(Time Range: 2022-4-24 11:33:26 -0500 to Present Day)

Patch Notes 7 : Chapter 6 

: Kissing the Deadlines Goodbye

Hello again for probably the final issue of the Dream & Sugar Patch Notes! Why?

Well, mainly because the project has been focused on bugfixes and simply finishing what has already been planned and designed.

This issue goes from our public demo at GDEX 2022 through our public demo at GDEX 2023, which just happened, so, after this, we're just going to focus on the Dev Diary.

Anyway, grab some popcorn and get ready to see some updated art and tech change information!

BENNETT ROUTE FINISHED

v1.2.5: MAY 21 2022

Where we left off, we were still wrapping up the Bennett route.

Added voicelines, one-off characters, fixed a lot of small TODOs from testing.

v1.2.6: JUNE 3 2022

Fixed transitions. Found a few more bugs to fix. Added newer transitions

Almost done with Bennett Route!

v1.3.0: JUNE 7 2022

Bennett Route merged with intro route. Minigames in bennettSlow subroute connected to script.

Short animated video experiment in a1 smart route.

We showed the game at GDEX 2022! Here was our booth!

GDEX 2022

GENDER SELECTION

formerly titled "take a gander at our genders" writer's note to editor please cut this

Before this GDEX, we had been kicking around the idea of having a male option for the main character. Generally we considered it to take too much work. 

But, between a combination of user feedback, and by reconsidering the problem, we decided it would be worth the effort.

We began working towards a simple system to let the player choose separately between visual and verbal gender. Then we needed a way to swap out the pronouns in the game when the story gets put on-screen. There are a lot of pronouns that need swapped between female, male, and nonbinary main characters. Here's the list of words and phrases that we need to convert based on character gender (as of the time of this writing)

"boyfriend and girlfriend" (direct object), "boyfriend and girlfriend" (a 'label'), "girl"/"Girl" (literal), "girl" (conversational), "girlfriend"/"Girlfriend", "girlfriends", "girlie", "her"/"Her" (possessive), "her" (direct object), "hers" (possessive), "herself", "is she", "lady"/"Lady", "lady" (regal title), "Ma'am", "pretty" (statement of beauty), "she"/"She", "she is"/"She is", "she's"/"She's", "she has"/"She has", "she's"/"She's" (past), "woman"/"Woman"

Finally, there's a special helper called "s_ifnot_nb", which adds an 's' only if the character is NOT nonbinary.

Here's an example.

We updated our script like this. The base script is written for a female protagonist. This can become:

So in most cases we just have to slightly modify the word and surround it in brackets.

- Spaces in phrases are replaced with underscore _

- Words with apostrophes: theyzre using zzs instead of apostrophes. Why z? Why not? It's an uncommon letter and it means we can sort of pronounce the difference verbally when we're talking about making these word swaps..

Each of these words in brackets is a loaded "variable" for the game. Near the start of the game, when you choose your verbal gender, we update all of them based on your response. This stays loaded as part of the game file for the whole game.

So, pretty easy solution, which allowed us to fully implement multiple character identity options without changing how the game works.

The big issue with this is making sure that the script is fully covered by swap-outs, and that there aren't any irreconcilable issues with the script. And of course, creating all the "Noah" art variants for the "more masculine" visual gender option.

v1.3.1: JULY 31 2022

Added CG's, changed dialogue, adjusted audio, fixed graphical bugs. Lots of changes

Background changes! Made some CG inserts

v1.3.4: AUGUST 7 2022

Update to Ren'Py v8.0.1.22070801

Pronoun tests and test section. When we play the game in test mode, there is a dialogue before the story begins where Riley tries out all of the pronoun swaps for fun :)

Initial working gender (appearance + verbal) prompts

v1.4.0: NOVEMBER 6 2022

Added [girl], [woman], [Girl], [Woman], [Mazam] pronouns 

September 9

Added beginning of Hugo's route. Ready for first date + Valentines + Crisis + End

September 13

Added Fast/Slow script, no images/staging

October 1

Added the remainder of Hugo script

remainder of hugo script, still need like everything but the script is in.

October 15

Added staging up to dates

October 22

Finished staging. Still need SFX, music and transitions

November 5

Fixed some bugs with hugo route, still need some things

hugo with civvies wasn't even in the game lol

November 6

test-only main branch skip selection

v1.4.1: JANUARY 15 2023

Updates around how the game feels during certain transitions, like when we wanted to wait for player input to advance. (Also removing things like "**STAT CHECK**" literally showing up in the script)

v1.4.2: FEBRUARY 12 2023

Bugfixes for last couple of weeks (of testing)

v1.4.3: MARCH 5 2023

Word swaps for Ms., Lady, Girlfriend, girlfriend, pretty, and girlie added.

Word swaps for "boyfriend and girlfriend" (both label-form and collective-form), and "lady" (both standard and regal form). Implemented all current word swaps and those from previous pass.

RILEY ROUTE

v1.5.2: APRIL 16 2023

March 11

Added Riley Route

Still need to:

• Verbage for Riley No (b3No) choice
• change all r to ri
• change all Nora to [character_name]
• gender fixing (Ms., she, etc.)
• character portraits
• positioning
• music/sfx
• vday ordering is broken. wrong people are saying things

April 1

Added voice lines, images, changed staging in script

April 8

added images, added staging, added a bunch of stuff

April 16

• 1.5.0
• 1.5.1 tweak
• testing changes
• 1.5.2 Immediate playtesting fixes

v1.5.3: JUNE 23 2023

Had to fix some deeper issues that crept in over time.

Recompiled and it seems to be fine.

GDEX 2023 TO NOW

v1.5.4: JULY 2 2023

June 22-26, 2023

We made some changes to improve the live-demo experience.

• gender previewing, default name aligned with visual gender
• demo date previewing, selection
• Improved character creation flow
• Keyboard-only input bugfixes, extra noname easter-egg clarification

Our project was unable to "build" properly at GDEX so we had to run it through the Ren'Py editor. After the show we updated the code to accommodate all Ren'Py 8.1.1 Linting (minor warning) complaints, and the thing blocking the whole game turned out to be one single parameter, 'fit', in the main component of the painting minigame

Gender-choice word-fixes

Two new choices, [girl2] and [girlfriends_or_boyfriend], and various catches of missed swaps. 

v1.5.5: JULY 9 2023

We've spent the last couple of weeks until now testing our version 1.5.5 game and fixing things we find from that! We are feeling pretty good about the game overall, and are looking forward to finishing it this year, and finally getting it to everyone.

Thanks for reading about our game development process! We will be including some more technical backend details as a sidebar or section in our Dev Diary from now until release.

We couldn't get this far without caffeine you!!

- Couch Lion Studios Dream & Sugar Team