A wasted day
Had a day off work to try and wrap off the tutorial - and everything that could go wrong did almost.
Good bits
On the plus side I finally stopped myself adding extra bits to the tutorial; after all unlikely that anyone will play the tutorial anyway (which would be a mistake in my opinion but...*shrugs*) and it was getting bigger than some v.01's out there so at least that's locked down. Also a good lesson to not get carried away in chapter one of the game itself. -Far- too easy to tell yourself "oh, what if I also added...." and then get in a coding/rendering backlog. So discipline is key it seems! (Seriously, this is a big problem for me - despite having scripted things I keep getting new ideas for scenes that can happen. Alright, having ideas is fine, but why can't I have them all -before- I start coding!)
Also added (and finished!) a "TL;DR tutorial" as well. So the player can decide to either jump into the game; have a one page tutorial; or have a full tutorial. So all preferences covered there.
And that was it for good news.
Bad bits
The inventory system, after working fine for weeks - suddenly bugs out. Absolutely no idea why. I haven't changed anything so haven't a sodding clue why it should suddenly be happening. Also found out that randomly swearing at the PC screen doesn't actually solve bug problems.... I suspect I'll have to strip it out and re-add it.
To add to the woes, the simple combat system has also fallen on it's arse too :confounded:. If I'm honest it was perhaps overly complex and perhaps a bit of a stretch of my coding skills so I think it's time for that to come out and be replaced with something more simple - at least for now.
And then there was the rendering. God, Daz -is- a bitch at times. I swear it seems like the little god of rendering is out to get me. One day perfectly acceptable renders, the next..junk. I mean, I -know- I'm pushing it with only a 2GB card so I can't expect to be hitting BB or
High Rise Climb quality but it's the bloody inconsistency of it that can drive you mad.
It began with me adding "one more thing" to the tutorial. A simple little bit expanding further on how if you're in a room and there are multiple characters to talk to, how that would work. Plus it was a nice little opportunity to add a small playful scene. So did a batch of poses, set the batch rendering going and wake up this morning to:
a) My planned three hour teaser render being an overlit piece of rubbish (when an almost identical pose had been bloody perfect bar one of the girls elbows being submerged in the bed, hence the re-do)
and
b) Squiggle hair! Now I haven't changed the model. I haven't changed the hair pose and yet suddenly after scores of bloody renders, the girls now have squiggle hair. Jesus....
Thank God these two aren't in the game itself. The other characters so far haven't given me this problem.
So I've twelve renders down the drain, unless I can somehow "fudge" correcting them in Paint....
And to cap it all Croatia won the football. Arse.
