[Divine Suite] Bi-Weekly Check In (26)
A bit less done this check in than I had hoped as several things came up within my personal life that I had to attend to but, there are some cool things that I've been working on!
Continuing where last check in left off, I am currently in the process of playing through the game and fixing any missing assets or errors as they come up. This time my main focus was on revising the recruit menu which I will touch more on.
Without further ado - here is this week's check in!
Goals/Deadlines
Completed Since Last Check In:
Elurra Concept Art - Polish
Like last time: I have more concept art polished off! As the concept art is not used in game, in order to keep the game progressing and still get concept art done, I'll be trying to get 1 concept a week done.
Trait Icons - Complete
I mentioned last time that I had completed 1/2 of the trait icons well they are now completely done! With this everything except for audio design leading up to a game/save start is complete.
Map Revisions/Rework
The Map reworks are officially done.
In the old system, the 'regions' were cities. With 7 of them scattered throughout the map (their assets still visible because I think it looks nice) there was a lot of dead space throughout. Additionally, the old map did not lend itself well to the revised event system.
So, things needed to change. First, as part of the downscaling, the 7 cities became 5. Then the cities were replaced with regions. Splitting the map into 5 distinct parts gave me more room to work with when creating events and other visual assets. One such change was how employees looked when assigned to a region.
Before, employees displayed in a row underneath the city in a makeshift character bank. Now the character spread out through the region in 4 clusters making far better use of the space and looking just a bit nice and more in theme.
Event Rework
The event rework was a big one. One of the things I always didn't like was the old event system. The only reason it lasted to long is because I couldn't figure out how to change it or the potential changes would've required work on multiple systems which I didn't want to do.
Eventually, I bit the bullet and I'm glad I did. While I did have to rework the map the new event system looks and feels a whole lot better.
The old event system would queue up events throughout the day when certain conditions were met. Then at the end of the day, it would play straight through them before bringing you to the next day.
The new event system look a lot like the pins from Isana's Snapshot. For those who didn't see it, it looks similar to the character pin in the image above. Now, throughout the day, events will still queue but where as before they played automatically at the end of the day, regardless if you wanted them to, now they show up throughout the map as pins.
Clicking on these pins start the event which can range from H-scenes, random events such as finding cash on the floor, negative events, or even minigames. This system looks a lot better and doesn't forcibly pull you from the game into a cutscene.
Shibari Enemy Design
I've also completed another enemy design. This enemy will be joining the previous enemies in Eros - the second of the 5 regions - as the cover girl for rival brothels.
I will go into more detail about all the different regions closer to release but what I can say is that there will be 5 regions in the final game and 2 in early playtesting and in the Demo.
Work in Progress/Upcoming:
Recruit Menu Revisions
When the UI Overhaul was taking place, the recruit menu was the only menu to go completely untouched. At the time I thought it looked good but the end result was that It kind of felt out of place. Of all the UI it was the only menu that took place in a different room/screen.
When it was created, this was fine as it was more common for UI to look completely different. The UI Overhaul however changed most of the UI to look similar and maintain consistent visual elements. Additionally, the new UI were all changed to feel more 'in world' such as the character menu that changed to resumes.
To keep in line with this setup I decided to revise the Recruitment menu.
Below you can see the old one with Delphi and what the new one looks like with Daisy.
These changes are mostly done. One of the key changes however is not. In the old you may notice the hearts. These hearts represent lives. If you lowball an employee too much they will get mad. When this happens you lose a life. Once all are gone, negotiations break down and the employee won't talk to you for the rest of the day. They will also be harder on you during the next negotiation.
These lives have been changed to impact the paper itself. While it isn't done, the new version will slightly burn the paper every time you lose a life until eventually it burns away completely.
While working on this, I also came to the realization that the recruitment illustrations are a bit rough around the edges so in time I will go back over those as well.
More Enemy Art
More enemies to come. Unsure of how many I will end up designing but if you have a design you would like to see, drop it in the discord and I may just add it!
Random Assets
For the most part the assets that need to be done are fairly random, an icon here, a concept there. As such most things up on the chopping block are fairly random.
More Polished Concept Art
Even more concept art coming, including some concept art of the characters from the Game Jam I participated in a while back.
All characters will also have an alt concept art available to paid supporters~
Future Info:
- Early Access Playtesting
- Beta playtesting
- Pre-Demo playtesting
- Pre-Release/Post-Demo playtesting
- Second character raffle: post demo release