Plans for v0.36 - Starting with Some Coding
Another update cycle down, which means it's time to get started on another! For this update I've got two major chunks of code I want to tackle, so the supporter focus poll is going to wait a bit until I've got those done. Which bits of code? Well, read on and find out!
First up, I'm going to be doing a refactor of the menu code. Right now all the button logic is split into a few different places (screens.rpy and MiraMenuOptions.rpy, mainly) and is just generally a mess of hacked-together solutions. My goal for this section is two fold: First, I want to break the button logic up so new button requirements can be added and updated easily. Second, I want to implement the whole menu as a
Creator Defined Displayable. That should dramatically improve menu performance for boring technical reasons related to how Ren'py updates screens.
Once that's done I'm going to be updating the way NPC outfits are assigned for events. Right now NPCs are always wearing their 'default' outfit when they're off screen. It's up to individual events to assign NPCs their correct outfits if they should be wearing something different. That system gets in the way of adding new outfits going forward - I have to update all of the
old events to make sure they assign the correct outfit! The new system will tie outfits to specific clickables (or functions that return outfits, so you can dynamically pick one), assigning that outfit to an NPC when they're present at the clickable and removing it when they're moved elsewhere.
I've got a pretty good mental model for all of this new code - I've been thinking about both of these changes for a while - so I expect the actual coding will go quite quickly. When the code changes are done I'll be putting out a testing build on Discord to help shake out the bugs. There won't be any player-facing changes in this build, so if you're not excited by the idea of writing bug reports you don't have to worry about missing anything.
Just because the supporter poll is going to be a few days doesn't mean you can't leave me some suggestions! Write me a comment below (or over on Discord) about what you'd like to see included in the next update cycle; I'll be sure to include my favourite options in the poll itself!