The latest addition to the interface:
Added 2023-02-14 02:58:54 +0000 UTCI made one more layer of visual clues to make the game feel more responsive when the player interacts with the environment. I can't hold my excitement. This addition completes what is needed to handle interactions with that woman on the floor.
- You can click on a specific button, and these stencils show up in the environment to make it clear where you can interact with the environment. While it's showing, we have this neat glitchy effect to make it more visually appealing, and it fades away with time to keep the interface clean (but you can click anytime to activate it again :D).
- When you click on something, it shows a specific animation to confirm where you clicked and neatly glitches everything else away to keep the screen clean.
- When you get an item during a cutscene, it automatically disappears from the environment without any extra code.
- Notice how the character sprite lets all the visual elements do their own thing before moving to where you clicked and approaches just in time to touch the stencil while it's still disappearing. It took me a day or two to figure out how to make Ren'py behave the way I wanted. Worth it every second.
- Don't want to activate the glitchy stencils all the time? No worries. All visual clues work independently from each other. Click anywhere in the environment, and the game will tell you if you interacted correctly at any time.
- This last feature is a big one. If I save the images with an appropriate file name pattern, I can make them interact with the character sprite without any extra effort. It will be WAY faster to set up the lewd interactions and other complex multi-layer setups.
Overall, these latest additions to the interface paved the way to make this game more engaging and visually pleasing. I can't wait for players to experience this feeling. :D
