08/01/2021 Patreon Devlog

I'm going to pretend it's not August. Let's pretend it's....February.

Yes. That's good.

February 1st update!

Here we go!

(Also, sorry I forgot the update. I'm apparently just really off this week. Forgot the KS update until someone reminded me, the forgot the Patreon update because I did the Kickstarter update.).

LoL

This Week's Summary:

• I realised I had forgotten an entire side character in Caleb's route. Just totally forgot he existed until I got to the chapter where he appears. So...I made a new sprite this week.
• I Finished putting together Ari's flowcharts
• Coded Ari's flowcharts
• Tested Ari's flowcharts
• Put a few more BG variations in the game (I have a lot I've made but never imported them into the game)
• Started converting all the BG files to webp format.

The Ramble:

SO...this week I mostly focused on Ari's flowcharts.

I had to create all the official flowchart images, then format them for the game, then code the screens and code the "unlock" flags.

Then test them.

Setting up the flowcharts is easy from a process standpoint but time consuming because the flowcharts are just so involved.

The chapters average about 20 modules each (some are less, some are more, of course). That means about 280(ish) individual components for each route's flowchart. Those have to be saved individually then coded into the game so that they show up on the flowchart screen.

Then I have to go through the route and flag each scene with the correct variable so that part of the flowchart "unlocks". This is something I have to do while looking at the flowchart image to make sure I have each scene pathed to the correct module.

Then, of course, I have to test it. And fix errors (of which there were some for sure).

This was what took up most of time this week but it is now DONE. And has one test pass complete.

I did also work on Caleb expressions and realised at some point I'd forgotten a minor character who appears in a couple of chapters. He did not have a sprite....

Now he does. LoL

I put a few more BG variations into the game as well. This is mostly necessary because I have saved a lot of the variations I need but never actually put them into the game. So some scenes are still using placeholders. And I realised this as I was testing and certain BGs weren't triggering properly. So I was just moving those into the game and making sure they work.

AND finally...

Before beta testing I need to convert some image files to .webp file format. This is a relatively new file format that has a higher compression than .jpg without losing quality. It also supports transparency so you can use it to replace .png and .jpg files.

This may seem like a minor thing to everyone but honestly it's a big deal because Gilded Shadows is REALLY HUGE.

The uncompiled game was well over 1 GB in size. Which of course isn't that big a deal for a game. Plenty of games are several GB in size. But I know for VN players, size can be an accessibility issue. And I know I can probably shrink that size some.

Because most of it lies in....the image files. And from there, most of it is in the BG files. The BG folder was over 500 MB in size.

I've currently reduced that by 300 MB and still have more files to convert.

It's not quite as simple as just converting the files. I do have to go in and make sure the files are also declared properly (sometimes you have to declare files by typing out the entire path including the .jpg/.png. Which means I need to go in and change those to .webp).

I really wanted to get this done before beta testing starts just to make the game size a little more manageable for beta testers.

Once I'm done with it, I think I can ship the new beta testing version with Ari's route. I'm still trying to decide if I want to release a testing version with JUST Ari's route or leave the alpha versions of the other routes.

I don't know. Probably the latter, just to keep everyone focused.

We'll see. I'm going to try to finish converting files today and then....yes. Testing!

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

I don't have a ton of interesting screenshots this week since I was mostly working on flowcharts which....aren't interesting to screenshot.

That said, one other thing I did this week was set up another tint version of the sprites, this time slightly greenish. There are some dark BGs where the lighting has a distinct green tint so the "night" (blue tinted) sprites weren't looking right.

But they transition from the green background into a blue one so I'm going to have to make sure I get the tints right through that area too.

I'll be testing that...idk. Today or tomorrow.

Upcoming Week:

This coming week I expect to:

Make a few more small tweaks to things in Ari's route (just some small clean up and polish sorts of things)

Send Ari's route to beta testers

Work on Caleb's sprite expressions more, now that Ari's flowcharts are done.

And that's about it I think.

If you are in the red tea tier that has access to alpha testing - you will not be getting beta access to Ari's route.

If you are a new subscriber to the black tea tier that has beta testing access I'll contact you individually with an access key and explain to you how to get into the beta testing files when that goes live.

And with that, I shall bid you adieu! See you next week.