August 12th, 2018: Progress Report

Hello everyone! I'm gonna start off with some very good personal news this time around. I got the results back from last Sunday's colonoscopy and basically I'm currently in no risk of colon cancer, all I have is just normal hemorrhoid. Apparently hemorrhoids are untreatable but that is really whatever since it's not life threatening. As the days rolled on since last Sunday, I figured my diagnosis would be negative because based on my singular experience, if I did have something major, the doctor's office would basically give a phone call right away to urge me to come to the doctors to see my report and since that didn't happen I didn't worry too much. as for my health as it stands, the next examinations form my throat and for my liver would be around winter this year, so for the time being I can devote myself completely to my work.

And with that, let's segue into what I've been doing. We're still currently in the planning stages of the game, and I've been able to make major strides into two systems: One which I will similarly called the "B System" for now, and the language text system of the game. The B System is core to the game and I'm gonna go into more details about it when there is something more visual to show off instead of just code. 

The language text system is technically not essential to the game, instead it is just a system that allows me to easily release the English and Japanese version of the game, whether that is demo versions, retails versions, or updates. With Meltys Quest, I had to keep track of three separate RPGMaker folders of the game, one for the Japanese dlsite version, one for the English dlsite version, and one for the English Steam version. It ended up costing me a lot of man-hours when I needed to make one change and have to do it three times. This time, I am hoping to have just one folder for the game that will contain all the necessary information for the game whether I will compile it as the Japanese or as the English version. The language text system is basically me fighting around the normal limitations of the RPGMaker editor to implement a language setting. 

And currently right now, I think I've won that fight. There's still a lot of copy and pasting to apply my system to every inherit text inside the game, but the framework *should* basically be completed. If I wanted to, I could at this point implement an options setting into the game that says, "Language: English / Japanese" and it would work as you expected. But, whether allowing dual language options into the game is a topic that I haven't discussed with Sachinama yet, nor is it vital enough to prioritize other issue to bring up so for the time being, only the English version is slated to be on sale on Steam.

Speaking of implement options settings, remember how in a post-release update for Meltys Quest that implemented a way for players to rewatch sex scenes they have already watched before? And in order to do that, you had to like buy an item from a shop and keep it in your inventory and stuff like that? Well, through the weeks and weeks of diving and poring over RPGMaker MV's Javascript coding, I've become more and more able to bend RPGMaker MV over my knees and make it do whatever I want. That whole buying an item thing and 'using' the item and etc in Meltys Quest? Now it is simply an option in the settings menu that you can turn on and off as you would expect in a regular game.  

This has already become a really long post so I'll leave off with what I hope to be able to implement this week. This week, I want to work on the battle screen of the game. I don't mean the aesthetics or art design of the battle screen, but coding the implementation of how I want the battle screen to look and act like. Hopefully if successful, I can show off the "B System" that I've been working on the last week.