January '25 Progress Report

Hey guys! Here I'll be sharing my progress over the last few weeks on FS&S as well a bit on what's been going on behind the scenes on my other projects.

FS&S Progress Report

I am back working on For Skin & Scale! I learned a lot during the hiatus and I'm already implementing some features, like sprite layering. I also went through my story plans and changed a good bit. One reason for the burnout was I didn't like where I had planned on taking things, but didn't know how to fix it. Spoilers, we're going to be spending a bit more time in Grifton than previously planned to have the choices you as a player make cause more of a difference in the story. This also means more time with certain hot friends (and enemies), many I have yet to introduce.

Sprite Layering

Currently I have Klaus and Rake layered, and the old sprite method completely replaced in code and in-game. These two are relatively recent additions, so they were perfect candidates to test this out because it takes a bit of time to replace old code.

But what is sprite layering? Simply put, it's stacking sprite parts onto one another. Sprite parts can be things like shirts and books. Instead of using one sprite for one expression/clothing/equipment combination, I can just have one sprite part and stack them as needed. Below is an example of what Klaus used to look like in the files.

This is what his files look like now. (note that Gleeful is missing temporarily)

For Klaus, the storage has gone down from 34mb to 7.5mb. It's worth noting that I had to significantly downscale sprite sizes back then, too. This means higher quality sprites that can be zoomed in on more during special scenes, all with fewer and smaller sprites.

Now I can make, say, Klaus take his top off in a few steps because I don't need to worry about storage space. Once set up properly, it's pretty easy to do in code, too!

Also, here's Rake to help demonstrate the modularity:

With all of these variations, I would need to have around 100 versions of Rake pre-made to be able to do this or any other combination. That takes... forever and increases storage space by a factor of 7, at least. Now, I have to worry about none of that nonsense! It's a bit easier to work with on the code side of things, too.

Layering is a Ren'py feature I just never really knew to look for. After spending just a little time learning it, here we are! In conclusion, this method allows for:
- Reduced storage space
- Higher sprite resolution
- Modularity and in-context sprites
- Faster and easier coding (for the most part)
- Unique sprite animations are easier to implement

I know this might seem like a 'duh' kinda thing or just generally not that interesting, but I think it'll make the reader experience better. It was fun to learn, so that's a plus for me haha

New Content

Right now there is one new CG and new readable content increases the size of the VN by about 8%, which will only grow by the time the update hits. I'll be making a poll later on to see if people would prefer to have an update sooner or later.

Character Stats

Oh, also, I finally found that awesome tool that shows the actual word count. The dev version is sitting at over 25,000 real words.

It also shows the word count for individual characters... looks like I could be spending a bit more time at Martin's PoV vs. Reidruss.

I might publish the actual stats somewhere if people are interested.

'Kobold Project' Sneak Peak + Other project news

There were a few projects I mentioned previously, and unfortunately those seem to be for later, if ever. I won't get into all the details, but I'll say I probably should have waited to announce those before more work on them was done and I was confident we'd be getting to completion.

As for this 'Kobold Project' I'll just leave a sneak peek into it for those who've read this far and save a grandiose announcement for later.

I'm a bit more hopeful for this one because my partnered artist is super involved in the story, he's already made colored sprites, and we've already stripped back at ideas that were a little too big. You should be hearing more once a demo is ready.