Hello everyone! It's been a week and two days since my little alpha demo in German und English saw the light of world. Since then, over 100 people have already viewed my project, which makes me very happy because it has been one of my personal goals and it has been accomplished so easily. Thanks to everyone who tried it. In addition, since the start of the blog and my regular publications, but also because of other activities, I have already achieved my other goal: 50 Twitter followers
The start has been made, but of course not everything is done. The premise of the first episode seems to be well received, which of course makes me happy. The first scene, however, seemed a bit wooden to many and I also share this assessment and will take care of it.
Something much more important is changing the user interface. Personally, I liked the old text box very much, but it had a fundamental problem: it is too large and has hidden some of the characters. While this isn't too much of a problem with larger characters, it doesn't look very nice with smaller characters. My testers also gave me ideas on how to do it.
One idea is to simply shrink the text box and adjust the font size if necessary. While this would at least somewhat mitigate the problem of hiding the characters, it would not completely solve it. Scaling up character sprites is a good approach that works with smaller scenes, but scenes with 3 or more characters (if only for a short time) would make the scene look too full. Another tester then gave me the correct hint and implementation, which can be seen in the following picture:
The new idea is to completely replace the text box with this blue stripe that is always displayed. This allows the characters to be moved a little higher, but would then have to be scaled a little smaller. Nevertheless there would be enough space to show the characters "full" (their busts). I also have more space in the lower area for the texts. The only downside is that it hides part of the background, but that part is so small that I think it's a good compromise.
Another problem, which at least some noticed, is the number of lines in the text box. Some consider two to three lines to be too small in a visual novel and I broadly agree with that. However, at least for this project I would like to note that I tried to write reasonably authentic texts without a lot of monologues. And for a conversation with changing people, I find two lines of text quite a lot.
I could easily extend the whole thing to three lines by reducing the font size a bit, but this is almost just a simple push of a button that I could do again in the next test run.
There is still a lot to do, because I still have to adjust the dialogues in several scenes and above all have to reposition the characters. Once this is done, there is a new alpha version for you. Until then, please be patient. If you want to support me, think about a small donation in my DONORBOX. Of course, this only applies if you like what you read here.
I wish everyone a good and successful start to the new week! Stay in good spirits! Your
GameMaking-decorating-for-Easter Dizzy
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