Progress Report
Added 2024-02-02 15:05:53 +0000 UTCGreetings, everyone!
Ah, it's all starting to come together. Plenty of chapters still need to be created, but thanks to the work of this last week, I'm now seeing all the individual parts work in unison, just like I talked about in the previous progress report.
I have implemented Anna's first chapter and done an audio overhaul of Michael's. Right now, I'm replacing a couple of renders I'm unhappy with in Michael's chapter, and then I'll move on to one of the game's other chapters, most likely another one for Michael. It's the one where I introduce Sybil, and I've been itching to see her on the screen for a while.
The two implemented chapters are now fully playable and feature a rich audio tapestry consisting of both individual sound effects and an ambient layer that really heightens the illusion that these 3D environments actually exist. I wish I could demonstrate some of them for you, but there are too many spoilers, even in the sound effects. At least I can tell you now that my vision of making the game sound like it's taking place in New York has become a reality. It's hard to describe how much this elevates these scenes, so you'll just have to take my word for it for now.
The music also turned out to fit better than I had expected. One track in particular that I was uncertain would work when I listened to it on its own turned out to be amazing when placed into the game, fitting its scene perfectly. One of the background tracks that will be heard a lot in this first update is wonderful to listen to while reading the story. This is such a relief to me, for it's not always easy to know if audio will work in context, even if it sounds good in isolation.
Another thing I've been planning for a while is to add a tiny bit of movement to individual scenes, even if it's on an elementary level. I wasn't sure how to do this at first, but I dived into the technicalities and implemented a solution that works and is also super-smooth. I want to avoid a situation where taking your hands off the mouse and keyboard makes it look like you're staring at a screenshot, so many scenes will now slowly zoom or pan to liven things up. It's a small thing, a tiny little detail in the grand scheme of things, but I firmly believe that this kind of polish makes a game experience stand out among its peers. Time will tell, but at least I got this out of the way to quickly add similar movement to later scenes.
Finally, I dealt with a programming-related issue that has been looming on the horizon for a while. Like most programmers these days, I use AI tools to keep me effective. One of these tools is called GitHub Copilot and is integrated directly into Visual Studio Code, the software I use to code Supermodel. The problem I was facing was that the scripts for this game would get quite racy once we got out of the opening chapters, and since the AI is integrated into VS Code, it will upload these scripts to the server so that it can guide me properly. But porn breaks the terms of service, so I was at risk of getting banned if I kept doing things the way I did up until this week. Not only would I lose access to the AI tools if that happened, but I would risk losing access to my entire code repository on GitHub. For those not aware of what this means, let's just say that this repository contains everything I've coded for the game, versioned and packaged in such a way that I can, among other things, roll back faulty code, transition code between Supermodel and Snapshot, bring in contributors, and so on. Losing access to this would be devastating.
Worst of all, GitHub Copilot doesn't let you set things up so that certain files don't get uploaded... unless you're on a business subscription. So, this week, I bit the bullet and created an organization in the GitHub infrastructure, transferred the Supermodel repository to this organization, and subscribed to GitHub Copilot Business, assigning myself a "seat" in that organization so that I could get access to Copilot again. It took several hours to get this all set up correctly, but the end result is that I can now tell Copilot to keep its sweaty palms away from the story-related scripts in my repository, keeping me safe from breaking the ToS. Phew!
Anyway, this post is going on a bit too long. Suffice it to say I did a lot of different things this week. Now, I intend to move on to the story's next chapter, which should be fun.
Until next time!
Comments
I actually only use the panning once so far, and only because the scene is too large to fit on one screen, so it pants to another section at the appropriate point in the dialogue. I agree that needless panning won't necessarily look good, so I'm not going to use that unless I have pressing reasons. It does open up for interesting aspect ratios and ways to pose images, though, and in cases where I feel that will heighten scenes, I will use it. The zoom is more subtle and can be applied to just about anything. I won't overdo this one either, for it can work as a hint of tension or vertigo, and I don't want to imply those things in every scene of the game, after all.
2024-02-03 18:17:20 +0000 UTCI've seen "slowly zoom or pan" implemented in some games and I really liked the subtle zoom. The panning not so much but it's often used very seldom so it didn't feel overused. With Saphirweapon's suggestion and your insights I guess you won't over do it so I trust it shall be fine :)
Ricardo
2024-02-03 18:11:42 +0000 UTCThe movements are quite subtle. I had an interesting experience back when I implemented the panning background image in Snapshot, because I was feeling under the weather at the time, and the constant circular movement made me feel nauseous. I wouldn't have noticed under normal circumstances, but the nausea helped me adjust the movement to something that would feel more comfortable. A learning experience, for sure. As for the teasing, remember that I'm posting these progress reports every week. Due to the nature of this work, we can't expect the work I've done every week to be demonstrable without spoiling. Later chapters in this version will be safer to show off, so don't worry, you'll get your previews. But these opening chapters are extremely revealing (no, not sexually), so I have to be a little cautious with what I show. One thing at a time.
2024-02-02 22:12:36 +0000 UTCThanks for the detailed update on your progress ! I assume it couldnt hurt for you to spent some time on finding creative ways to visualy show us some work without spoilering things ; ) For the zoom and pan things this reminded me about times where i had fun dealing around making my own rpg maker game. But it also had the experience that even when some effects are nice at first they can get quite annoying in the long term. So it would be nice to have as many customization options in the game as possible to turn such features on and off as your liking goes. Thats also true when you check out some of the newer renpy games and certain modifications. They offer already a big variety to customize the hud in terms of color and transparecy etc. Hope we get a certain freedom in the long term (!) here aswell. Keep up the work and dont overdo the teasing unless you can deal with rioting patreons that dont wanna wait any longer ; )
Saphirweapon
2024-02-02 15:44:31 +0000 UTC
