12/18/17: The Development of Cinnamon and Honey

Good evening! I'd like to talk about the current status of the game CaH.

As of right now, the game is approximately one-fourth is done. This one fourth is the coding for Act I, the first half of the game. Another fourth is Act II, the second part of the game and a part I hope will be slightly harder to complete (like a level in an action game). The two other fourths are corresponding assets (art, music, sound effects).

Coding

Currently I am thinking of re-writing the code (yet again) because I feel it could be improved. I want to see how I could incorporate point values in Act I because I neglected to learn how to use them. This resulted in me having a harder time coding. I want to use these point values to make the main cast more realistic in their responses to the MC. I also want to try out using persistent values because there is are features I want to try adding to the game, like a screen displaying all achieved endings and possibly a screen for short character profiles.

I also want to try to find a way to let the player customize their pronouns in the game. I already have a theory on how to do this, point values. I would give the player options to choose from the three basic English pronouns (she, he, and they) and attach the values 1, 2, 3 to those options. In this way I could use 'if' statements to control what pronouns the other characters would refer to the player as.

If I really wanted to do this, rewriting the code could come as a huge benefit. However that would be extremely time consuming (it took me approx. a month to re-do the coding for Act I initially).  I want to shoot for the release date October 2018, so I don't know how re-doing Act I's coding and assets alongside coding and asset-making for Act II will affect the progress of the game. My living situation isn't ideal for set schedules for working because it could change any time, and I am working late in a club I joined at school almost everyday.

Re-doing code is something I really want to do, but I feel that I should try to pro and con it out before I make any set decisions.

Assets

All current assets are placeholders. At the moment, all music, art (including GUI and the title screen), and sound effects are things that I am mostly intent on replacing. I am making all the art, so that is not as much of a problem, but the music and sound effects will be a bit harder to find better versions of. The music is made by me, but the program is too simple and not as quality as I would like to be producing music in. I also need to track down the sound effects I used (because like a dumbass I didn't save any of the links) and find royalty-free effects as I don't have the means of making my own.

I could re-do all the assets I currently have and make sure I use royalty-free sound effects, but also many music tracks are done and re-composing them could take an indeterminate amount of time, and as I said earlier I don't want to take away from developing the game and progressing with unnecessary changes.

Final Statements

 So, what does it all come down to? I need to think about my decisions for the game in terms of development time. If there is any at all, I would appreciate feedback. A demo of the game will be released sometime this week. Signing off for the night,
                                                                                         -GGDev