v0.37 Preview - Throwing Shade!

(Hehehe, I'm so punny)

Hey crew, it's been a little while so I thought I'd give you a progress update on v0.37 of A Very Full House!

For the last couple of weeks I've been bouncing between a bunch of different sections of AVFH, tidying up things here and there but (in retrospect) not achieving much. I reflected on that for a bit, and decided that was a symptom of there being so many "good enough" placeholder pieces of content. Any time I started to work on something I'd run into something else that wasn't quite finished, meaning my new content would need to be updated or rewritten in the near future - a thought that really puts a damper on productivity!

I decided to tackle that "oops all placeholder" feedback loop by working on something that was absolutely going to be in the final game: better location art! I started with MCILF's bedroom, since that's a location you see for a bunch of the game. As a reminder, here's what that location looks like in v0.36.6:
What an awkward mix of different unfinished assets! Bleh!

The first thing that jumped out at me was the lack of shadows for. The sewing table was the biggest offender; without any shadows on the wall or floor it looked very disconnected, almost as if it was floating or drawn in a different perspective. Casting shadows onto other objects needed an update to how room objects were drawn, as well extra shadow assets for each object. This was exactly the sort of catch-22 that was holding me up!

I pressed on, updating the clickable code to have optional shadow images (coding always takes less time than I expect) and adding shadows for each object where they should be casting them (drawing always takes more time than I expect!). With that side project actually finished I was able to go back and update all of the clickable art in the room, bringing the whole thing up to a more uniform standard that looks significantly better! Of course I'm going to be biased, so I'll let you be the judge:
Look at that subtle off-white ceiling color. The tasteful vignette of it.
Now that the room art is more put together I can start working on new content in the bedroom without worrying I'll have to redo it in a month or two. It also means I now have a shadow system which I can expand to all of the art for other locations! That's going to be my next focus: updating all of the house art to give it a more consistent quality.

Last up for today, I forgot to post an update here with my latest bit of practice art: Madison's PR campaign! You can leave a like and retweet over on Twitter if you want to encourage me to do more, or just enjoy her big bubble butt right here:
The jewel was very fun to draw with all the different semi-transparent layers to get the depth right!

That's all for today! I'll keep you posted on v0.37 progress as I chug along!