So many sounds, guys. I honestly don't know how many unique sound files most visual novels use, but I feel like I've gone overboard... so far (and I'm not finished), the audio directory has 332 individual sound files. Those are music, ambient noises, skill sounds, death sounds, transitions, Kermit falling in the grass, Lani falling in the grass, meowing, various doors opening... it's just a LOT of stuff. But now that I'm mostly finished with the actual in-code sounds, I've been working on sounds for video files. If you're in the discord, you've seen this already, but I've attached the movie for the succubus dungeon boss door, which was one of the first videos that was sound-ified. There are, of course, a ton of other videos that need sounding, and I've been getting those finished at a pretty good rate. I'm hopeful that sound will be finished and out to testing at the end of this week or the beginning of next. That's not to say the next version is almost ready, but the sound portion is pretty close.
Let's see... here's my current roadmap for the next release:- Sounds (80% finished)- Lani solo Threadbare continuation (100% finished)- Marla solo Threadbare visit (0% finished)- Lani exploration scenes for Map 2 (0% finished)- Quest System (25% finished)- Hint System (75% finished)
The Hint System is coming along really nicely, and the guts of it are more or less finished. This is intended to be a more robust method to find hidden scenes that require some very specific variables and timelines, so it knows exactly what stats are required to unlock every scene, as well as what order of scenes are required for each scene, so it can (in theory) give players much more accurate guidelines to find those elusive variant scenes.
Here's the most recent work-in-progress menu screen (it's ugly and giant right now, ignore that part):
In the example, the player has chosen to focus on the first Lani/Marla poly scene (which is locked behind variables like whether or not you've met Miri at the guild and if you have high or low affection with either/both girls. The general requirements are listed at the top (these are flags and variables, along with whether or not the player has met the requirements), and the general steps are lists at the bottom. These are more detailed than the current one-line hints. So for this scene, the player needs to meet Miri, and the required variables for that scene are listed in step 1, then the player needs to wait for Lani to discuss the curse with Marla, then the final step describes how to enter into the plant conversations (which are the location of this particular variation). As I look at it, I need to add in another step at the front that tells the player which tent(s) are required, and tells them when they've met the requirement of 'Lani has snuck into tent' in the actual steps list. And therein is the real benefit of this new hint system: It's something that can be expanded or altered if players find that certain hints are inaccurate or ambiguous. I fully expect that some of the variable flags may be not entirely accurate... for example, if the requirement is having affection over 150, but not being in a relationship, then the affection should read something different... perhaps 'affection between 150 and 250' to keep the automatic relationship from happening before the desired scene. I'll be relying on testers and players to root out those problems, because finding all of the individual issues would simply take me forever to do alone.
And the real beauty of this (for me) is that it was built from the ground up to tie directly into the Quest System. Each of these hint trees is intended to be something that players can simply select to create their own quest (added into the Quest Menu). The requirements will be ticked off, and the player can open the Quest Menu at any time to see their progress on any of the scenes that they've created as quests. I've mentioned it before, but the Quest System is the underlying bones of the Academy... classes will be modified quests in the same way the hints are being built. Of course, Guild and Temple quests will be the same, but I'm most looking forward to early game quests. Those will be populated to give the player direction in the early game, and to provide rewards to hopefully push new players to embrace our Death-First Lifestyle.
(As the player base expands, I'm finding that a not insignificant number of people are not really organically finding the methods to expand the story and are sort of stuck on a life two loop of not getting anywhere. Hopefully this will fix that problem.)
And I think that's the majority of my news. I'm really happy with the progress that's been made so far, and I think that all of you will find the sounds fun and unobtrusive... personally, I'm not a huge fan of incredibly annoying sound effects getting in the way of my fun, so I've really tried to keep things to the holy trinity (necessary/funny/ambience). There is... that little bit... where the 'chance is a cock' sound plays... and playing through it even annoys me... but it's supposed to be annoying... and I really don't know how to deal with that bit. We'll see.
Cheers!