DANG!

I got a bunch of work done AND played two shows with my band ZAKU this week! It was action-packed!

It's SHOWTIME

The shows went pretty well... I had technical difficulties BOTH shows, though... pretty embarrassing. Still, everyone seemed to enjoy it and we got invited back to play with every band that played both shows... so I guess I can't complain too much! The issues I had were entirely my own fault too, so at least those can be prevented through careful preparation. Live and learn!

Our next show is July 5th... I forget what it is, but I'll post it here next Sunday.
...unless it's like... a private house show, or something, lmao. Anyway, I THINK that actually, finally, really, for REAL THIS TIME, my guitar parts for the upcoming album are totally done! Lord help me, that took forever.

CUTSCENES

OK! The big Negative Reverie update this week! I got a TON of the Chapter 1 ending cutscene done! You get to meet a bunch of the main cast of villains and get into the first boss battle of the game! I added a bunch of code that allows me to speed through the dialogue to make it a lil easier to make changes and such, which has been crucial.
I'm kinda REALLY enjoying coding the scenes up... and it makes sense, because to me... Negative Reverie is more about being a story than a game. This is where it really shines, imo.
I'm thinking about just.... making all the cutscenes first and THEN just going back and making the rest of the gameplay, lmao.

MECHANICAL UPDATES

Just a few of these.
I rearranged the way Enemy AI is done a little bit, so that each individual enemy follows a general AI script and only deviates if that particular enemy has a function that overwrites the generic AI function. It seems to work pretty well!!
There are now checks in the battle system for things to be "bullet type" attacks. Basically, anything involving a gun. Using certain pieces of clothing or armor will naturally negate the damage from bullets.
I changed where the information for "F.I.T.s" are stored. It's better... but honestly, I'm still not entirely happy with it. Maybe the answer is to have all the code for what different FITs do placed in a gdscript file somewhere, and then just call the functions within as I need them... is that what a "callable" is? I've never actually used them before.... perhaps its time to dive in a little deeper.

BATTLE TRANSITION

I finally added a battle transition! It's a simple swirl and enlargement shader that lives in its own scene. I'm not sure I did it correctly... or if I'm 100% happy with how it looks... but holy MOLY it took me a long time to make. You have to know a lil trigonometry for it?? Insane.

WHAT'S NEXT

I'm really in the mood for scripting out cutscenes at the moment. I might finish up the end of Chapter 1 and just start making the rest of the games' scenes in isolation. Then just come in later and stitch em all together. I DO need to make an alternate dialogue system to display different kinds of text and a special in-between-chapter style scene that will pop up several times during the game.... but that's secret for now!

WHAT ELSE, WHAT ELSE

This week... busy as always. First, I gotta fix those technical issues for my guitar rig... and then the world is my oyster! I've also been consistently chugging away at Japanese study... which is exactly what I plan to do after posting this, lmao.
Also, after the show on Thursday, I found out that all my other band members can do a full Slav/Asian Squat with heels all the way down... I'm the only one who can't! So, I started spending about 30 min a day stretching my hammies and doing other various mobility exercises. I WILL acquire this power...

OK THATS IT! Have a good week and thank you for supporting me, as always!! I noticed 2 or 3 new patrons over the last couple weeks and I'm too scared to tell them thank you directly, but THANK YOU!! I really do appreciate it! <3 <3

See ya LATER!