Custom Items and Achievements

Back with another big update! Phew, it's been too long. I blame the Switch. I've been playing Splatoon 2 to procrastinate on work. Go me!

The first thing you might notice when starting up the game is sound. HOLY COW! I finally added some sound effects and music. In a perfect world, I would have the capital required to commission sounds for this game, so let's say that these sounds "aren't final." Now we've got some sweet UI clicks, some good/bad feedback sounds during dates, and even three background songs! Check the credits on the main menu for details!

Another huge improvement this version is the ability to change resolution of the game. After some complaints from someone with a small laptop screen and another person with a huge 4k monitor, it was obvious that 720p wasn't going to cut it for a universal size any longer. Now you can change screen size to your heart's content and even try out full screen mode! With the absence of the Windows bar at the top of the game window, I also had to add a pause menu while you're talking to a character. With basic functionalities such as "Quit" and "Cancel," critics rave that this pause menu "does something."

We also have the addition of an achievement engine. Earn some achievements to give yourself a nice back pat while you play the game. For now, there are six achievements to earn. More will, of course, be added later. A nice white banner will inform you if you've unlocked one. And don't worry. Achievements (and resolution settings) are saved as well!

Finally, as far as big improvements go, I added a nice complement to custom characters: custom items. Want to expand what your character eats/drinks/enjoys? Now you can! With some simple edits to files and small pixel art sprites, you can add any item you can imagine to the game as well. And, if that wasn't good enough, the game will automatically determine which items you need. No longer will you see the gift of a "Donkey" and not know who to give it to (spoiler: no one. That character isn't released yet). As long as a Tag on an item lines up with a Tag on a character, the item will be available to purchase!

While there are no new characters in the official release of the game, you might notice an unfamiliar face in the banner to this devlog. Meet Varma, a squirrel girl, and the first custom character to be made for Trist. If you want to play with Varma, give her a download from Google Drive. Follow instructions in the Trist_Mod_Tutorial file if you don't already know how to install mods. A long-term goal is to have a website with a library of characters and items, but for right now, Google Drive will have to do.

Well, that was wordy! Because most of these updates were to frameworks around the game, I don't have any entertaining bugs to recount to you. But I will say this: I have finally fixed the issue with dates ending too early. Happy days! Why did this happen in the first place? Well, silly me decided to refresh your choices of blocks BEFORE deleting the one you just used and checking for moves. So you could place a line block, have it replaced with a squiggle, but the game would still consider that block "used" and not check the squiggle for available moves. Rookie mistake, honestly. Four days tracking down a bug that was fixed by moving one line of code up. Such is life, I suppose.