Saturday Update!

Okay this is probably going to be a long one! And maybe a vaguely incoherent one because I am a little bit sick [ not real-sick I think, it's probably from getting my flu/covid combo shots a couple days ago ]

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I need to start with an apology. I've decided to cancel a translation experiment I had going on. I had 3 volunteers working on translations, and they did a lot of work, but I've chosen to cancel the project. I know that people want translations and people were willing to volunteer, but I've been evaluating my workload and it's just too much for me. Fixing the missing translation indicators in the script page, organizing volunteers, answering questions, reexporting and pushing updates on the game constantly, building more menus, there's still a lot of work that would have to be done on my end. Just having yet another ongoing and endless project going on. It's just a lot of extra work and I need to step back from how much I've taken on.

I'm not immune to world outside and how tired these awful times are making everyone. I've had too many moments where I wish I wasn't doing any of this any more, and that tells me I need to make changes.

I shouldn't have started this particular experiment at all. I didn't want to, but I was scared of upsetting people by saying no. I was a coward and my volunteers paid the price with their time and hard work I've put to waste. I've apologized to them privately but I want to apologize to them publicly as well.

And of course I'm also sorry to anyone who was looking forward to translations of the game. I know this is a dick move. I have nothing to say for myself aside from apologies.

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I did get a fair amount of writing done last week. My writing was mostly centered around a night sequence with some exploration, not unlike the parts in YKMET:Strade where you're left alone. This stuff is generally more technical in programming but usually lighter on character scenes [ although there were some of those too ]

I did come up against more spots where I needed my new precision skill check, so I spent about a day and half working on getting that built.

[ incoming gif spam and boring math stuff but this is stuff I really enjoy so I'm putting it in. If you're visiting right after I posted and the gifs don't work, try giving the page a refresh ]

So, at first I thought my task would be relatively easy, because I thought I could use an image moving back and forth with Renpy's built in easing [ easing is changing the speed of a motion, like something speeding up or slowing down in a straight line ] and then just use code to grab the position of the image.

[ The ease is actually the opposite of what I want, being fast in the middle and slow at the edges, but it doesn't matter because I scrapped this immediately ]

I've just used strade's drippy heart as a placeholder for this. I was hoping to grab the position of the heart with code so I could tell if a player clicked when it was in the middle or not. After a solid hour or two of research, I realized there's basically no way to do that. Incredible how many coding forum posts start with people asking how to do this only to be told 'why would you want that? do something else.'

So, after banging my head on that wall, I decided to make like the forum posters and 'do something else'.

I scrapped the image concept and went back to using a bar. I can always get a number for how full a bar is, because I'm the one assigning that to it to begin with.

Here's a snapshot of it working with the bar. Looks more like the old struggle skill check now! And of course I have a pile of debug text there on the side, because I needed to be able to tell how my bar was working and where problems were happening as I debugged it.

That first number 'Fill' is how full the bar is, I've set it to be between 0 [ empty ] and 2 [ full ]. I chose a 2 and not 1 because I needed the first and second half of the bar to behave differently and 1/2 being left and right is easier for me to remember. Remember that thing about easing? It's built into renpy with images, but not with bars. For a bar, I had to do it myself with math.

The second number 'positivemotion' is a variable that becomes true when the bar fills, and false when it empties. I need to ask the bar when it becomes full, then set that variable to False, so it knows to start emptying instead.

The ease was more complicated. If I wanted it to move quickly at the edges and slower in the middle, I had to calculate it myself. This took quite a few tries and poor attempts at math before I got it right. At first I was trying to use addition to add a little bit to the ease number as it approached the edges, but this was terribly unstable and broke the behaviour every time LMAO

Eventually I nailed it with this:

SetLocalVariable('easeamount', abs((barrange/2) - barfill)*baseease)

Now the 'barrange/2' is ALMOST unnecessary since the bar's range is 2 [ 2 divided by 2 is... 1 ], but I put that in just in case I change the range of the bar. This way, the equation is always saying 'half the range of the bar minus how full the bar is right now'. The 'abs' is short for absolute, it's a function that makes any negative number positive. The reason I need this is because I need it to give me the same answer for if the bar is almost full and when it's almost empty. Lastly, the 'baseease' is a number I can supply separately to any instance of this bar in the script to provide a basic amount to multiply my result with and get a nice number to add or subtract from the bar as it moves.

Sorry if none of that made sense, it's a little hard to explain properly. The main bullet point is, this equation makes the bar move faster at the edges and slower in the middle. I think it gives the bar a lot of character.

I've also set everything up with variables so that I can change the basic speed of the bar AND how much the ease changes that speed, every time I put the bar into the script. That means I make some checks harder than others, and I can allow players to change the difficulty of them in the preferences menu.

Here's the final code for the thing, if you're interested:

Does that timer have way too many actions? I don't know. Look over there. Don't worry about it. You should have seen it while I was mid-figuring-things-out, it was possibly 3x as long LMAO

Anyway, now that the thing WORKED I needed to style it. It can't just be a copy of the old struggle bar. So I set both ends of the bar to dark grey and added a thumb image. A little foreground and background change, and now the player can actually tell what they're supposed to do.

Practically done! The last little bit of work was to create animations for when a player wins or loses the check. Simply having it pause like that and fade away would be no fun at all.

So I made a winning animation:

[ The blue thumb image also snaps right to the middle when you win for extra satisfaction - every winner is a perfect winner! ]

And I made a losing animation:

I broke my UI coloring rules and put in some red- I figured it was justified for just a short moment to make the player feel like they fucked up 😂

Overall I'm very happy with the new check! I managed to get everything on my wishlist for it, and I've plugged it in properly in all the spots in the script where it's needed so far.

The old button mashing struggle bar is still in the games code, I'll probably end up using that too eventually, but so far the story involves more stuff about being careful or quiet than it does about trying to overpower someone/something.

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Aside from that uhhhhh I think that's all. I have to clean a bunch of stuff in real life haha

I am very tired 😂

Here's Willow asking politely for attention from the arm of my desk chair:

Her food switch is going fairly well. At first she didn't want the new kibble [ of course it would be the first food in the universe she doesn't want ] but after I put a few bits in her wet dinner and then served her a soup of them with warm water and churu the next day, she came around and started eating them. Now she's almost entirely on the new food and so far so good! She seems to want to play for much longer in our sessions so I think it's making her feel better. [ I know I'm pushing the new food a bit fast, but I kept noticing her obviously feeling worse after picking out and eating a bunch of her old food. Evidence is pretty strong that she's allergic to chicken or something else in the old food ]

I did get a video of Willow making air biscuits and showing her wide array of toebeans as well, attached.

Stay safe out there and have a good weekend guys!