Ren'Py Under Your Spell [Development Thread] (Magic School Dating Simulator)

[Shady Character 1]

Okay, I think I will try to return to weekly Friday updates.
We got a lot of feedback in this past almost week. Most of it were issues that we were already aware or ready for, like "too little content", "where are the boobs?", etc. But we also had a lot of got bugs caught, and a lot of ideas how to improve things or in what direction we should move first.

So there already some changes that we did. (None of them included boobs though. Those will have to wait for now):
-Stat losses were a bit too punishing in the early game, so those got scaled bit a bit.
-The exam descriptions were expanded to give clearer picture of how you did and why. These are still placeholder events and will be expanded even more later.
-The first encounter with each girl is now guaranteed once you have enough stats for that (you still need to to the correct activity)
-New random event have been added to the "Rest" activity, which will bring a bit more value to the activity, as well as adding more flavor to each of the houses.
-The work continues on the Trial of Mind, which was actually a bit broken before, but is fixed now (about 80% done).

I guess that's it for this week, aside for the continuous work on the art. See you next Friday.​

 

[Shady Character 1]

Wow, this week flew by fast!
Unlike the previous one, I don't have much to report. Aside for almost finishing the first Trial. Only 1 door out of 19 and the event aftermath remain to be finished.
- Most of this week was spent in planning new events, looking for bugs, typos, translation and setting up pages on other websites.
- I also started working on two new girls' plotlines (Elizabeth and Ciara), those will not be added for some time though, because they still need their sprites to be done by the artist first. As well as me wanting to each girl having the same number of events when added (which is currently 3.)
- On the art side, a couple new sprites have been finished along with some progress of the BGs and in-game artworks. Hopefully those will be completed and added into the game soon.
​

 

[Shady Character 1]

And another weekly update is here. To be honest, I and acquired an new sense of appreciation for other game devs, who make games open to the public, because it is really hard to not feel you rhythm broken by players' feedback be it good or bad.
That being said, we are trying to pace ourselves going forward.

On the coding and writing side:

Most of our attention that isn't spent on planning the game events is currently focused on implementing the shop and part-time job mechanics. These two mechanics will allow you to buy items that will help you train your stats. Later the store will also be one of the places that allow you to gain access to utility spells, that will need to be learned and trained during "Practice Spells" activity, and will give you additional ways to resolve some events.

Since these three mechanics are interwoven, it takes a lot of time to plan and implement them. But you will hear and see more of them in the upcoming updates.
I will not burden you with how they look right now.

One the art side:

A sprite for Elizabeth Lewis, the prefect of Dunagall House and one of the main girls is almost complete and will be soon added to the game.

We are also continuing the work on placeholder backgrounds, so that the game will not feel so empty. As well as the introductory artworks for the 8 main girls. Artworks, as all good things, take a lot of time so the progress is pretty slow on this front.
​