Realizing I never shared this WIP. Enjoy the Adam.
I explored the idea of CGs in YAGS briefly, but ultimately decided it didn’t make financial sense. But the first (and, now, only) one that I commissioned, as a test, is making good progress!
I think this is going to become the cover for the Behind-the-Scenes book instead (and maybe also a desktop wallpaper), so at least it won’t go to waste.
randomnobodyandfriends asked:Really enjoyed YAGS, will definitely play it a few more times once finished. If you don’t mind sharing, do you have any idea what genre your next project will be?
Thank you for the message!
I expect YAGS will be code-complete by the end of February, with both final backgrounds and music, leaving only sprites to go. Those should filter in over the next few months, so hoping for a final release sometime this summer. (But with plenty of releases between now and then with sprite updates.)
I have two projects I want to work on while I’m waiting for sprites:
The first is ZAGS, a direct sequel to YAGS, but built more as a stat-based dating sim, because I really want to get into more advanced RenPy coding, and I think setting up weekly scheduling with interspersed VN scenes would make for an interesting project. YMMV in terms of play, because I expect it will feel extremely different than YAGS.
This also has the benefit of reusing many assets from YAGS, so its release won’t get delayed waiting for sprites. And hopefully I’ll be able to plan in several CGs as well.
(Screenshot below of the current GUI, as implemented in RenPy, including the stats summary screen.)
The second is intended to be a short (5-10k word) VN based off of a drabble I wrote one night while I couldn’t sleep. It’ll probably be in RenJS, and I mostly want to pursue this project as a way to handle all art assets for a game myself. (Some sketches of the sprites are below. They look pretty weird. I’m clearly not an artist.) Story-wise, it’s a slight fantasy twist on reality?
Of course, given my lack of motivation on things sometimes, it’s also possible that neither of these things will actually come to pass.
(It’s also worth noting that the second of these projects was my primary reason for splitting my tumblr up yesterday, so expect more details about it in the relatively near future.)
Welcome to the new home of YAGS… at the same URL. Unfortunately, tumblr doesn’t make it easy to change the “master” tumblr associated with an account, and I felt weird having @bobcgames be subservient to @yags-game… so here we are.
I’ve reblogged almost all of the content from the original tumblr (just missing the first three posts, I think?) and re-tagged everything, so there shouldn’t be too much of a difference once we settle in here.
In any case, there’s actually not much work left to do on YAGS. My main goal with the next build is to stage in music with placeholders, so I’m ready to go once the final tracks come in. Of course, there will also be work to replace sprites and backgrounds as those come in.
The BTS book is also mostly done at this point, minus filling in sprites for asthetics, but I should also work on finishing that up.
Progress!
I’m still waiting on final Jake and Dan sprites, but I wanted to push a new release anyway due to the massive number of changes queuing up. We’re approaching full background replacement, with only three left (James’ apartment, the student center game room, and the epilogue apartment), which is exciting.
The biggest change in this release is probably the full replacement of all character sprites with “better” stick figures, which I affectionately dub “tentacle sprites” due to their arms. I suspect there are remaining bugs, but this means future builds with finished sprites will be much less buggy.
Version: v0.20122
Release name: C is for Cookie (because Jake)
As usual, you can get it on the download page.
Changes in this release:
Stats for this release: 26,300 dialog blocks, 230,663 words, 1,211,282 characters
Here’s some inks for Jake, via the talented @stollcomics. Looking forward to his final version!
Given my incredible success at making my own Juan sprite, I went through and also did sprites for the other characters, and replaced them in the game. It looks pretty, uh… special.
I’m hoping to have sprites for everyone replaced by this weekend, which means it’ll be a significantly simpler matter of dropping in the final sprites when I get them.
I’d gotten some feedback that Dan’s previous pose was a little strange. It was intended to be a friendly “I want a hug” kind of pose, but ended up not quite looking like that, and also looked particularly odd when I started to replace his sprite in the game, because he didn’t have a more generic default pose.
@stollcomics was awesome enough to oblige me, and came up with this instead, which I think fits his character well and also is a much more reasonable “default” for him.
I also wanted to provide a general status update, because it’s been an incredibly productive winter break. I’ve actually gotten through the entirety of my last TODO list except for updates based on personality. But more importantly, I’ve also finished spite replacement in the game for Dan, Jake, and Juan, which means the next game build is ready to go once those sprites are in.
This was particularly interesting for Juan, because I don’t have even a sketch version for him yet, so I improvised by making a variant stick figure sprite that included his different clothing. The result was rather, uh… interesting.
The behind-the-scenes book is also making good progress. In particular, I finished the guides on how to obtain all of the achievements and collectibles, wrote the sections on the different locations in the game, and mostly finished the section on characters.
Hopefully this productivity will continue.
Also, a very happy new year to everyone!