Update Progress: UI work!

Hey everyone! these last few days I've been diving into the wonderful world of UI design, working on improving the interface experience in A Very Full House. Today I thought I'd share with you some of that work, along with my thought process and what I'm hoping to achieve here.

So, let's jump right into it! A huge chunk of AVFH involves clicking through menus, and that means how those menus feel is an important part of how the entire experience feels. Right now menu buttons are all boring grey rectangles with some text (and some requirement glyphs for things like Arousal, Corruption, etc.). That's functional, but not exactly inspiring. My first step was redesigning the actual button art.

Here's a new basic button. The transparent background makes sure any interesting art behind it can still be seen, and the outlined white text guarantees contrast on any background so it's easy to read. Hovering over the button highlights it, while a disabled button is both darkened, desaturated, and blurred. Overall, it feels pretty similar to the current system, but a little sharper.

My goal is to use these buttons to deliver more information to the player than the old versions could do with just text. To do that menu options can have "accents" given to them, which attaches some extra art to the button. Here's what a button with the "arousal" accent looks like:

I'm currently planning to have accents for: arousal, control, chores, and money. That should help players find which options complete chores, which ones you can expect to generate arousal, which ones generate control, and so on. It also means I don't have to be as explicit with some mechanics. Eg. instead of "*Tease him*" I can use something more interesting like "*Pay extra close attention to him*" and be confident that the player is still getting the same information. All of these accents will be mutually exclusive and located on the right side of the button.

On the left side of the button I'll be putting accents for mechanical effects the button will have. Right now I'm planning for that to be: change location, time advances, and day advances. Here's an example for what that will look like:

A button can have left and right accents at the same time, which I expect to come up a fair bit of the time.

There's one more element that I'm going to be taking advantage for the button art: the colour ring. The previous examples have the default grey ring, which I'll be using for most actions. For actions that lead to a corruption tag you haven't yet collected, the colour ring will be set to gold instead.

It's a subtle effect, but it should make it a lot clearer when an option leads to some type of interesting game progression. I'm also planning to use the ring to show menu options that have been selected before, perhaps with a duller grey, but I haven't implemented that functionality yet.

All of that - plus work on the text bubbles, which I'll talk about another time - leads us to this before/after comparison:

All of this UI stuff is subject to change - I've made everything as modular as possible so it's easy to change and update elements in the future. I expect I'll be tweaking things for a while until we've dialed into an optimal set of aesthetic and functional art!

Now this post has gone on long enough, and I still have some aspect art to work on, so I'll wrap this up. I'll be back in a few days with some accessory art, and maybe some polls to have you vote on what else my supporters would like to see added!

Hey everyone! I've got the grand finale for the MCILF"s Twitter ad series to share with you all, along with some updates about A Very Full House progress!

What's that? Oh, you want the boring update details first? Alright, I guess I can put the porn at the end if that's what you want.

Work on v0.29 of AVFH has been going well. After a month of being super busy, things have calmed down a little. That means I've finally been able to get a good chunk of writing, drawing, and coding done! Most of my work has been focused on the Cheerleader and her new underwear unlocks. Like the "cutdown" stage, the "minified" version is unlocked in two halves: her bra and her panties. I'm adding a few extra places where her underwear can be damaged to make sure it's not locked behind progression with a single NPC (who you might not fancy), and to make it easier to find naturally, rather than needing a guide.

I'm also going back and editing/expanding some events that have the Cheerleader interacting with other NPCs. In particular, I'm adding branches that use the "Tease your brothers" chore that you can assign to her. I think seeing "Needs: Teasing her brothers" next to an unlocked option is a lot more rewarding than the game just launching into that branch automatically.

Alright, you've been nice and patient, so here's the finale for the MCILF's big Twitter ad campaign! I had a ton of fun drawing this series of images, it was great practice, and it drove a bunch of engagement! That means you can expect to see some of the other AVFH girls show up in the future - but not until after I'm finished getting v0.29 done. As usual, you can expect to see a version of this art added as a phone background in the next update as well.

Oh, and if it hits 50 retweets I may have promised to add one final drawing of a prego MCILF. The highest the other posts have reached before is 41, so it's probably fine. Right? (Want to make sure it's not fine? Go leave a retweet!).

v0.28 Release Time!

Already puffing what I'm passing? Here are the links!
PC
Mac
Android
EDIT: Updated the links above to v0.28.2, fixing a progress bug with the Cheerleader's uniform quest.

Major Update Features

Changelog

Still here? Alright, here's an outfit teaser!

Hey everyone - it's my first SubscribeStar only post! Woo! I've got a quick v0.28 progress update for you. As a reminder, this update is going to be a small one focused on adding content for the Cheerleader, and swapping over all of my admin stuff.

The last few days I've been busy handling the switch over between Patreon and SubscribeStar. I've updated all of the site references in AVFH to point here, and I'm busy working on Cheer's new content now. I had hoped to have the mini update (and F95) soon, but the admin work for the platform change took more time and energy than I was expecting. The next few days are busy with some IRL stuff for me - this disruption really landed at an unfortunate time - so I'm going to aim for the end of the weekend/start of next week to have the v0.28 mini update ready to go.

As a teaser (and because it didn't actually post last time I tried this), here's an out of context look at some new art that's coming in v0.28! Have fun guessing what it is!