15/05/2021

*Pterodactyl shriek*

If you are on Discord, you probably already know 90% of this update is going to be me ranting about my laptop. LoL

But let's jump in, shall we?

This Week's Summary:

• Coded music into ½ of Ari's route
• Did a lot of plot planning for Reuben's route
• Worked on one new sprite
• Considered devouring my laptop whole

The Ramble:

So this is going ot be a short update this week because unfortunately my laptop is still not fixed. Someone did come out to work on it but he didn't get it fixed that day. (That's a whole saga) Since then we've been in this cycle of trying something as a "fix" then me trying to see if it will blue screen if I "use it normally."

The last BSOD was last night so it's definitely not fixed.

The sprite I worked on was for a backer character named Celeste. I worked on her while deliberately trying to see if spending a long time in photoshop would result in a blue screen. (It ultimately did. LoL).

It doesn't count but I actually did a lot of coding and GUI work on one my side projects during one of my "TRY TO GET THE LAPTOP TO BREAK" sprees. Because I didn't want to work on Gilded Shadows and risk losing work if it shut down on me (or risk corrupting my art and game files.) Even though everything is backed up - it's a pain to replace them and also, losing a few hours of work is really annoying. 

But losing work on a side project doesn't bother me as much since I don't have the same emotional attachment. LoL 

(It's not even properly edited so I'm going to probably have to re-do it all at some vague future date anyway. But my laptop currently hates Renpy so I was trying to TEMPT it by coding for a while. Rofl)

It might have been a huge waste of time since it was less "working on a project" than "testing my laptop's patience" but I did play with a pronoun tool that someone made for Renpy that lets you code in customisable pronouns. That was an interesting experience and I learned some valuable coding stuff about lists. 

I'm trying to think of ways to apply this to the way the GS flowcharts work to see if I can streamline that code. OWO

ANYWAY....I coded music into about half of Ari's route so...that did, at least, get done. I've taken a new approach to doing the music that's making it go a little faster than usual. You know....except for the part where coding makes my laptop throw a hissy fit.

In other news I managed to find a keyboard for my old Windows surface, which is the machine I coded Changeling on. LoL

The problem with the surface is that I cannot use photoshop on it due to compatibility reasons (so I can't just switch over to it.)

The other big issue with it is that it has almost no space left on it. I couldn't even put Gilded Shadows on it until I cleaned up some space. After I put GS on it, it has a whole 3 GB of space left. 8D

One of the frustrating things with this surface is that the apps and files aren't actually taking up that much space? There's about 50 GB of SOMETHING on there but I don't know where it is and can't clean it up.

But I was at least able to free up enough to put GS on there. So my hope is I can get some coding done using the Surface until the technician can come back to look at my laptop again. Renpy was so badly out of date.

Everything on this surface was/is out of date. No one has touched it in like...a year. Rofl. BUT YEAH. I think it's usable now? 

At this point evidence regarding my laptop is pointing toward an issue with the memory/RAM...so...yeah. Idk. Looks like it will be a few more days. =w=

The technician will have to order new parts then come back to try to replace the RAM....hopefully sometime this upcoming week.

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

None this week, unfortunately, considering I was barely able to do anything and spent most of the week gingerly working on google drive and Miro to try to plot out Reuben's route.

Upcoming Week:

Now that I have GS on a machine where I can (hopefully) work in peace, I'll be trying to finish up coding the music across all the routes.

I'm not sure how long that will take but if I get through all the routes, I'll move into sprite coding. Usually when I start coding sprites, I start by coding all the MC's entrances, exits, and expressions.

Unfortunately, since I don't have all Morgan's variations and probably won't be able to work on them for at least part of the week, I'll have to go back and add those in at a later date.

But regardless, working on Morgan's sprite coding would be the next step after music.

I hope I have a more interesting update for everyone next week.