24/06/2023 Patreon Devlog (Gilded Shadows)

Hallooo! Time for the GS devlog for this week.

This Week's Summary:

• Finished scripting Yuu's route
• Finished a ton of little things in prep for alpha testing
  • Music stops (places where the music goes silent, like endings and chapter screens)
  • Set up the scoring spreadsheet
  • Coded in scoring
  • Checked all variables in the route
  • Started coding in initial BG changes
  • Started coding in initial music cues
• Worked on Morgan sprite variations

The Ramble:

Halloooo everyone! We have officially moved into the next stage of development.

This week I finished my proofread of Yuu's route and more importantly...

So I finished scripting!

This means I got the code fully imported and set up properly.

I've shown this process before but generally it just means taking the raw script and translating it into functional code. This means a lot of finding/replacing improperly formatted things that happen due to writing it in Scrivener, as well as indenting things properly.

Code relies heavily on things being indented correctly but Ren'py can't actually recognise the "indent character" (spaces and indents count as characters - just like letters or punctuation) from word processors. So I can't set up the indentation until the script is coded.

So scripting really just entails copying and pasting the code, making all the corrections, then checking for any errors or places where the code is messed up. Anyway.

I now have an official word count!

So we can see that we ended up just over 1,000,000 words, which is where I have been predicting I'd end up for a while. I knew I'd end up over 1,000,000 words but less than 1,100,000.

As you can see, there are 220+ actual menus (places where you're presented choices) and nearly 600 individual choice options within those menus.

There are 320 screens - that will go up with Yuu's flowcharts since each flowchart counts as a screen. And 710 images. This will go up a little as I add in more sprites for Yuu's route.

The number of images is the number of declared images in the game. For instance, Morgan's sprite has over 1000 files associated with it, but it only counts as 1 image in the game code. It's 1 image that uses multiple image files. So what Ren'py is counting here is the number of declared sprites, BGs and other images that get called in the game but not necessarily the number of image files used to create those images (since many of the images are composed of multiple image files).

So these are the stats now - it'll shift a bit as I get other things ticked off the list but this is more or less what the game is going to look like!

Yuu's total coded word count is just under 108,000, which puts him between Caissa and Lance, length-wise. Very comparable to Lance, though. They're only a few hundred words apart.

So now that I have the hardest part (writing and editing) done, it's time to move on to coding all the assets and other features.

Exciting!

Based on my spreadsheet (the total progress one, not just the word count one!), this means Yuu's route is just over 70% complete!

Sneak Peeks:

Nothing for this week but I'll start posting more screenshots when I get further into sprite art and coding. Very soon!

Upcoming Week:

So when a route reaches this stage, I essentially now have a huge check list of tasks to complete - some are really quick, small tasks. And others are much more time consuming (CG art, flowcharts, etc).

I basically try to go through the list a task at a time or completing in "chunks" that kind of move me into the next stage.

What I'm doing right now is a lot of preliminary coding stuff that gets the route into a playable form. This includes putting in the BG changes, the music cues, and checking the scoring and variables.

I always find the route to be a more playable "alpha" version when it has the scene shifts (usually indicated by a BG change or a music cue) because it just helps me visualise where I am in the story a bit better. So that's why I set up those things really early on - just to make the alpha version easier to follow.

For the next week, I'm going to keep doing those things and when I have a fully playable alpha, I intend to do what I call a "David run" of the route. This basically just means playing through the route with self-voicing enabled (the default voice in Windows is named "David" LoL).

So why do I do this?

Well, by this point I've read the route about 5 times. And I really am no longer capable of seeing issues or reading slowly.

Listening to the content helps a lot. When the self-voicing mispronounces a word due to a typo, or reads a sentence weirdly because there's a missing word...or when there's a continuity issue or a strange jump - it's so much more obvious when I *hear* it.

This is an example of an error I did not see - but heard right away when it was read aloud.

And listening to the self voicing just makes me slow down and think about what I'm hearing so I can hear continuity issues (and remember variations I've previously heard) much better.

Yuu's route has a lot of variables that branch into really small call backs and variations. He has more than any other route actually. This means that small continuity errors are a much bigger concern and I really feel like I need to go through the route to try to catch these before beta testers.

So a David run is necessary.

The problem with a David run is that David reads slowly. And I can't speed him up. So a 'David run' takes a while.

Anyway, that's all for Gilded Shadows this week. I will see you all next week!