[The Hive] Weekly Report #18

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Play the latest demo here and leave some ideas here.

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Latest batch of work on the Hive !

During the break, I decided to tackle what I dreaded the most: the entire user interface (UI) of the game. Surprisingly, it turned out pretty well. Of course, I'm not a programmer and writing code isn't my job, so there were very frustrating days of work where I was stuck for hours on small details. But overall, I'm pretty happy with the result!

I started by integrating a quick menu at the top left, which only appears during the exploration phases. This menu will be used to access the relationship panel, inventory, saves, and the main menu.

I also added more flavor text for Ms. Sato's house, in place where there were placeholders in the demo (as you can see here).

Next, I worked on a gallery that will contain all of the artwork in the game. Once an artwork appears in-game, it will be available in the gallery. Renpy uses "persistent data" which allows the state of the artwork (shown or hidden) to be saved in the gallery even after exiting the game.

The quick menu will also allow you to access a relationship panel. This way, you will be able to consult the progress of your relation with a character, as well as its level of regression. Characters accessible from this panel work the same way as artwork for the gallery: Once a character appears in-game, they become accessible from this panel.

The last two UI elements were also the hardest to integrate. The first was the options menu, which allows you to switch from full-screen mode to windowed mode, as well as to control the volume of music and sounds.

The second was the inventory.

In all, it only has 15 or 20 lines of code, but that was by far the most complicated for me. A Python command (.append.item) is used to add or remove items from the inventory. I wanted the items to be clickable, and for June to be able to interact with the items, which didn't make it any easier.

There are still a few small details to fix when an object is interacted with. For some unknown reason, the quick menu disappears during the interaction. But it should be something fairly easy to fix.

Overall , the last thing left to do for the UI is the save system.

I also found time to work on characters. I wanted to touch up some that I was not happy with, like Molly or Ms. Cosset. For Charlotte, I redesigned the dress.

And finally, today, I drew two new characters. The first one is Ms. Sharpe, the stern teacher who is in charge of the Giraffe class. She looks like the exact opposite of Ms. Cosset.

And Nancy, aka Nana, who takes care of the Chick class, the most regressed Juvies in the Hive.

You will also find a video in attachment that showcases the different menus and how the whole thing is working together.

Next week I'll be working on Perpetual Change again.

I want to focus on the secret endings to finally finish the game. I plan to work three weeks on Perpetual Change and one week on The Hive each month until PC is completely finished.