ZAGS is going to be a more traditional stat-based dating sim, so an important part of the GUI is the planner and stats screens.
I spent part of today getting the screens up and running, with a ton of animation thanks to ATL. I think it turned out pretty nice!
Also managed to get the prologue to the game completed today, so actually managed quite a lot of progress.
Tomorrow we’ll start work on actually coding the planner.
I’ve made less progress than I wanted on ZAGS, but I’m in the process of building out the game GUI now.
Here’s an animation of the choice menus and how things move about the screen.
My goal is both to finish writing the prologue and to start on the scheduler/stat aspects of the game by the end of the week. We’ll see how far I get!
ZAGS has been a long time coming, so this is, in some ways, a continuation of the previous ZAGS posts.
But I think I’m actually starting up in earnest now. Spent yesterday both testing the cross-game persistent variables that will carry game state over from YAGS:
as well as starting to pull together the GUI (also Hi, stick figure Chris!):
More to come, including code explanations for the cross-game functionality and my usage of LayeredImage to replace YAGS’ convoluted sprite system.
Sorry for the relative silence here. Figured I’d dump a general status post here before February is over.
March is nanoreno, and I’m signed up to work on the sea life dating sim Whale’s Waldo, which should be a lot of fun, but won’t leave me much time to work on other projects, like YAGS.
Which is probably for the better anyway. YAGS itself is basically finished, minus assets (backgrounds, sprites, and music). If you’re been following the tumblr, you’ll notice that I’ve been writing a series of backstory fics while I’m waiting on assets. My goal is to post one fic a week for as long as I can… either until I run out of things to write about, or I start ZAGS development in earnest. I’m hoping nanoreno won’t interfere with this goal too much.
And speaking of assets: There’s not much progress to report there. Jake is complete, and will be added to the game at some point, but my musician has run into personal issues, so staging music will be further delayed a bit. Sprites and backgrounds otherwise are ongoing.
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.)