Hello again, good morning! It's Saturday update time!
I think I had a pretty good week, although I didn't get very many sprites done. Instead, I was working on new background placeholders and lots of coding to get the night section working.
I originally had a simple choice menu for what to do at night, but I ended up needing to add more than 5 choices, and I wanted it to feel more immersive. So, I've set up another 'mouse search' type screen, like YKMET:Strade had at night.
It was certainly easier and took less time than making it the first time, since I was able to copy a lot of the code I wrote for Strade, but it's still a little time consuming to set up due to making the placeholders, positioning them properly in code, and connecting all the script sections to the right buttons.
[ Don't worry about the bright white placeholder buttons, they're just like that so I can easily see them in these early phases LMAO the finished versions will blend in like Strade's game. ]
I'm also really glad I took the time to draw a floor plan for lawrence's apartment a while ago, because it made it so much easier to draw the placholder backgrounds.
[ This is old, but pasting it in again for people's reference ]
I think I'm actually starting to really get the hang of drawing an interior room freehand with no guides! That's something that always froze me up, even as recently as YKMET:Strade. I managed to avoid using a 3D mockup for his basement, but I still used photoshop's vanishing point grid system.
[ for demonstration: the light blue grid you see here under the sketch ]
Using those systems lets me make a pretty realistic background, which is alright for Strade's game, but for Lawrence I really want things to feel more... off. I'm going to try and freehand everything indoors to deliberately get some errors in there and make things hopefully feel a bit more dreamy [ or maybe drugged? LMAO ]
I'm really quite happy with the bathroom placeholder! It's a bit of a different setup to show how small the room is. [ Had to rearrange the layout compared to the floor plan I made before though, to make the image work better ]
Anyways, I'm sure you guys want to at least see SOME Lawrence in this update so here's some art with his hair down for night:
In other news:
there is something wrong with my drawing arm :/ I'm not super sure since it doesn't feel like my typical RSI soreness. It's more like random stabs of nerve pain? But do not worry, I'll be resting it all weekend and I will keep an eye on the issue. I think maybe I slept on it weird or maybe pushed it too hard during yoga.
I took some time to switch off chrome/google to duckduckgo to get away from mandatory AI. My personal opinion on duckduckgo so far is that it runs well and obviously prioritizes privacy, it's nice to be able to opt out of all AI, but it is missing some bells and whistles I'm used to. Not being able to install extensions is a real pain. Might try firefox sometime for a middle ground. I dunno.
Last weekend I worked on my personal Zelda fanart project and gave the trio some outfits:
[ Thank you everyone who helped me brainstorm in the stream, I like the new composition better and the archery knowledge was very helpful! I didn't realize it but the new composition has them matching positions with the triforce segments I assigned them now! ]
I probably wont be working on that this weekend though because I purchased and downloaded paralives and I'd like to try it out. It seems like it could already be better for creating 3D mockups of interiors if I ever need that for projects again. Plus it just looks fun LMAO
WILLOW ZONE!
I think that's everything! Long update, sheesh!
Thank you so much everyone for your support and kindness! Stay cool, stay safe, and see you next week!