Redefining Management

How do we redefine management?

With a new definition.

Hello everyone, I've got a relatively quick post for you with the results of the Avatar poll, and some notes on where we're going over the next few months. There's plenty of fun things in store, and I can't wait to get going on expanding Appletree's story!

In more mundane news, today I added another 70,000 words to the game in the form of the Gene Therapy story, along with some official Institute documentation and a few clues. I also completely redid the game's text scaling. Now text is consistently sized regardless of font, and the font-size option in the system menu applies much more uniformly to game text.

It seems that the desire to see one's character really overrides most people's concerns about the derpiness of the avatar. Most of the comments I've received however have proclaimed the dislike of that Dynamic Avatar drawing. I have to admit, that I don't really care for it myself... but I'm going to see if I can't make a few minor tweaks that will improve the way it looks. Honestly, I'd rather just draw some bodies myself with simple anime-style shading than use this thing as it is... but drawing everything would take more time. Probably not much if we're just talking breast size, hips, waist, and ass... but that falls a bit short of the level of variable representation I think people are looking for...

So I'm going to work on the avatar system, but I'm going to do it primarily in extra time, possibly with a little help from good ole' Besty. It's not something that will be in the game for version 0.18... but it should be in by version 0.2. 

What's Next

Really, the major pieces standing in the way of our complete framework is the dating and relationship framework, and that'll be the main focus of our attention over the coming months. Version 0.20 should mark the end of the framework phase, and we'll be digging into the content. It probably won't be an easy transition for me, to be honest, though I'm excited about it. I've spent so long mostly coding, I know it'll take me a little bit to get used to mostly writing. It's a nice problem to have though! It's like spending ages preparing for an epic TRPG campaign. The story and experience is what you're passionate about, but you've been working on the maps, notes, dungeon traps, and the thousand other things you need to actually play. Those things can be fun on their own, but now it's time to get the session going.

While I transition over to writing, Besty will continue to flesh out some of the open areas, and we should get a solid stream of new content coming. It'll be even better if we start getting some fun submissions in the future too. 

I have to say I'm quite happy with how quick it is to add content and places. Jobs, schools, stores, and more can be added quite easily, the most work going into the requisite writing. Writing itself is quite quick to convert from simple writing to twee ready for the game. That's the objective I've been working toward, so it's really nice to see it working!

For example, we added a sex shop in the adult district (actually, Besty did shortly after v0.17 came out). The part that took the longest was arranging the art assets. (The sex toy system is slated for later in development, so this is mostly for sex furniture type stuff.)

Thanks everyone for your support along the way! I know that the choice to dedicate most of my effort in development to framework first wasn't always the most popular choice, but it's nearly time to start showing everyone why it was worth it! :D

And a quick reminder...

I didn't mention it before, but I'll be updating the contest description. The writing does not have to be in twee. Using [brackets] (color coding is awesome too) to explain what you want is plenty sufficient. You don't need to code... just write :D