Happy Spooktober and hello!

We're back to the beginning of the month and that means it's morbin time!
I mean it's devlog time!

The main work that happened in the last two weeks is work on the dialogue imaging system.

For everyone who missed it in the last few posts, that system is supposed to streamline the image process for dialogues in-game.

Until now, every image in-game was uniquely created for the specific situation where they are used in. Even events where two people just exchange a few sentences, the amount of images can go up to over 30 images or even more. That is because I need to have different images for when a person is talking and when they are not, then I need a few variations on the body position, and then all the variants for the different uniforms for the different levels. Even when the chat spans one word each, that's 2 images for the talking and up to 10 uniform variants. That makes 20 images minimum. The rendering of the uniform variants is no problem time- and workwise for me, since I have a pretty much optimized workflow for creating these, but those are still 20 images and at 1MB each that is 20MB. And that is for the third smallest event possible.

So I decided to create a dialogue imaging system. The concept isn't new. It's actually rather common, but since I have or want to create a more dynamic system than one Ren'Py supplies. And that makes a bit more work.

That is what I worked on the last two weeks. I now have a rather capable first version, that give large amounts of freedom on animation and usage. Here is an example for my Test event where I tested the currently implemented system:

Here different actions are tested. Repositioning of the characters. Changing the image. Rotation and multiple of those at the same time.

Here is what the code for that looks like:

Pretty simple, isn't it?

But work isn't finished yet. As said it's the first iteration. An important part is still missing. That system currently isn't able to layer images. It only displays single images per object. The object being the character in this case. So the system works with different objects, but not multiple images per object. Layering is important, because I want to be able to separate the face from the body. So I have an image layer for the face, to display different states and moods, and then another layer for the body, to switch outfits and poses. So that's the planned work for the next two weeks until the next devlog!

That's all for today! If you have questions, feedback or suggestions to the system or to anything. ASK! I mean really, ask, tell me, I love reading your ideas, comments or feedback!

Also join me and other cool people on Discord!

Bye!