Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #18

Hiya there, guys! How are we all doing today?

First things thing--I apologise for the long stretch of time between this dev log and the last--I never intended for this many days to pass without updating you all on progress, so I hope I didn't cause any panic or worry! But rest assured things are going smoothly. Art is being drawn (some of the last h-scenes are getting done as we speak!) words are being written (I hope to have a substantial alpha update soon with quite a large chunk of new story to go through!) and generally things are going pretty well.

I wanted to take the time in this dev log to show off progress, quite literally in this sense, with the relationship UI I've been putting together.

I believe I may have shown a rough version of this UI beforehand, but I've taken the time recently to make it more thematic with Chapter 2's UI visuals and tried to make it more visually appealing while keeping in line with the overall parchment/fantasy quest feeling I've gone for in the second chapter.

Given that Chapter Two has a large cast of characters this time, I felt that it would be best if there was some way to track the affection levels that each girl may feel for you as well as judge how your actions and dialogue choices may be inwardly affecting the girl, so that you either know you're on the path to good times, or potentially upsetting them so much their bar might go negative! (And gosh wouldn't that be something?)

What you see attached to this post is a more polished draft of what I'm thinking of going with for the progress screen. It should be noted that it's still heavily WIP and the rougher elements such as white pixels around the edges and so on will be smoothed out come the proper implementation of it.

Each girl is represented with a portrait and a name, along with a meter that will give a general idea as to how they feel about you. To avoid spoiling characters, girls will only appear in this progress list once you've officially met them, and once enough girls are on the list, it will then become scrollable (since there's going to be a looooot of girls!)

This will also be where your past choices you made in Chapter 1 will be transferred over, taking into account what you said and did to give you a headstart on certain girls you may have favoured.

Additionally, I'm thinking of adding other elements to the bar to perhaps hint, or show when you're close to, or have hit certain milestones with each girl (i.e h-scenes) but worry I may clutter the screen with tons of icons if I aim for something like that.

And, yes, Jilly is great enough that she's duplicated herself multiple times in order to win over Matthew once and for all. ; P

I'd also like opinions on the bar style, as I was debating over between having a solid colour, having it segmented, or going with this more simple gradient where the colour gradually intensifies to a pinkish hue to signify their love increasing. But have to be careful when adding colour to the UI given it has a very uniform style this time around.

That about wraps things up for today's update. It was a bit more on the technical/mechnical side of things which I know is a bit more unusual, but I hope it was a fun insight into the workings and development of things and that you might have opinons to share on how things are shaping up, as it's all still a heavy work in progress so I'm definitely receptive to feedback on it!

Thank you as always for your continued support of Quest Failed, and until next time~