sierralee
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March 26 Update
🕑 Added 2023-03-26 17:00:30 +0000 UTCNot sure if the previous posts gave the impression work isn't progressing? When I have a theme/topic for a post, it feels weird to throw in "Oh and there was also other work."
This week I'll do a more rambly walk through my work instead of presenting a focused development. For TLS 0.65.x the scope got out of hand and I was working on everything at once. While I didn't entirely escape that tendency, one of my goals this time was to concentrate on individual pieces. So for the first several days this week, I was working on finishing up Yarra's harem quest.
Just when I thought I had everything set up, I ran into a serious problem. You know the party split system, which has been used multiple times with no issues? It started crashing the game and giving useless error reports. I fiddled for some time, first assuming I'd made some syntax error or stupid mistake, then becoming increasingly frustrated as I couldn't avoid the crashes.
So I had to ask for help, which will never be instantaneous. There are definitely advantages to working on multiple fronts, and in this case I switched to another harem quest. Floundered a bit after losing my momentum, but I did get some stuff done: writing rough drafts for all the sex scenes next update, for example.
Since I was still stuck on Yarra, the next day I switched to assets for the other harem quest: it will involve a lot of crafting and most the remaining unique equipment. While it isn't a herculean effort, it does take some work to set up equipment. You want to balance both individual items to be reasonable, but also a mix of different types: some custom equipment is hands-down best in slot, some is good with potential tradeoffs, a few are red herrings.
Fortunately, around the time I finished the equipment, Decanter saved the day. I hadn't been blundering with the multiple party script, there was actually a bug baked into the code! Apparently it hadn't been used for so many parties before (can you blame Yarra for getting the whole harem involved?). This gave me a lot of motivation to dive back into Yarra's quest: I assembled all the pieces I'd been working on and even ran through the full testing.
There's probably more balancing to be done. This quest is tricky because it's a check on all your relationships. Right now I think I've erred on the side of too easy for games with maxed everything, but hopefully the party split will involve at least a bit of strategic fun for everyone. This is intended as a relatively late endgame dungeon, so I'm not sure how it will feel for less optimized saves. I added a lower limit if you don't have enough characters, to try to reduce potential frustration for saves that aren't ready.
So that's basically how this week went. With some non-creative asides like getting my taxes back from my accountant and having to deal with that. T-T Now I need to focus on the partially finished harem quest and hopefully wrap up all the new title screen/assets that has been soaking up time. Another report next week!
Comments
Sierra Lee
Yeah, seems reasonable. That reward will no longer be accessible unless Simon has recovered (though that change won't make it into the upcoming build). Note that not every scene is blocked. But those that are allowed (generally the more personal scenes) should all have special dialogue regarding it, whereas this one was an oversight.
Dubsington
Minor continuity problem (oh no, MAH IMMERSION!): If you run Altina's Request during Simon's recovery, you get a scene where he is doing to a room full of elves that which he is supposedly refusing to do. (Nudge nudge wink wink, etc.) Maybe that scene should be blocked unless he's recovered?
Sierra Lee
The game is already on that end of the continuum, I know. But for this case, I'm thinking mainly scenarios where costs and benefits are very close together (there have only been a handful, like Uyae or Altina). I was actually getting somewhat off topic when I wrote that... the upgrades in the quest won't all have immediate benefits, but they'll all be pretty good (and it will be possible to get 100% of this set eventually).
Runcible Technician
I am constantly amazed by the talented people you've managed to wrangle into helping on this game. It feels good, like there will always be a forward momentum in getting the whole project done.
ushiroace
Fair enough. That said, I think sometimes the ability to practically test out different outcomes can be very limited (ex. funding decisions with huge effects a chapter later), so hopefully that's less of what we're looking at in this scenario. Either way, I'll keep an open mind and look forward to it!
Sierra Lee
I hope you'll like the section! It lets the player choose the teams, so it won't be heavy on new interactions, but I hope it will give less favored characters their time to shine in combat. I see the role of red herrings as leading the player to cost-benefit analysis, particularly in closed sections. Making the player go to a lot of effort and then giving them something subpar would feel wrong, I agree. Rather, I think they have a place in sections like Uyae's quest, where the player is assumed to be testing out different rewards. Technically this does favor wiki usage, but I think even blind players are likely to look at the different rewards and then reload to choose the ones they want. Stereotypically, custom equipment is always the best and players will naturally want to hoard it. In a situation with limited resources, I think it's interesting to have them reconsider their assumptions and decide whether or not a unique item is worth what they'd give up in exchange. It's another brick in the game's thesis that you can't have everything - hopefully one that makes the player think a little and then feel good about optimizing, not a frustrating element.
ushiroace
Exciting post! I've always really liked the party-splitting sections of the game. It gives a really good sense of how large and powerful the group has grown over time (and, perhaps somewhat incidentally, gives the harem a good sense of overall unity seeing as Simon isn't directly leading every group). Out of curiosity, what is the idea design-wise for having some custom equipment be "red herrings?" In general, wouldn't you want to reward players who go through the process of obtaining the materials needed for custom equipment by having that gear be powerful? Especially since you don't know what the equipment is until you make it, which would seem to reward players who keep the wiki open and plan things out far ahead of time instead of trying to make the best decisions as they play blind.
Decanter
Time SL spent slamming her head against the prompt trying to get the details right, the style right, and everything consistent between frames... is time SL could be using on many more fruitful things, some of which wouldn't even be soul-sucking.
Dubsington
I'd actually be pretty disappointed if AI art was used in-game. Back when we were selecting an artist and Anikanth won (handily, IIRC), a big part of it was that it was clear that the art was being made by a fan who "got it". Every CG has lots of little details that make it great. An AI-generated image would either lack those details, or only include them because of what amounts to dumb luck (it's not really luck, but ML is complex enough it had might as well be.)
Sierra Lee
It's unrelated. What you reference was an issue where, if you actively tried to screw things up, you could cause problems by switching between groups. In Yarra's quest, the game immediately crashes when it tries to divide the party. AI art is improving, but so far it seems better at approximating an idea than actually producing details. I certainly hope it doesn't replace real artists.
lostone2
Decanter seems like an useful guy to know, lol. From what I had read in the forum, there was a serious issue with the two different groups in Zirantia (Ordeal of the Claw)? It's related to that? Regarding the topic of last week, some random guy somewhere has stated that you should employ your time developing the art of the game using AI... (Because she/he felt that the actual pace of the art is slow....)
