Screenshots!

Hello everyone! It's the end of another month. Because of this I thought I'd leave you guys with some screenshots and highlight one of the villagers who you'll meet when playing Taradiddle! So first, the screenshots.

Okay, not a screenshot but a random art-bit I did

Your fields if you buy the farm

Intro

Your house if you pick to live in the main village

Behind clothes shop

Greta

The clothes shop

Greta walking to work

Ruby Lore:
Born seventy years ago, when heroes were more common and Trinin was booming. She was raised in Trinin and married a travelling  merchant. She had just one child, Nicole. When Nicole was just three Ruby got her first major hardship: her husband was missing. He had missed one of his stops and calls started coming in asking where he was. Ruby didn't know. Weeks turned into months then years and Ruby's husband wasn't heard or seen. The government considered him dead after three years. Devastated Ruby become an empty shell and Nicole was often sent to the neighbors so that her mother could mourn. The mother managed to heal but not until her daughter had grown distant and no longer wished to be close to her. Ruby tried hard to reconnect but Nicole just didn't have the will to make it work. Instead Nicole left Trinin for some years. Upon her return she brought a baby girl with her and no husband. Ruby was older,  it was harder for her to move around. Yet when Nicole came back Ruby welcomed her daughter with open arms and promised to help raise her grandchild no matter what. Now the three live together with Nicole working and Ruby staying home to help look after Alisa, her granddaughter. Every day she will sit at Trinin's entrance and wait, peering into the dark forest and waiting for her lost husband to return.


As to what I worked on today I did more writing. It's amazing how much writing is in involved. When I started this project a year ago I thought the majority of work would be using the game-maker but it isn't, a lot of time is also spent in writing, art, and lining resources up. Well, I guess it's time to backup all the work I have so far.

Cya!

February 27th

Today I worked on the NPC Ruby Lore's movements. I didn't do anything other than that. To be honest, I felt sick for most of the day and still feel off right now. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day!

Cya!

February 26th

Worked on writing out more cutscenes today. Also got a lot of the first draft for a mini-comic done up. It's really rough at this point but I've got the basic story down. The comic will focus on two NPCs, Greta and Emmaline. It will follow them as they spy on a 'suspicious' person they've never seen before. Other than that I took screenshots and uploaded them to my website.

On an unrelated note I got accepted to the training school! Super excited atm.

Cya!

February 25th

February 20th

I worked on NPC movements today. Spent a good two hours working on them today. I discovered I had forgotten to switch one map over to my new system so that took an hour in itself. Then I worked more on one of the NPCs that you can marry, Greta Moore. Then I tested what I had so far to make sure they all worked right. They did, by the way.

 Non-Game related: I got everything sorted for the training school I'm trying to get accepted into. Now I just have to wait for the interview and then cross my fingers and hope I get accepted! I'm so full of nervous energy... I think I could explode and splatter my computer at any moment. If I don't get accepted, to be honest, I'm not sure what I'll do. Someone asked me this a few days ago and I hadn't really thought of it *blushes*. I've been so stressed getting everything together that I hadn't had time to think of failure. Now that's all I can think of since there is nothing else to think about until the interview. Anyhow, you guys probably don't care about this anyway.

Cya!

February 19th

The above is the NPC I've been working on. You can marry her so her movements are a lot more complicated than a normal NPC. First, it changes depending on if she is unwed, wed to rival, or wed to you. If she is married to you it changes once more depending on what house you're living in at the time. So that's a lot of different possibilities and routes and times when it comes to her travelling around the village. I will get it done though even if it takes me five years! Oh, and today I mostly wrote things.

Cya!

February 14th

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope everyone had a better day than I did. Anywho.

Today I used the Looseleaf generator and got all the female hairstyles made and converted for Ace. Only other thing I did today was attempt to think of some new mini-games but I wasn't able to as I've had a headache all day.

Cya!

Book Sorting Mini-Game

Today I made all the icons for the book sorting game and finished putting it in as well! The game takes up time and energy for your character despite the short time it takes to actually play the mini-game. How much you are paid varies with how many books you sort. If it's 0 you don't get paid anything. If you go to a bookshelf without a book or you have the wrong book a message will pop up taking up some of the precious time that you have. Also, if you miss Emmaline's first showing of the book you're sorting you can ask her to show you again. The second time she shows you it takes up more time than before so it's better if you don't have to ask her a second time. Tomorrow I'm going to work on thinking up more mini-games to play. I want each one to be unique with different mechanics. I hope I'm able to do that!

Cya!

February 12th

Today, for the most part, I worked more on the written parts of Taradiddle. In fact, the written, I would say, makes up at least half of the game so I have to start writing a lot more than I have been. I got the first event of Emmaline almost down and finished up her backstory and personality. I also worked on writing a mini-story from Trinin and added some things to my GDD. Then I worked on the actual game.

 I'm figuring out and putting in my first mini-game. It's book sorting at the library for cash. In Taradiddle part-time work is a mini-game unless you turn them off in the option screen. If you turn mini-games off you'll just get a fade screen and a set amount of money. If you play the mini-game you can earn more than the base amount if you do a good or great job. Each shop will have its own separate game. So the work I did today on the book-sort game doesn't have it anywhere near done but I am closer than yesterday, which makes me happy. Tomorrow I have to make a lot of icons for the mini-game. 

Cya!

February 11th

I only got to work on my game for about an hour and a half. I had to go to a lot of other places today. Despite that I did get the following done:
Three icons made, Emmaline to and from work(unwed), Clinic set up, Emmaline backstory writings, Looseleaf generated NPCs(6).


Cya!

February 8th

Today I:
Finished up two more NPC schedules, which was exciting. Finished making a new map of a NPC's house. I also wrote some dialogue for a woman that you can marry(Greta Moore) and worked on her personality and backstory. The map may still change a bit but it's overall design won't. 

Come Monday I plan to put Emmaline Smith's schedule into the game and get the clinic where she works up and running!

Cya!

February 7th

The above is the portrait I completed today. She is Laura Smith, the mother of Emmaline and Alix Smith, two people that you can marry.

 Only other thing I did today was fix the lag spikes(I think). Turned out the cause was how I was handling the NPC movements. Once I had so many NPCs moving on a map it got laggy at certain spots. I fixed how I handled those and so far the lag has vanished. Here's to hoping it stays that way!

Non-game related: Today we ordered all the books I'll need for the course I'm taking this summer. That was exciting and I look forward to studying them ahead of time. I'm nervous but excited all at the same time. I'll be living away from home for a lot of the summer. I think it'll be mostly exciting though, an adventure, if you will ;) Oh, I also ordered a new graphic card. Can't wait to see my games after I get it, Friday!

Cya!

Bakeries, Laura, Lags

Howdy!
Well, today I got a bit done. To start with I finished the other half of Laura's movements(her day off). Then I also finished up the bakery. Made four icons for the food the bakery sells in spring and organized all the food items in the database one final time. Since I got all the food finalized I was able to do that. All that was exciting, I feel good about it.

Then when I was testing I noticed lag spikes at seemingly random times. It was getting all the way down to 30 frames. On one map I know why it's lagging, I had a super-duper long and complicated event. I think I've found a workaround for that though. It was doing it on maps with next to nothing on them though. Tomorrow I'm going to go over my scripts, test my computer on a fresh project, and take a closer look at the parallel common events I have running. I don't have that many and I never noticed them causing any trouble but I'll have to look over everything. Lag isn't acceptable.


Cya!

February 5th

Yet another day completed!

Okay, so to be honest I didn't get very much time in today. My Mom had surgery and then I went to an archery person who showed me how to put a nocking point on my recurve. Then I shot said recurve to test it out. Despite that I did get some things done:

1. Two icons made(watering can, hoe)
2. Three icons tweaked to new style
3. HUD found and implemented
4. Laura NPC movements half-way done
5. Bakery merchandise started but didn't make much headway
6. James normal portrait completed

(James Moore is the mayor who you can replace. I'm probably going to redo him)

February Fourth

Howdy Folks!
Today I finished fixing the gardening, tweaked maps, tested things, then I fixed a boatload of bugs. So today was a polishing day. Despite not having much in the game there were a lot of things that needed to be fixed, tweaked, or added to make things run smooth. I thought, after finding the garden bug Friday, that I needed to test more and fix what was already done before moving on. Today I think I did that. I also began writing a short story about one of the NPCs. I decided to write each NPC storyline/questline in short-story format and then convert that into a script. I got almost 1,000 words written for that. Overall I'm happy with what I got done today even though it doesn't sound like a lot on paper. Tomorrow I will be back to adding things in instead of just fixing up what's already there!


Cya!

February First

Howdy Folks to a New Month!
Yep, exciting I know. Anyways.  Today I made six new icons for food. I'm now in the Bs! Two of them are verging on a fail though so I'm probably going to re-do them tomorrow.

 This morning I was putting in another garden square when I found yet another bug. So I spent a lot of time fixing that. Still have four more squares to fix. I did get another garden square in today, though now I'll have to go back and fix that one too. I'm glad I caught it now though, instead of later. It's a lot easier to fix things as there aren't that many squares in the game yet.

 The last thing I did today was work more on NPCs. Their bios, personality, and so forth. They still feel flat to me. You'd think this part would be easiest for me as I enjoy writing novels and have done so for years but it isn't. I don't know why but I just can't seem to click with these characters. Can't get a good grasp of them. That's why I haven't even started writing their dialogue. Hopefully I'll pull through though. Well, to be honest, I have to or my game will flop. It depends so much on the NPCs, your interaction with them, their secrets and desires. I will prevail! Well, I'm off to dinner.

Cya!