3rd milestone today

ok today is the 3rd milestone.
so what have i done?
it might seem that our build this time round is not much different from the last milestone on the surface, but that's not the case. i did a major overhaul on the codes structure, taking apart gib's and then restructuring them.
the thing about both of us is, gib is good at figuring out new stuff, he's able to start quickly on a new platform and show u something on the screen. while i will do the garbage cleaning and give u a pretty structure. i probably won't have new things on the screen for u in the first few weeks.
anyway,
what happens is previously, everything was defined per location.
so we had location1_screwdriver, location1_newspaper something like that.. which meant that this screwdriver and newspaper, were just used in location1. and because that's the variable name of that item now, if i need a newspaper in chapter 5 say location x, i have to declare a new one. because the codes have to somehow be able to create a new string with the current location id to refer to this variable.

so xp changed that (because we also got the reminder that we prob need another script-writer which might not be a programmer). now the items are just id-ed with a unique number, and its name in the string table which the script will get thru the id. Then i have a script called Scene, which holds the id of everything i need, location, character, dialogues etc, and the codes will composite them. in this way, a non programmer can refer to our list of items, and just write new scripts for new scenes easily. better still, i can reuse my parts like lego bricks. ;)

3rd try at the girls

ok this is another new set of characters from our artist. they are all very nice, but not what i'm looking for. she's trying again now, this time i've asked her to try exaggerated features and another art style..

though the first character that one might see for the current build is the father character,
the artist and i both feel that it's easier to settle on the main character first, and then fit the rest of her world in. we need time to come up with a good design that strikes an impression on ppl, it's not uncommon to scrap 50 characters, and i think so far we've scrapped 30.

Music, please

I have managed to add the music and sound code to the demo. It was pretty easy using Playground's engine and I added some classical music and royalty free sound effects to the game. This has enhanced the mood of the game dramatically. I have also created a LUA file that stores the name and paths of the sound files so that a non-programmer can change the sound and music without affecting the code.

As Playground supports only OGG, I had to use Audacity to convert my WAV and MP3 files to OGG for use in the Playground engine.

second batch of concept for the main char

2nd batch of concept art from our artist, with more differentiating styles..

and from the art dept

our artist has churned out new designs after mda's comments,
and she made the effort to color it too.

i'm still working with her to create the character designs..

luciola has updates!

oh yay,
luciola has code updates!

some of the 'highlights':
1) everything for a location is stored in assets/loc# where # is the location number.
2) the location bg is always called bg and it's stored inside assets/loc#/images. i tot that made sense cos i can't think of reasons y it shud have many different bgs.
3) the names are all stored in the strings.xml , what happens is if i have to switch location, based on the id, i combine to form a string,
"loc"+id+"name", and store it in my accLocs (accessible Locations) vector. then i create buttons using the same old method.

so now things are more automated now. u press a button u want to go, and i boot up the location with its bg image, and the places that it can go to.

note now that,
1) only the top most button is working. cos i'm sleepy and is KO soon. will add in tmr morn.
2) u see a blank bg first, click once on the screen to make the buttons pop up. will add in the move menu button to do this later.

however, it's not all rosy.
i've got a big problem. detected memory leaks.

luciola speaks~

ok, so we've sorta got a first puzzle working,
and i must admit that things look a hell load better with pro graphics,
compared to placeholders we got from the net.
even if it's 'ceteris paribus'.

even though something seems to be working,
we've got a lot to do..
settling the story, creating the entire look-and-feel.
and i think the most impt,
the codes structure have to be settled,
cos i really don't know how and what to code sometimes.

well,
things will work out i guess.