Myre’s Massive Mealtime - development (v0.583 - 2/26 sample platter)

Middle of the month!

What’s going on?"

I have the last of the appetizer options written in rough draft state. What else though?

I will definitely get the dinner options stubbed out. I mean like all the choices clickable and stuff.

But that’s not exciting, is it? I definitely want to get some of that content written, but am not sure how how much i will get done because i have a few other things in mind.

I’ve been collecting some sounds that i would have the rights to use. Background sounds. Slaps. Plaps. Some crunches for chip. And other sounds. I want to go through and add these around to make the project even more vibrant.

I’ve also been working on adding a new little fun feature for when you feed Myre appetizers.
feed_myre_wip2

So the idea is that you can click and drag to feed her. I don’t play to make it a huge feature, just a fun little thing to break up the pace. As with other things it will have setting to adjust. I want to have 3 settings, with the middle one being a balance between not having this at all, and having to do a lot of it. So you’d feed her once or twice in each of the relevant sections by default, but have the option to make it happen a lot. Or disable it entirely(in which case it just gets replaced with a quick automatic animation). It’s an experiment, sure. But it seems easy that i could use what i learn for other fun widgets in the future.

That’s the crux of what I’ll be working on for the next update. Sounds. Writing. Fun little widgets.

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image
Thing are getting wild.

No i will not elaborate.

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image

I’ve spent time this month working on sounds a bit. This month’s update will have 5 different ambient tracks to give a little more character to the visual novel. Two outside sounds and 3 inside ones with various leves of crowd noise.

I hadn’t mentioned before, but Kay exported a few alternate versions of the restaurant background with varying number of people present. The idea is to simulate the fluctuation of customers over the date. Some of you may have noticed that already. Now, with the crowd sounds, the amount of crowd noise should rise and then fall off as you go through the date.

I’m sure sound levels will need to be tweaked in the future, but i have tried to curate the base levels to be - well - ambient. they should be quiet relative to the music and other sound effects.

Hopefully it adds some extra dimension to the experience!

What else will make it in this month?

TBH this month has been very rough. I want to have an update out before the holiday, so i still intend to add more.

I’ve gotten a lot of the stub work done for the main dinner meals. I still need to outline the gist of how i want each part to flow. Regardless, I’d like to try and get some more writing done too, and get some more work done on the little feeding widget.

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After hours of fighting with code, and searching through the ancient scrolls it turns out what i want to do with the drag and drop feeding wont be as simple as i thought? So I’m putting that on the shelf for now.

Still thought, i can do the simple animated version:

feed_myre_wip3

Myre gets fed Rufio imagination food.

I think the time before the next update will be spent fleshing this out into the content.

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Download MMM v0.49 now: https://www.patreon.com/posts/73652124

This month was seriously bad for like 4 different reasons. But regardless, here is an update in time for the holidays. New writing. Background sounds. New art and foundations for future month’s content!

Changes:

-New content
More writing! All the pre-meal conversation options are now done in rough draft shape.
More sounds! I’ve added 5 ambient background sound tracks to give the VN a bit more life. Two are outside ambience for the intro and when you’re standing outside the restaurant. The other three are for during the date. Background crowd/eating sounds at three different intensities to give the feeling that dinner starts off quiet, and gets louder as people get their food and get into conversation. I’ve tried to set the default volumes to an appropriate level relative to all the other sounds. The sound volume slider is what to adjust if it’s too loud.
More art! Clinko has graciously provided some close up eating sprites for Myre! So now during the appetizer section, (specifically just in the scenes where you feed her yourself, for now) you will occasionally get to see a fun little animation of you feeding Myre. I Spent a lot of time this month trying to get a more interactive version working, but at the end of the day it will be more complex than I though. Still, the version that is in this month if plenty fun =)

-I also spent a lot of time outlining the next stage of content: dinner! That really did eat up a lot of development - laying the choices out to be filled in later. Rather than just make dinner a repeat of the appetizers, I’m planning on having variation in each of the dinner choices based on previous choices. So for example, if you brought up ice cream before, then you’ll have several places where you can suggest she orders a milkshake along with dinner. That kind of thing.

Download links will be available at the link above shortly as soon as the uploads are done (downloads are taking their time. Maybe something up with my internet).

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Download links are now up!

EDIT: put out a hotfix update to fix a loop bug

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feed_myre_wip5

Oh and here is an updated gif! =P

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bruh myre eatin pipis

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myre self feed wip gif
feed_myre_wip9

Just a couple wip gifs featuring new food art from Clinko. Obviously the first is much rougher than the second. It’s getting there though. It took 3 hours for me to figure out and implement the arm moving thing lol

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This looks great! I like the artwork you have been getting from Clinko and the I like the text lines so far. How many branch lines are you going to have in the game as a whole? Are you going to be doing more of these throughout the whole game?

The little feeding animation moments can/are going to be reused all through out the game very easily. As for more variations? I dunno maybe?

As for how many branch lines i plan to have… Well i don’t have a particular number in mind. But from the outset my goal was to have a structure that was easy to add additional content, while also preventing too much scope creep. It’s easy to end up with a project looking like an oak tree with endless branching paths.

Instead…

The general flow of the project is supposed to be like this.There are branching choices, but they all go back to a central narrative. It’s a first date, so regardless of what you eat, you’re always going to end up eating the next part of the meal. The idea is to create more of a pine tree shaped project.

That, I feel, can/could get predictable. So what i’ve also included is that previous choice unlock choices down the line. For example, if you bring up ice cream early, then you have options to suggest ice cream related stuff down the line. Bringing up her education (chemistry) unlocks spicy foods. And later, if you have both, you’ll be able to suggest a spicy burger, and suggest she handle the heat with a milkshake.

Then once i’ve done the main choice, the intention is to go through each branch and add callbacks to previous choices. I’ve already laid a bit of groundwork for that.

Ultimately, the illusion i want to create is one where it feels like a sort of natural progression through a conversation - where topics come from, previous topics you’ve discussed.

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That’s really cool. It would make every playthrough of this game either slightly different or vastly different depending on your choices when all of this is fully implemented. Will there be anything happening with the waitress or is she going to mainly be there as an Easter egg? I ask because it would be interesting to se if you could also give the waitress food. Like you send food back that Myre doesn’t like and the waitress ends up eating/drinking it instead of throwing it out. But that could be something for after all of the main parts of the story has been implemented.

I do have some things in mind for Clara, yeah. But I’m not ready to give any hints yet haha! it’ll be some fun side content once we get towards the deserts and stuff.

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Oh, i also did some work (with permission) and made composite poses from existing art. There poses are in the VN right now but i haven’t written content for them yet. This is a mockup a made to illustrate some of the new possibilities!

myre_poses_wip

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This looks pretty good! I do wonder what else you could do with this in the future. Maybe do a whole feeding scene?

What do you mean a feeding scene? There is a bit of content lake that already, and more coming. But i assume you had something different in mind?

Download MMM v0.495 now: https://www.patreon.com/posts/73652124

v0.495 Changes:

-New content
More art! Clinko has made food! Now there shouldn’t be any more food blobs. The restaurant now has things other than blue gel to feed its customers. Those have all been added to the existing feeding bits. But now I also added little animation bits for Myre feeding herself. Arm movement! That probably doesn’t sound like a lot but it honestly took soo long to figure out the way renpy wanted me to do it.

Besides that, I did a lot of work compositing the existing Myre sprites to create hybrid poses with different hand positions. They’re in the download. They’re implemented in game already but i haven’t had the chance to include them in the writing. I know stuff that paves the way for content down the line isn’t the most exciting, but these new sprites should really let me add even more subtle detail to the date! Now I can visually include belly slaps and have her smile while grasping her gut. As we get farther into the date these new poses will be invaluable.

myre self feed wip gif3

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Getting back into the swing of things, i’ve gone through and started to write out more detailed outlines for the dialogue for dinner. First i’ll be focusing on a burger and their variations.

Overall for the main entrees, i want to have a few options and have lots of little variations based on previous choices. With the burger example, if you’ve talked to Myre about her chemistry background earlier, you can suggest a spicy burger instead of a regular one (which also ties in the with spicy wings earlier). Then with the spicy burger, you get to suggest a way to handle the spice. Milk is the default choice, but if you’ve also brought up that Myre runs an ice cream store, you can suggest a milkshake instead of just milk(more filling).

The goal, as I’ve stated before, is to make it feel like the conversation has a continuity to it based on your choices.

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Getting more writing done.

In the meantime, I’ve also started going back to implement some of the new composite sprites i made last month. They really should allow some fun content. Example:

myre round belly pats

Belly pats =)

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Download MMM v0.5 now: https://www.patreon.com/posts/73652124

v0.5 Changes:

-New content
–Writing! About 2k more words. It’s all in one dinner option, but there is several parts with variant dialogue for previous choices
–Revision! I went back to the pre meal conversation options and revised a couple sets of the options there. I fixed some spelling and grammar there, but the purpose was to integrate the new composite poses I made before. So now the belly talk and appetite talk options include a bit more belly touching and body language. I also added and removed some of the writing in them. You know, like spruced up some of the old lines and added some more hot/contextual lines.
–Art! Okay so not a lot of art. Just 1 new pop up image drawn by Clinko. But it’s really good

With the first dinner content out that puts use at about halfway to 1.0 in terms of the planned structure!

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