Progress Report

It's been one week since the release of version 0.42 of Long Live the Princess, and I have not been resting on my laurels. Let's get into what I've been doing and what I have planned, shall we?

Long Live the Princess

In case you missed it, the next version of LLtP will be version 1.0.0, and it will finally wrap up this game, making it a complete experience at long last. Here is what I have planned for version 1.0.0:

• Any remaining sex scenes that are poorly lit and/or animated will be updated with improved lighting and more frames of animation so that all the game's animations are at a similar level of quality. 8 scenes like this need updating, plus potentially the smaller Thaddeus scenes.
• The Fairy Queen prophecy will be changed and the puzzle modified. This puzzle has a decent core but a problematic implementation that makes it frustrating to solve. I want to rework the prophecy so that the solution makes more sense and feels more logical.
• A long list of achievements for people to hunt down. Some of these will be incredibly obscure and require you to discover rarely seen parts of the game.
• I will play through the game from beginning to end while making adjustments. This might include updating art that looks outdated or wrong, fixing missing or incorrect scene transitions, adjusting ability requirements (including potentially adding more ability checks), tweaking music placement, and so on. I want to ensure that the game has a consistent feel.
• All known bugs will be fixed.

This week, I updated one of the abovementioned sex scenes, namely Primrose's missionary position. It looks a lot better now. That's 132 new images just for that one scene!

Supermodel

Much of this week was spent working on Supermodel. I have come to the realization that the Supermodel card game prototype is at a much more advanced stage than I had expected, which means that I'm closer to being able to release it than I had previously thought. As such, my current efforts are focused on getting the prototype ready and polished.

I aim to get the prototype out there as soon as possible after LLtP 1.0.0, followed by the first actual Supermodel release sometime after that.

This week, I added card animations and brief pauses. Previously, ending your turn meant that a million things happened simultaneously with cards teleporting between decks, making it impossible to realize what was happening. Now, these things happen one at a time, but so quickly that it doesn't get annoying. I'm talking a fraction of a second here. For example, whenever you were dealt cards from the deck before, they would all instantly fly to your hand. Now, each card moves smoothly (and swiftly) from the deck to your hand, one after another. It gives the whole experience a much-improved feeling of professionality and makes it way more satisfying to play. 

Additionally, I added an in-game help system that you can bring up by double-clicking (or double-tapping) any card. The cards are relatively small during regular gameplay, so they can all fit on your screen. Double-clicking them brings up a magnified, high-quality version of the card (again with smooth animations and transitions) alongside a detailed rules breakdown of everything you see on the card. Ever get confused about what the text or numbers on a card mean or how the card is meant to be played? Just double-click the card and receive all the answers you need. This is one of many small things meant to make it as easy and smooth as possible for a new player to get into the game. 

And that's it for this week. I've accomplished a lot, and I can't wait to dive back into things to accomplish even more. Wrapping up the old game and starting a new one is doing wonders for my motivation.

Until next time!