SECRETS SECRETS SECRETS
Can’t wait lol
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Are there any different weights yet? Just curious, what’s here now is great!
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Loving what I see here, but Grace’s new design seems like a complete 180 of her original concept which I thoroughly enjoyed. She still resembles a short girl yet she’s been given amazonian legs, so she appears unnaturally tall next to the other girls. It feels odd seeing Grace’s waist the same height as Hanna’s shoulders and Rea’s chest. Obviously it’s up to you guys if you decided grace should be tall as fuck instead, just thought I’d mention her height and build look very off now and that level of “offness” is further emphasized by the other girl’s very short appearance in comparison. This is further jarring when it feels like Rea and Grace completely swapped build/appearance. Before it felt like Rea was the tall lean one just beginning to pack on chub, now she just looks like grace used to except with purple hair.
PS I don’t mean to sound rude and love the teasers y’all have been giving us keep up the good work!!
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A slightly general question, but what sorts of final weights are we expecting for the full game? Extra Thicc, or like genuinely BIG?
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Given Foxfire’s general work, I feel we can assume BIG. There’s an image of Alex buried quite a ways further up the thread at a considerable weight, and if I recall correctly, that wasn’t even her biggest.
And when I asked, I was told that one character can get even bigger.
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The reason I ask is because FoxFire generally hasn’t done super big ladies for a while, if you take a look at his newest Twitter account.
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Been two weeks, so here comes the Forks train again for a quick stop!
After recovering from the flu (still have a dry cough 
), I’ve continued poking at the new UI and making sure everything fits the new, higher resolution. However, the new textbox and icons are fairly solid, so I can at least show you guys that much!
We’re not reinventing the wheel, just building off the original. We made the textbox three lines tall instead of two, changed the name format, and redid the skip/auto/load/save icons. You’ll notice an additional icon to the right as well too. Some sort of in-game smartphone was a priority for a lot of survey-takers, and right now I’m slowly trying to make something worthwhile. If we keep it, I’ll show it off in a later update. Ren’Py’s UI languages aren’t always intuitive, and I’ve already spent time figuring out that the humble “If()” is really what I thought “SensitiveIf()” was supposed to be.
Title screen’s had a revamp too, but I’m still putting the last half of it together.
FoxFire’s done a lot of work making new UI assets, and has now gone on to redoing old backgrounds and adding new ones. The one above is an early WIP of a new, rooftop campus view! There’s plenty more to it (you can see the tip of an editing window, I put this in the game from a screenshot for now), but we’re always scooching forward!
That’s it for now, just wanted to show you what we’ve been doing. The UI is a lot of backend work, and hardly anything’s quick when you’re working from scratch. I’ll get more of the basics in, then go back to finishing the script.
@Spillz No problem, the beauty with working with fully drawn portraits (rather than from the thigh-up as in the old demo) is that we can finally get their scales correct. Everyone’s was wonky in the demo because we didn’t have a good, common reference point. Alex is 5’4", and Rea is indeed a little shorter than her. Hannah’s 4’11"-5’0", and Grace is about 6’0". We’re really happy the portraits finally match that 
@Billybobjoe88 Yes, we’ve got different weights in-game ready to go, but we’re holding back on showing them until release.
@chilmistressfreia Rest assured, they can get pretty big. For example, look at Rea’s position in the screenshot above from 2 weeks ago. There’s so much empty space between herself and the edge of the screen because we had to make sure she’ll always fit, and she cuts it close 
It’s actually why character spacing has been a little troublesome this time around. Everyone gets so big it’s hard to keep many on-screen together!
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To be honest, that was the only reason I resigned up for twitter, lol.
And, let’s be fair, Kiari wasn’t big, or even super big. She was abso-*******-lutely MASSIVE. It does make someone wonder when you cross the line between human being and living ball of Crisco…
If I was a betting man, I’d probably guess it’s very unlikely anyone will get to size immobile, but you never know. Should be one heck of a ride regardless, eh?
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Best thing I’ve read all day.
Keep up the awesome work, can’t wait to see the finished product. C:
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Hey. So, just made an account and have to say, I love this game. It’s really cute and fun!
And I was wondering if you were taking any ideas? Specifically related to the possible endings.
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wowsa the game is lookin great, reeeeally liking the polish put into well… everything! Good luck Team!
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@TDG Glad you liked it, the next demo should be even better! And of course you can share your ideas, no need to ask 
@Gorilla Thanks! The polish itself doesn’t come in until the end, but it’s true what they say about the last 10% taking 90% of the time!
@LeftHandManGary You’d win that bet. Nobody becomes immobile, but the largest character gets close. She can walk, but not far! Smaller than Kiari 
Since I’m posting, may as well show you another WIP:
I’m glad you can set kerning at per-character, menus are meticulous in Ren’Py. Clock and cell bars are dynamic, I’ll probably add the date too. Can you guess what each button does ?
Edit:
Ha, that’s a pretty weak update. FoxFire finished another background set this weekend, so let’s see how the master list is doing:
As you can see, most will have seasonal variants, as well as day/night. You may spot a few that aren’t there in the current demo. What ever could be happening in them?
Here’s the finished exterior shot previously posted a week ago:
The man’s a machine!
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Just shut up and take my money.
Well, at least some of my money, lol.
Seeing the “Progress” button on the phone does feed into a question or two I’ve been wondering about. First, is the progress menu just the achievement list for the game? And will it be possible to get all the achievements in one play through, or will it take multiple attempts to unlock all available content?
And a very similar question here, but is it possible to fatten all the girls to max weight in a single game, or will each one require focusing efforts on her gain to the exclusion of others? And, for that matter, is Alex’s weight gain consistent between games, or is she like the other characters, and her size will vary depending on in-game choices?
I do like the idea of Alex using the progress button to keep track of her growth. Bonus points if she’s engaging in a serious misuse of a diet app, lol.
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Hey, they gotta be able to fit on-screen 
The phone is meant to be used in-game, and so will only have in-game utility. Ideally, Alex can answer texts/calls, look at photos sent from others, record observations, and track her weight. The weight tracker has been the hardest to implement, as graphing and other math intensive coding has to be done in Python, and I’m hardly a programmer 
Things that exist persistently outside of the game (achievements, gallery unlocks, etc) will instead be in their own menu accessed from the title screen.
As for achievements, you won’t be able to get everything in a single playthrough. Each girl helps Alex realize her gain differently, and so she must make several mutually exclusive decisions. Her weight is not consistent, and will vary depending on whose route she’s on. Normally, each girl will require focus to gain, though there is a planned alternate ending to let everyone in on it. Being the only writer on a narrative-centric game, it’s going to take long enough just to get through the normal endings 
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Lies and slander.
At the risk of being “That Guy” and potentially getting myself in some rather hot water, wouldn’t the tracker just need to be set to show such and such a number when this route/flag is tripped, or is there something far more dynamic at work than I’m aware of? I will plead ignorance, as I’ve barely escaped the Stone Age. Not quite sold on this “loom” invention, either…
Will we as players be able to record observations, or is that menu strictly for Alex in-game? As silly as that question might seem to ask, I usually have a doc open, and make jot notes while playing. Had to get away from paper because my dog kept attacking it when I left it on the floor.
Now those are very interesting words. I don’t dare even ask for clarification because that would totally ruin the joy of discovery.
Everything you guys have done so far has been amazing, and I can’t wait to see the end result. Best of luck with all the writing.
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Not the dev but it sounds like he wants there to be graphs showing weight increasing or decreasing at each interval from the start of the game. Just showing weight as a number would be easy but making a graph like that seems much more complicated.
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I apologize in advance if this comes off as hand-wavy, but wouldn’t it be possible to use the already existing functionality in RenPy to render a series of vertical bar graphs to show weight over time? If you store the weights in a list (or dictionary) and call the last, say, 8-10, weights, you can render them out as bars spaced evenly across a chart (and styled however, based on what you declare in RenPy)… if that’s a thing you wanted to do. Drawing an actual line graph is a bigger pain in the ass (but still technically doable - if you need help, please give a yell; I’m not an expert at this stuff, but I’ve run into a similar problem making a similar game).
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A bar graph, that’s a wonderful idea! I got so hungup on a line graph that I couldn’t even see the tools Ren’Py already had available 
If that fails, then there’s always a text list. I always need to be aware of how I might need to limit the scope of things. It’s already happened with in-game texting. I’ve got it mostly working, but it’s sending/receiving multiple texts in real time (without using multi-screen or ynvl mode) that had me stumped. No problem, just gotta send/receive one at a time, then store the history! That’s at least a way forward.
Anyway, thank you very much for that flash of insight. I needed it
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And I’m kind of surprised it took me re-reading a couple of the old posts before I noticed it, but:
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alexhome
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alexhomelake
If I’m interpreting these two correctly, I can only wonder what her parent’s reaction will be when she comes back from campus 2-300 pounds heavier than when she left…
So unbelievably stoked for this.
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Hey, you’re welcome. I’m glad I could help. If you need any help coding anything, give a yell.
Inspired by Forks and A Piece of Cake, I started learning Python last month (I’m a web developer by day), and it’s been a lot of reading Ren’Py docs since then - hence the knowledge of the bars. The other option would be to add the weight integers to a static grid to create a dot/point? graph - drawing the line in between them is much harder - because you can use xpos and ypos to position objects with custom screens (which you seem very comfortable with). Here’s a pretty basic thing I did with a simple character creator and home screen:
I’m hoping to dump snippets of code around here once I’m done converting the game, so if anyone needs help in the future with stuff (or during game jams), they’ve got a starting point.
EDIT: Sorry, this is what I was converting - A Piece of Cake / C'est de la tarte (le français)
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