Keisi
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Dev Diary #99
🕑 Added 2023-06-12 18:02:53 +0000 UTCThis diary was planned for a few days ago but I wanted to wait a bit to have something to show apart from explaining other stuff. So let's get straight to it!
The previous diary I did for patrons was too long so I kept explaining a bit about how I work with shadows, lighting, and all that for this one. It's something silly and simple (although at times somewhat tedious). It's also something silly to show, but I think it's interesting to show a small part of what I've been doing behind the scenes (post-editing) for a long time now in each new version:
We have the old image.
Here is the new base image. We remove the shadows on the ground, add individual shadows to each girl... but the shadows on the girls' bodies are badly focused (Yuna's arm/Alina's hair/etc).
We remove the scene and leave only the poses with the correct lighting for each girl (and each pose).
Some editing here and there, magic and love... and we have the final result.
Another example (grass clipping in the rescues): Old image.
New base image in which we have improved the height of the grass as well.
Remove the grass.
A couple of edits later...
Ikr, the images may look a bit small to see some small details.
And like this, many other occasions and scenes that although subtle, are things that some extra work can be done to improve.
And well, although they are silly details, from my point of view they are details that differentiate something that you are doing fast to finish as soon as possible and something that you want to have a certain quality and dedication. And yes, I know, they are things that nobody notices or don't give importance to, but I'd rather you don't notice them than see clipping or weird shadows, bad lighting, whatever.
I have to say that since I've been working on v16, I've realised that despite having more experience in all this (renders & stuff), if I want to do things right, it takes more time than I thought, even using tricks or things that I've been learning during all this time. What I do realise is the sh*t I used to do before and the little self-criticism I had or so much conformism with the excuse of wanting to release new versions every X weeks, because in the end... look where we are now.
Leaving that aside, I wanted to explain one of the new features that will be in v16: Something I'll call "Duty", but it's not a call as such Ba Dum Tss.
This feature will work similarly to typical phone games (especially gacha games) where you have different objectives/tasks and when you accomplish them you get a reward.
Well, this will work the same in LA with the intention that anyone who likes repetitive stuff will be rewarded in one way or another.
Example: "Spend time X times with any main girl. Reward: X materials."
Initially, this was going to be exclusive to hard mode since that's where the grindfest is, but then I thought that in normal mode you also do repetitive tasks after all, so it's going to be in both modes but adapted to the difficulty. I've decided to do it this way because I think it's interesting to include more extra things to do in normal mode as well.
But anyway, let's get to what everyone wants: Rewards. I don't have it 100% defined yet as I'm working on the general idea and the interface design but the idea is that the rewards will be similar to the quest rewards plus some extra like cards, bgs, achievements... and all that. As always, I have to think long-term so it won't have as many rewards now as it will have when the game is finished (the outfits don't exist yet so I can't implement a reward that doesn't exist yet, you know).
And as a last note, as expected, the hard mode will have its own section in this feature (Bravery) to get rewards related to this mode.
At the moment, it's the only new feature I'm going to add in v15.75. Or maybe it's not the only one...
Against all odds, I've finally decided to add a gallery. I say this because I remember a long time ago I made a poll here and the result was that +50% didn't want a gallery. The thing is that since then, people have continued to insist, even several patrons, so if the patrons insist... I have to consider what to do.
This is now implemented and finished. It has taken me a few days because the initial design was not what it turned out to be in the end. Not only that, but it's not the same to add something like this for 3 girls than for all the girls that there are right now, even though some of them don't have many repeatable events (yet). But this is finished now so I can focus on the next feature explained above.
These two features and redoing the rest of the main quests will be the content of v15.75 and if I have time I will try to add more stuff but my idea is also to revise the dialogues of as many quests as possible.
After all this... there won't be a v0.16.0 yet, as I'm reserving an extra version (v15.90) to add the rest of the extra things I still have to add (a new minigame, variety of girls available to play blackjack with, finish revising the easy/hard mode, among other things).
That said, I'll say goodbye for today!
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Comments
Scott Wulf
Sounds like a lot of good things honestly! As probably one of the few people who is also a bit detail oriented, nice to see you cleaning up the clipping and other loose bits! Loving the touch ups, and really looking forward to how they look in play! All of the work you are putting in sounds good, and I am curious what you will do next to improve LA!
