Hard at Work

Hello awesome people!

I did the last update a little early last week for Valentine's day, so I thought I'd go ahead and check in early this week too. Mostly, we've been busy down in the code mines. Besty has finished up the scheduling system update, and I have been busy working on the NPC dating system. A whole lot of things come together for dates, so I've just been taking it step-by-step.

Right now there isn't a lot to actually show you, as it's still mostly code at this point. The above image is a look at the "date spot selector". Of course, the player can just let the NPC select the next location on their date. But there are situations where the player may want to be the one to choose the destination. NPCs will be happier if you choose a location that they like, rather than simply choosing themselves. This should come into play slightly more if wooing a female/futa NPC, but it applies to males as well.

Date spots themselves are expansible and eventually will have their own mod interface to allow adding custom date locations. They're also broken into a few simple categories to make them easier to find (and also to prevent going to eat multiple times in one date).

In other news, I added SASS into our build process on Sunday. I've been annoyed at some of the limitations of our present CSS setup. Somehow, on my one day off I ended up adding that in, and doing some minor conversions. The hope is that it will make it much easier to maintain and unify the game's CSS, as well as making it easier to support a wider array of screen formats, and better user customization.

And, elephant in the room, I'm aware that some aspects of AW's UI are not great. UI isn't my strong suit, so I've been learning along the way. I'd like to think that some of the more recent work like the wardrobe menu, and the settings/character/social menus are pretty decent... but I also know that there's a lot of clash between mismatched styles, particularly when it comes to older UI elements. 

Fortunately, Besty used to do work as a graphic designer, so I think we'll be able to improve things a lot. It's important to note though, that the UI isn't a high priority for us right now. The UI is functional, and that means that time is better spent on content over the next several months. 

Talking about UI does remind me of something else I worked on in my 'off' time. Customizable menu buttons, to allow you to choose menu shortcuts to add to the phone UI. Basically, It lets the player create shortcuts to different submenus, instead of needing to open a menu and then click over to the submenu. 

Anyway, this is already way longer than I expected, so I'm going to get back to the code mines!

o7

ThaumX