I kept working on the new sprite system, now that the code has mostly been figured out all that’s left to do is produce the sprites. Which, although not very hard, is the most time-consuming part…
I’ve been a bit busy with work these days, because colleagues are in holiday but customers and partners aren’t, so I couldn’t work as much as I wanted on these sprites. As there’s still a lot of work to do and I don’t want to delay the update, I’m thinking of excluding the new sprite system and body shapes from the next update. This way I’ll have more time to implement it properly, and even though it won’t be the most exciting update, there’ll be some new content, fixes and improvements. For example, I’ve started working on small accessories, as someone asked me if I could add glasses:
So now here’s the plan: I’ll spend the next two weeks working on other small features I want to implement for the next version and push the body type system aside for a little while. At the end of the month, I’ll upload the update, and I’ll get back to work on the new sprites in order to get the body types ready for the last update of the year.
And that’s pretty much all I have to say for now. See you in two weeks for the update!
Of course! You can already modify your characters to some extent through the debug menu, and once the body types hit the game you’ll be able to edit your existing characters in the same fashion.
The main new feature is the world map with two new locations, the Park and the (west part of) City Center. When you interact with the door in your character’s room, you will be taken to the world map where you can chose the location you want to go to instead of being teleported to Omnimarket. There is also a placeholder for another location I’ll add soon with at least one new NPC, the café Maison Mocha. You can’t access it yet, but I felt like it was better than having a big empty space.
Another new feature is the addition of a first wave of accessories to make use of the outfit system and start testing it a bit. The sprites for these accessories have been made by Fatahlia!
Finally, I reworked the new game sequence entirely. From now on, you will only get the full presentation speech the first time you create a new character. After that, you’ll have a very sped up version. You probably don’t need to be warned this is a fat fetish game if it’s the fifth or so character you’re making… I also reworked the tutorial entirely and got rid of the old one, which was relying on very old and painfully maintainable code. The tutorial is now entirely made using the dialog engine of the game and adds a bit of clarity to a few points, like the game being in real time.
And that’s it for the major changes. Regarding the smaller additions, I cleaned up a lot of old code and optimized the file management system, I added a clock to the top left of the screen to make sure the player understands the game is in real time even if they skipped the tutorial, I added two small variations to the Not Tetris minigame, and I simplified the cooking interface ; you can now click on a recipe you own to automatically add all of its ingredients to the cooking slots, if you possess them.
As I said last time, I will now focus on finishing the sprites for the body types update. I’ll also take some time to make a small tool for Fatahlia (and anyone interested to help) to let them preview how their sprites will be rendered in game, and I’ll work on the Maison Mocha to try to implement it in the next update.
Please let me know of any bug or oddity you may encounter, I had to be a bit quick on the tests because I did not have a lot of time on my hands so it’s very possible a few glitches are still in there. Other than that, have fun!
so i got bored and made a chart about which food has the most effecient calories per pound cus why tf not so here it is: Debu Complex food chart - Google Sheets k̶e̶e̶p̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶m̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶d̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶v̶a̶i̶l̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶v̶i̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶o̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶u̶s̶ ̶i̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶n̶t̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶l̶.̶ ̶m̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶r̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶i̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶I̶’̶l̶l̶ ̶e̶d̶i̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶.̶
edit: nvm I added it like immediately after I made the original post lol. though i am still missing one thing and i dont know how to get it.
Yeah, as there are not many NPCs for now, the different areas are going to be a bit empty. It’ll improve as I add more characters.
Regarding extra sizes, that’s planned, but not right now. There are other features that take priority, like outfits, as more sizes = more body sprites = more outfits sprites. So I’d like to have a few outfits ready before I start thinking about adding larger sizes.
The map and new areas are looking great, so are the accessories. Always a good time making a new character for an update
Just wanted to list out some qol things I think would be good while they’re fresh, may have already mentioned some in the past. Just throwing things out there of course.
option to buy x10 or custom amounts of items
text labels of food in shop like they are in inventory
persistent bgm selection
separate head and face in accessories menu
debug option to uncap or raise cap on weight/capacity (but still progress based on current math)
Also not qol, but way down the line implementing some sort of meal themed incentive (as in breakfast lunch and dinner) might really add a lot to the standard gameplay loop. Whether that’s some sort of stat/calorie bonus or some scene unlocks or something else entirely, something that incentivises not just stacking double burgers forever. Seems like that might be where the happiness system is roughly headed too, but theming it might be fun. You could even work in the real time aspect there.
Regarding the bgm, I’d like each area to have a fitting one. I could reuse the ones in the player’s room for a few locations, but I’d like to see if I can find some better ones. So for now the areas will remain mostly silent, and when I have a bit more time I’ll definitely look into adding some music.
Regarding meals, that’s a good idea and would not be too hard to add. I wanted to add more time-dependent details (for example, the café will have a different menu depending on the time of the day), so this mechanic would definitely fit.
I have taken note of the other points too, and I’ll see how I can improve some of these features.
Anytime, I like this game a lot so always happy to give feedback. As far as bgm I meant what plays in the room itself, I think tracks per area is definitely the right call.
Currently whenever you leave the room or spawn Emma, it will not only turn off the bgm but also play the default track when you start it again even if you have another selected. So you manually need to turn on the radio, and then go in and change one track over and back to keep the same song (besides default)
The meal time idea sounds absolutely brilliant. There could be a hunger system that allows characters to eat more at certain times and they would digest slowly rather than immediately over a nap. This way, the player would be further incentivised to check the game regularly rather than grind all day and then become disenchanted with the concept for a month
I don’t want to put too much constraint on the main gameplay mechanics - feeding your character -, that’s the reason behind the power-digestion nap. And I don’t feel very comfortable taking this feature away entirely.
However, maybe I could find some kind of middle ground. I can separate the items into two groups: quick to digest and slow to digest. The quick ones can be digested with a nap, but the slow ones will require to wait. I can also assign each individual item a digestion time, so some “heavier” items will take more time to digest than others.
And going back to the meal times, we could imagine that eating the right kind of food at the right time of the day would negate the digestion time of said foods, basically turning slow to digest items into quick ones. For example, eating a burger at lunch would add no digestion time, so it could be digested immediately with a nap, but eating a burger in the morning will increase the total digestion time and you’d be stuck with a burger-brick in the stomach for a short while.
I will think about it. It could be an interesting idea to explore, and it would be yet another parameter I can play with to balance the game, but that’s going to require a fair bit of work to make sure the game doesn’t become unplayable.
That sounds good. I feel like the current watermelons and double burgers are absolutely overpowered. But under this system and with a slow and steady approach, I could feed a non gainer girl a similar amount of calories without the pain from fullness. This would be great because I like making people happy
Yeah I definitely don’t think constraints should be put on the basic mechanic, no matter how you balance one food or food combo is going to be good and I don’t think having some speedrun tier items is inherently bad. The suggestion was more coming from a place of encouraging more “rp style” interactions, so there are rewards that are less focused on efficiency without locking the sprites behind a crazy grind. Meals are just what came to mind, but on a meta level that’s what I think would help take the gameplay to a higher level. Besides the art and general polish I think what makes this game stand out is the character relationship aspect so anything leaning into it is good.
Normally you should be able to translate the dialog files without issue. Unless maybe if you’re using a non-latin alphabet, then the missing glyphs are probably getting replaced with ▯, is that the case? If so I can try to fix it by using another font that supports unicode, this way you won’t have to bother with custom fonts. I’ll look into it.
Also while I’m at it, if you’re translating the dialog files please make sure to make a backup of your modified files, I’d hate it if you lost your work following a version update. Also note that the dialog files are subject to change, so you may have to re-translate some parts in the future.
