April 24th

     Today I worked on two main things but for the most part I spent my time with the NPC called Charles. First I set up the switches and variables for befriending him. Then I drew his portrait.

I've recently started using Manga Studio 5 to make the portraits. I'm enjoying it a lot so far and it works better than the other programs I've tried. I don't have enough cash for Photoshop so it's a good enough alternative. I love the pens that it has and the coloring isn't bad either. 

Charles Singer

     Charles was born and raised in Trinin. His family has been running the only hotel in town ever since it's founding over 150 years ago. He lives with his wife Tess and daughter, Olivia, who is the local school teacher. Charles dislikes change and has an uncanny ability to draw out others' problems when talking to people. He enjoys helping others when he's able but can be grumpy if you catch him at a bad time.

     The thing I spent a lot of time doing was the chat option which looks simple on the player's end but behind the scenes it's a more complicated. There are seven "ranks" of friendship. Each rank gets its own text. The text will also vary depending on the season and whether or not his daughter is married. Minor changes also occur if you're a girl versus a boy. Most of this checking is handled in a common event but there are some things that happen in the normal event. This includes the check for which rank of speech to call up and a check for if the player has already spoken to Charles that day. If you have already spoken then you don't get any friendship points. At the end of the chat you're booted from the event and allowed to go on your merry way. There are still some tweaks I plan to add. I'm going to make icons for each choice and may try to add a namebox on the right side. Haven't 100% decided how or where I'm going to display the name of who's talking. For now a name just isn't displayed.

      I will push the portrait more to the left side once I have all the portraits done. For now I'm leaving the largish gap on the left. The windowskin is also placeholder, ignore it.

     The only other thing I did today was begin redoing my maps with the new tilesets I bought today. (futuristic and modern). These screenshots are still very much a work in progress!! I'm still playing around with it. I was only able to get two maps sort-of redone before I ran out of time. I did a NPC's home and a portion of the main town. I like the sets a lot so far. Hopefully I keep liking them despite having the pain of replacing all the old maps :)