Jan 9, 2018
49
223







Hey guys, coming into the home stretch here. I've got almost all the art done for the next build, and almost all the coding I intend to do, all that's left is the handjob and blowjob animations, which hopefully won't take forever to work out. That leads into the topic of today's post, Renpy's ATL animation system.

I kind of hate this system. It's a real pain in the ass to work with. You can't really see the results of what you're doing without reloading the game, so a lot of the process is trial and error of "did this number change alter the animation how I wanted? Reload, wait ten seconds or so, see. . . no, ok, how about this change? . . over and over. :D

I'll start with the easy stuff though. "anchor (x,y)" defines where the "hook" for the image is. This defaults to the top left corner of an image, and all movement of the image is relative to this point. This means that by default, if you just drop an object into the world, its top left corner will be at the top left of the stage. You can move this anchor point, either by using pixel numbers, "anchor (120,160)", or decimals to place it relative to the image, so "anchor (.5,.3)" will place the anchor halfway across and 1/3 of the way down the image. One good use for moving the anchor is that you can set the anchor on an image slightly above the bottom of it, and then whenever you place the image along the bottom of the stage, it will automatically leave that margin off the bottom.

"pos (x,y), xpos #, and ypos #" are used to move the image around, relative to that anchor point. Like with anchor, you can use pixel placement, or relative placement, depending on the result you're trying to achieve. I almost always use pixel values for animations. One thing to keep in mind is that if you're using pos to define where an image is on the stage, then the pos values will be relative to the top left of the stage, so pos (300,500) will be 300 right and 500 down from the top. This can get a little confusing in that raising the y value makes the object move down the screen.

It's also important to consider that when you layer images, like I often do in my animations, the pos values you use may instead be relative to their position within the new image, rather than relative to the stage. For example, if the main image you're laying down is at location (500,500) relative to the stage, and then an image contained inside that larger image (which we'll get into later) has a pos value of (100,100), then that value will be relative to the anchor point of the larger image, not relative to the stage. That means that it will end up at the position (100,100) pixels away from the anchor of the image, or (600,600) relative to the stage.

"align" can be useful for simple things, like UI, but is a bad fit for actual animation. What it does is combine both anchor and pos, which is good for centering things, for, say, locking a UI element to a particular place on the stage, but I find that any time you aren't centering something, the results are too unpredictable. Better to just fix an anchor and then use pos to move around it.

"offset (x,y), xoffset #, and yoffset #" can be a bit tricky as well. Like pos, they move the image around, but they actually move the image relative to its own anchor point. basically if you do xoffset 50, and its anchor point is (.5,.5), then it will move the image 50 pixels to the right. Functionally, this doesn't mean much more than pos, but in practice you can do some tricks with it. For example, this allows you to choose to establish either pos or offset as a fixed state, and then use the other one to move around that point. In some image layering techniques, the pos or offset values might end up "locked" to a higher layer of the image, so that even if you try to change the smaller part's pos values, it refuses to move. In these cases, adjusting the offset instead can allow it to move. It's basically like having two different options to achieve similar results, so it's important to keep them both in mind.

Those are just some basic elements, and I'll get into some more stuff in the next update. The actual game release should also come relatively soon, maybe next week, or even late in this one if testing runs smoothly.

Oh, and if you were wondering about that post last week, it was just a preview of some of the art from the next build, I wanted to get a little feedback on it and also send a little extra reward toward the $3+ patrons, which I really don't do as much as I should. If you haven't seen it, don't worry, you'll get it in the game soon enough.
 

Aurelius

Member
Feb 4, 2017
228
513
Does he not realize his code is kind of...shit? Like some coding assistance would almost certainly make the product better, more than a background artist or a writer at this point. Especially considering every build comes with 10 bug fix patches.
 

texxy

Member
Aug 19, 2017
196
254
Does he not realize his code is kind of...shit? Like some coding assistance would almost certainly make the product better, more than a background artist or a writer at this point. Especially considering every build comes with 10 bug fix patches.
Hired help = Less money.
 
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Shiny Milotic

Newbie
Sep 4, 2016
82
151
Ok, so for Oni standards, "coming into the home stretch" usually means, what... 2 months?
I really like this game, and hell I get it for free, I have no right to complain. But wow, aren't his patrons mad?
 
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Punkreas

Active Member
Aug 11, 2017
752
1,013
Anyone got a save at least after unlock Emma and Kitty ? I don't want to do everything for the fifth time lol
 

rickpool98

Active Member
Dec 11, 2017
937
778
Does he not realize his code is kind of...shit? Like some coding assistance would almost certainly make the product better, more than a background artist or a writer at this point. Especially considering every build comes with 10 bug fix patches.
yeah plus the fact that hes willing to work and learn to be better at coding his game is something.
 

LOGhetto

Active Member
Nov 8, 2017
524
1,347
Ok, so for Oni standards, "coming into the home stretch" usually means, what... 2 months?
I really like this game, and hell I get it from free, I have no right to complain. But wow, aren't his patrons mad?
As someone who does Patron him, tbh I often ask myself why. I do expect better quite a bit. I like what he's doing. I know he puts up with a lot of stupid shit. But, I don't buy it for a second with how much he's raising that nobody wants a piece, and are not available to help push more content out and improve coding. I don't think he's actually looking. That's why he's like "Hey guys just send people my way." Like you've been saying this for months, how have you not found a single person yourself? Imo the more money I raise for a game, the more I'd be aiming to try and go even beyond what I was already capable of doing before I was making that much to begin with.
 
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Ghostly Hale

Active Member
Jan 26, 2018
862
781
As someone who does Patron him, tbh I often ask myself why. I do expect better quite a bit. I like what he's doing. I know he puts up with a lot of stupid shit. But, I don't buy it for a second with how much he's raising that nobody wants a piece, and are not available to help push more content out and improve coding. I don't think he's actually looking. That's why he's like "Hey guys just send people my way." Like you've been saying this for months, how have you not found a single person yourself? Imo the more money I raise for a game, the more I'd be aiming to try and go even beyond what I was already capable of doing before I was making that much to begin with.
Maybe try conventing SirenDomain for help with coding. You know the maker of Town of Passion and Zombie's Retreat. But then again Siren may be too busy.
 

Aurelius

Member
Feb 4, 2017
228
513
All seriousness. The game's good. Could the code be better. Yeah. Is anyone else trying to actively learn to code to help him. Well...
Yeah people have asked to help him code before and were turned away. I understand it is a learning experience for him and he wants to see what he can do, but as much as I love the game he could definitely benefit from taking some help and delegating more than he is. If it were more polished and if he would focus on one character at a time before adding in more than this would be a much more consistent and (probably) profitable game.
 

Wladdevon

Newbie
Sep 15, 2017
24
20
If it were more polished and if he would focus on one character at a time before adding in more than this would be a much more consistent and (probably) profitable game.
hiring more people to make the game better won't necessarily make the game more profitable, he might even make less money as someone pointed out earlier, no matter how good the game is or even if he releases more versions more frequently
 

Aurelius

Member
Feb 4, 2017
228
513
hiring more people to make the game better won't necessarily make the game more profitable, he might even make less money as someone pointed out earlier, no matter how good the game is or even if he releases more versions more frequently
Of course lol, I just feel as though he misplaces resources and help basically.
 
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