Ren'py and making contacts [WEEK 15]

 Making contacts -

At the end of last lesson i enquired with Rachel about the possibility of collaborating with some music students to make a soundtrack or Foley elements for our game, Rachel was able to get us in touch with a music student by the name of Amiya who is interested in helping us with our project. To help lay out our ideas for the game, i sent over a copy of our PowerPoint so far as well as our sound design document which includes our inspirations, potential Foley elements and information on filetypes for Renpy. On top of this, i sent over a link to our discord server, as our main correspondence so far has been over Outlook, i thought adding her to the chat with all members of our team would allow for greater communication for our project. I think this could really help our project as none of our team really has much knowledge on music and sound creation, reaching out to others not only can get us the expertise of someone studying in that field, but also helps build our communication skills in the future which is a vital skill in the games industry.

Continuing to talk to the music student I have been sharing the videos i have made of our game's development to give them a good idea of what sounds we could use and where they could be used in relation to our game. Once our Alpha build is finalized and fully tested i can go on to making a beta test build that i can send out to the music student so that they can have a proper and more in depth reference to our game. On top of this i provided some more audio inspiration for our game with suggestions of a music loop as seen in Yume Nikki.

On the 21/02/2025 I organized an in person meeting with our music student to discuss the project, we decided to meet in metronome at 1pm.

Ren'Py -

Talking with my team in our meeting last week we discussed how we want to approach the Ren'py work, I suggested it to be a main priority, as once the coding is complete, all we need to do is replace the placeholder images with our final images and our game will be complete. I had a little look at Ren'py in session last week and found that it whilst it might be a little challenging to get the hang of, i think i might be able to code our game. We did discuss who would be best suited for this role of coder out of our group, me and the director Seb, are the only two members who have a background in computer science and Python coding [which Ren'py utilizes]. Comparing our skills, i achieved a grade 9 in computer science and used to be fairly proficient in the software [though admittedly my knowledge is very rusty now] I decided i would take up the responsibility of trying to get the coding done, in the mean time, offering my job role as Environment artist to be taken by anyone who would like to get some drawing done. As i created a lot of drawings for my last project [building alliances] and the director didn't get to do as much as she wanted, i thought it fair to let others get stuck into the drawing whilst i handled the more admin work side. I am a little intimidated with Ren'py, but i think if i take some time and watch some tutorials i don't think this is completely out of my reach. To help me however, i have requested the script writer to simplify down our script in the process of abstraction to make a flow chart that i can more accurately and easily create code for.

Here is the Dev Log for the script so far - https://youtu.be/HyGpNftAhnI?si=p1zqZywldsfhaZtm 

Date - 04/02/2025

I have managed to create the script for all of monday and half of tuesday so far, I have generally found it fairly easy to do but i have had to use the online Ren'py guide for tips on how to define characters, create choices, animate the characters moving in and how to create pauses in the game. I also had some trouble with defining the popular girl as i hadn't noticed that the menu option and the name for the popular girl [pg at the time] was the same. This brought up quite a few issues. I have also used Microsoft's Copilot AI to help locate bugs in my code, the code itself is all written by me just as a disclaimer, i have only used AI to help me find issues and i have then manually resolved them. My next step for tomorrow is to finish the popular girl option and the alone option, i want to ideally store the responses [sit alone or sit with popular girl] so that i can recall them later on, these will influence choices available to the player later in the game. I am not sure if this is something i can do but i am willing to give it a go :).

Here is the second video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlMg28FScOQ

Date - 05/02/2025

Today i was able to finish off Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and get through a good chunk of Thursday too. I was able to figure out how to store answers and recall back to them using IF statements, as well as create a looping section in the dress up minigame using a WHILE loop. Eventually i would like to have this minigame be little icons of outfits you can choose from on the side, however as getting the game to work is a main priority over cosmetic changes i will probably leave this until we have all of our assets ready to be inserted into the game. The next steps is to write the different interactions with the best friend [Nicknamed Benji for now] depending on the character's stress level, this anxiety mechanic is decided by whether or not the player decided to procrastinate on the work, i may also add in some anxiety points depending on whether or not they chose to sit next to the popular girl. I have also set up some mood points for whether or not they took the roommate's waffles, this might play into choices further down the line.

Here is the third video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juBaP_bMRz0

Date - 08/02/2025

Today I finished off the final Alpha Build of One More Week which I have handed off to my team members to complete testing and quality assurance. I made a channel in our discord server specifically for bugs they come across in our game. We also discussed once we feel confident all the bugs have been found, sending out a beta test as well as a google form people can fill in with improvements we can make with our game, this would help us get audience feedback on what is/isnt effective with our game. Whilst i was finishing off the Alpha build, I did personally come across a few bugs: this is how i solved them:

Bug fix -

Repeating and incorrect dialogue in conversation with Benji and Anna. Fixed by replacing If statement with Elif statement.

Claudia gets stuck on the concerned sprite. Fixed by inserting missing show statement.

Background of Benji room not appearing. Fixed by checking defining variable and its spelling, a space was missed out.

Added in more fade transitions to smooth out visuals.

Now that I have the Alpha build finalized, I intend to finish my character reference sheet for the roommate character, following the guide put out by the character artist. I can then focus on the environments whilst simultaneously fixing any bug reports that come through. Here is my updated Gantt Chart: