Chapter Two, Part Two Additional Tasking Poll
Here's the development priorities poll I mentioned in the Chapter Two, Part Two development post: six tasks, some from suggestions on the Discord and others are from me. Brief descriptions of the tasks below:
Adjust Android build: the current Android build just uses a "lossier" compression for the images, which might work again for the next release. The difference in image quality is pretty much indiscernible, even in the main 1920x1080 resolution. It's not a permanent solution though, as eventually the framework and videos will take up enough space that it won't matter how compressed the images are. This task will be figuring out what exactly needs doing to skirt the 2GB size limit on apks. I have a general idea on that, but need to take the time to delve into it (and any other potential solutions).
Support for translations: I'd like to make it easy for folks to add fan translations. I haven't looked into what it takes to add/create translations for Ren'Py yet, so this tasking will delve into that and make whatever tweaks are needed to support adding translations. Note that I don't foresee adding 'official' translations any time soon.
Continue updating old Chapter One renders: as part of Chapter Two, Part One, I updated a few hundred of the rougher renders from Chapter One. This task is to continue that process and update a few more scenes. Wouldn't be quite as many as I did in Part Two, but one I would like to update is the big ol' pool scene, and that's a fairly large one.
Update animations in "Hey", Cerys's first "quality time" scene: in the same vein as the previous task, this one would be updating the animations to the same quality as those in Chapter Two. This one might depend on animator availability as the Part Two animations are the priority as far as commissions go.
Add preference to toggle always showing pronunciation text: self-explanatory, just a preference folks can use to enable/disable 'permanent' display of the in-line pronunciations.
Add ability to change the outfit romanced love interests are displayed in on the character detail menu: clicking on a character icon in the menu memory opens the character detail menu, which shows a profile picture of said character. This tasking would allow the player to cycle through a romanced character's outfits for that screen. Note that this would have no impact on the character's appearance in-game.
Patreon only allows single-voting or 'as many options as you want' multiple-choice, so I'm leaving the voting as single. Vote for the option that you'd most like completed as part of the upcoming release. The end results will influence the order in which I tackle the tasking once the release reaches proofreading/testing time. Poll ends October 1st 11:59 PM EDT.
Comments (9)
in order of preference best to worst" pronunciation outfits ch1 renders animation translations android
I put the "pronunciation text" thing in a translator but even in my native language I have no clue what that's supposed to be and why it has the 2nd most votes *confused* :(
It refers to the small text displayed above names that shows how to pronounce or read the word.
For these kind of polls I suggest you allow "as many votes as you want" since everyone can then pick the 1-3 options they deem as "most important". First, I think the animations are most important, since you want to leave a good first impression with the first animations your new players see. Second, about a third of your potential audience will be on Android, so you don't want to neglegt those. Third, making it easy for translators is nice; it makes your game accesible to more cultures, but fan translation projects are a lot of work! Experienced translators will always find a way, even if you didn't make it easy for them. So I'd say that's third priority. Everything else is just nice to have imo, not that important for the game's growth.
I'm one of your Android players, but I can say I don't think you need to spend a lot of time on making the Android build work better. Howl and I have already given you some tweaks on the Discord but I don't think any of them are terribly difficult changes, and I don't think there's much to worry about right this minute beyond those. As for avoiding the 2GB limit, the easiest method I've seen so far is to code the Android build to look for the game assets in a folder in Documents rather than in the APK. Then you can do something like putting all the images in an .rpa archive the user downloads and drops in that folder. Then the graphics assets can grow as large as you want without the app itself ever running into the 2GB limit.
Yeah, that's almost exactly the idea I was toying with. The Ren'Py docs outline a method to create a downloader that goes and grabs the game files, so I figured that could just be tweaked to look at the file system instead. Good to know that's on the right track.
Although I don't use Android, but getting the game in to as many hands as possible seems to be a top priority. I'd then update the ch1 renders, as the early game is the best time to show off your *current* skills. Outfit changes is not on my radar, same with translations, and other options.
honestly Id rather most of these be put on the back burner or just forgotten if Im honest but Im also not a backer right at the moment. suppose if they have to be done Id say outfits, ch1 renders, translations, pronunciation, android, animation
My preference order is outfits, pronunciation, chapter one renders, quality time, translations, android