not present in version 1.1:

• "Requires 3 Trust" means that to even play this card at all, you must have at least 3 combined levels of Trust Engines and/or Upgrades in play. For example, you could play this card with a level 1 Trust Engine and a level 2 Trust Upgrade in play. You can still use cards wi...
  2023-05-23 15:10:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

It's been another week with fantastic progress. With the deck builder out of the way, I put all my efforts into adding all the cards available in Snapshot 2.0. I also managed to implement every single card effect. Obviously, all of this will require serious testing, and due to the sheer size and the number of card combinations in the game right now, I'm unlikely to be able to test everything. Expect issues with game balance and the occasional bug, though I will make...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

Holy moly! This past week has been almost absurdly productive, and I'm on an incredible roll. Let's start from the top and work through everything, shall we?

First, the deck builder is now functionally complete, and I could release it in its current state with few complaints. Its worst part is the deck selector before you even enter the editor since it is just a simple Ren'py menu right now. Still, I expect to improve that before release. The editor itself can...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

Wow, this has been a great week for my progress, that's for sure. The ball really got rolling, and pieces I had been setting up for ages started falling into place. 

As I write this, the collection part of the deck builder is fully functional. You can see this in the attached screenshot. Please, PLEASE keep in mind that this is a work in progress and can change a lot before you get to play with it, but the general layout should remain the same. 

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

The deck builder is continuing to take shape. It has now moved well past the conceptual stage and entered implementation. Right now, I can navigate to the deck builder from the game's main menu and bring up most of the UI, including clickable buttons and functional cards. The card list can be smoothly scrolled. 

There were a lot of uncertainties with making all of this work properly, especially considering how I'm mixing Ren'py and Python code. I will hav...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

This is one of those weeks where it's hard to constructively present the fruits of my labor. It's been all about the interface for the deck builder (again), but this time I've been taking it from the theoretical stage to a practical one. The mockup has been finalized ("finalized" for this part of the development, anyway). It is ready to put into the game, but it's not actually in there yet.

These early days of Supermodel feel weird to me after more than five y...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

This week has seen me spending most of my efforts on the time-demanding process of updating all the cards to their new looks and ensuring they look correct in both small and large versions. You might not know this, but the renderers I use for the two sizes are entirely different, necessitating that I write the code that generates the layout twice and double-check each card to see fonts, placements, and so on all match. I can't automate this, so it must be done manua...

Progress Report

I'm a little off with the timing of this progress report, and for that, I apologize. The beginning of Easter and some personal stuff really threw me off my game for a short while. Not to worry, though. Progress has been good.

As you should all know by now, Long Live the Princess was made available last week for free for backers and everyone else. As of now, Long Live the Princess is no longer behind a paywall. That honor is instead reserved for Supermodel. Anyone backing at the $5 level...

Long Live the Princess - Version 1.0.1

A long time ago, I promised that one day the final version of Long Live the Princess would be free to download for everyone. That day has now arrived.

This public release includes some relatively obscure bug fixes based on feedback from version 1.0.0. Even if you already have that version, I recommend upgrading to 1.0.1.

While the game is now free, this does not mean that I don't need your financial support. I'm knee-deep in developing my coming title Supermodel: Defenders of Desi...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

It's been a week of mild lightheadedness and a stuffy nose, which is always fun. I don't know where the days went, honestly. 

At least I finally finished all the coding and preparations for Long Live the Princess version 1.0.1. It's sitting here, ready to compile and test. I don't expect testing to take much time since most of the fixes are so situational and weird that they are hard to even reproduce at all. What's important is to make sure that nothing ...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

Well, I finally got sick again after almost a full year without even a simple cold. And now I have... a simple cold. Nothing to be alarmed about in the slightest. It's not even hitting me very hard, leaving me only slightly reduced and with a sore throat and sniffles. Nothing that prevents me from working, though I'm not entirely up to my regular effectiveness. 

Anyway, what did I do this past week? 

On the Supermodel front, I finished the piec...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

Ah, inspiration. It hits when you least expect it. I was happily churning away on the 1.0.1 update for Long Live the Princess this past week when musical inspiration suddenly struck. When that happens, I can't just let it lie. The result is that I'm now 5 minutes into the next piece of music to be featured in Supermodel Snapshot, despite not really intending to work on that quite yet. Still, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. This music sounds great and only ne...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

It's been one week since the backer release of the first version of Supermodel Snapshot. During that week, I have spent much time talking to players and working on fixes and balance adjustments. The result is version 1.1, which will be released shortly after I finish posting this progress report. If you haven't been able to try Supermodel Snapshot yet, I suggest downloading version 1.1 instead of 1.0. In particular, the new version adds more manageable difficulty le...

Supermodel Snapshot - Version 1.1

IMPORTANT: Uploaded a hotfix. If you already downloaded 1.1, I strongly recommend updating to 1.1.1.

The day is finally here. Today, you get to try out the card game for Supermodel, though in a limited form. This is what I've been putting so much work into for about a year or so now, and I hope it shows.

What can you expect from this release? First, there is a brief, non-interactive tutorial I strongly recommend you go through. After that, there is one single match of Sna...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

The music is finished! It's just two tracks, but considering how long it's been since I used to make music regularly, it's no wonder it took me a while to get "warm" again. As I worked on these tracks, my confidence and abilities snowballed, so I'm brimming with inspiration for other music right now.

One thing worth noting about this music is that it's not really representative of what you will hear in the full game of Supermodel. Supermodel Snapshot, the card...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

It's been all about the music for me this past week, and it's been an enlightening journey. When I first decided to try my hand at composing the soundtrack for Supermodel, I did so with great hesitation and uncertainty. I used to compose a lot of music years ago, but I was never spectacular at it. Would that be enough to create a memorable soundtrack for an entire game after being out of practice for years? I didn't know, and that was not a good feeling.

But w...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

This has been an incredibly productive week. I can now proudly say that the gameplay portion of the Supermodel Snapshot prototype is complete and polished. Let's go over the most important things I did since the last progress report:

The game over screens are complete. Whenever you lose or win the game, a window pops up and tells you whether you succeeded or failed and how well you did. Once you close this window, you are returned to the main menu so that you ...

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 th...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

In case you're unaware, game development is a side job that I do in addition to my day job as a software developer. Typically, my day job is stress-free and relaxed (relatively speaking), but this month has been anything but. My job is balls-to-the-wall busy this month, and it's not about to let up in the near future. I kind of like it, but I can tell it's taking some of the attention away from developing Supermodel and patching LLtP. 

Not that you need t...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

I reached a couple of neat milestones this week, one of which you can see in the attached animated GIF. 

This video shows an example of what I wanted the particle effects for so badly. In it, I'm using one of my cards to directly attack a Challenge card. The moment I let go of my card, the Challenge card shakes while its health bar explodes and updates to reflect its new health. It would have flown up and out of the screen if it had been destroyed. Meanwh...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

It's going to be another boring update about particle effects this week, sorry. Once you start experimenting with highly technical challenges like this, progress can appear slow on the outside. Rest assured, however; the end is in sight!

The current state of the system is that I'm making pleasant fire/explosion effects with a reasonable degree of control over how they look and how long they last. I have placed these effects on top of the user interface and oth...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

I'll keep things short this time as I have done very little since the last progress report. Quite simply, several consecutive days of family gatherings during Christmas took all my energy away, and I've been using the past few days to regain my energy. That may sound weird to some of you, but this is how life is for an introvert. This is also why I've been relatively quiet on the various social platforms this week.

I wanted to finish the particle systems this ...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

Christmas is right around the corner, and with that, I'm going to slow down a bit to enjoy the holidays with my family. Not stopping, though; never stopping. There's still so much to do, and I want to get the Supermodel Snapshot prototype out there ASAP.

So, what did I do this past week? Just one thing, basically: I began the work of implementing a working particle system for Ren'py.

What's a particle system, you might ask. Anyone who's dabbled in game g...

Progress Report

Greetings, everyone!

I guess you have a pretty good idea of what I worked on for most of this week. My primary goal was to get the game to a state where it would be possible to take decent screenshots. The idea was to show those off in this progress report, but when I finished the necessary functionality sooner than expected, I made a separate post earlier in the week instead. If you missed it, make sure you read it right now. For future progress reports, I'm going to assume that you're...