Post Holiday Check-in!

Happy new years everyone! While the holiday rush of social obligations has been keeping me busy I've been able to squeeze in some work on AVFH. The biggest chunk of new work was focused on updating many of the UI elements throughout the game. The old icons for Stress, Arousal, and so on are ancient at this point and due for some improvement. So, let's take a look!

By their powers combined, I hope these UI elements are a little more attractive and clear than their old versions. These new icons have been drawn at a 512x512 resolution and then exported to their in-game resolution of 64x64. The old icons were natively 64x64 (or smaller!), which made it functionally impossible to scale them up or down without ugly scaling artifacts.

The Control icon has received a full redesign, changing from a pair of handcuffs (Did you know they were supposed to be handcuffs?) to a hand bell. For all of the icons I'm still tweaking the designs, line thickness, and colours, so leave a comment and let me know what your thoughts are!

I also did some experimentation on the code side of things. I've found that adding animated UI elements is reasonably straightforward. That would let me have, for example, an arousal flame that flickers over time, a control bell that jingles left and right, and so on. I didn't pursue that any further than a proof of concept because of the time it would take to create good looking animations, but it's something I'd like to revisit in the future!

Lastly, I spent a good chunk of time adding shadows to all of the NPC bedroom items that needed them. That mainly meant their beds and desks, and just that minor change has helped make the rooms feel less floaty. All of those clickable objects will have to get a proper art pass in the future, but for now at least it's better than it was!

That's all I've got to share for now, I'll be back with some more updates soon!