A Peak at Progress #5

I've already made 4 of these post with the wrong peek, might as well keep it consistent. 

This post is going to be split into a few parts, it's a long one.

The Too Long, Didn't Read

I've been re-writing Chitinous Carnival's scripting system because it was unstable and inflexible. I am going to pick September 25th as the release day of CC v0.3.0. I am going to focus on drawing next week. 

The New Scripting System is Completed

Well, that was a long and boring detour. And, I don't even have an interesting drawing to show off in this post. But anyways, I've been replacing CC's internal scripting with a new approach. This process is now fully completed.

It was not fun and it would have been much easier to skip out on doing it (again). But after adding the quick time event to the fun house, I knew this approach was untenable. Matter of fact, v0.2.0 revealed numerous issues with the scripting:

• Controlling interactive segments was done from the story script
• Impossible to add skipping already seen dialogue
• It was hard to write and even harder to proofread

These three points are the reason I needed to completely redo the scripting while CC was still small.

The first point was a big one. I only recently took time to plan out how interactive segments will be embedded into a sequence. These segments are where you are removed from the traditional VN experience. They can be a carnival game, a parasite event (see: Night Crawlers), or a quick time event (see: Fun House parasite). Furthermore, these segments need to be able to affect the story like a choice would. In other words, they represent a choice the player must make within the narrative. But instead of selecting an option, you are presented with a direct action. I've put together a small diagram to help visualize this:

The second point was another major issue. You know how Ren'Py has that feature to skip dialogue you've already seen? I could not do that with my current design. It was not at all possible. In the old scripting system, I regularly suspended the currently running script to wait for various events. The problem with this approach was I had no information about where, when, or why it was suspended. Without this information, I could not implement something like dialogue skipping.

The third point is the final major issue with the old approach. It was so tedious to write. And almost painful to read. This is what it looked like to proofread parts of CC:

This also illustrates problem #1 (see: the while loop) and #2 (see: any time I use yield). Here is that same sequence re-done with my new approach. There is no such thing perfect code, but boy is it an upgrade:

This was a lot of work, but essential work. I had this change planned for a while but kept putting it off because I wanted to work on new content. But this week, I finally bit the bullet and did it. Definitely worth it.

v0.3.0 Release Date - September 25th

Next, I have decided to give myself a v0.3.0 release date of September 25th for my patrons. I had planned for a release this August. But, between the bag-o-bugs minigame that became Night Crawlers and the new scripting system, I will need more time. Fortunately, completing this new scripting system has solidified many design decisions.

Plans for this week - No Coding, Only Drawing

As for next week, my goal is to finish drawing the parasite birthing scene. I currently have the urethral insect sequences completed, and I want to finish up the anal insects next. Additionally, I plan on drawing the body part images for the inventory screen. Finally, I want to create assets for the next parasite interaction scene. 

To summarize, I'm focusing on drawing this week. It feels like it's been ages.