Saving between patches

 

Ilias sprite with a better face

  

So with the frequent patches and updates in the last week, a lot of people have been having issues with saves getting screwed up between patches. The issue has to do with how nscript actually handles saves. It saves the exact line in the game's script that you're on (it treats 0.txt to 13.txt as one script). So if you save on line 3694 and you reload the game, you'll reload on line 3694, no matter what that line actually is. So when there are a lot of different patches getting released, the script keeps getting shuffled around slightly. This is what's ultimately causing the saves to break between patches.

I did find a solution to this. If I have small "save areas" located at the top of the script, you can save in those areas and your saves will work between patches. As long as the top of the script doesn't change between patches, your saves will be fine. Originally, I just had save areas between each part. I tested them, and they work just fine. But what I can do is add a few more of these scattered throughout each part, so you'll be able to save in part 3 without worrying about patches breaking them and making you start over. 

To put it more simply, I can make save locations that will still work between patches. The question is, where do you want these saves to be? I can put them at the end of each area, and I can also make it so saving on the world map is safe. Would that be a good solution? I can't directly change how saving works in nscript, but this could work as a workaround.

If you have any other ideas of where I can put save locations like this, let me know. Note that this only affects saves between patches. If you don't patch NG+ constantly, then you can save anywhere unless I outright disabled it (ex: battles, towns).

Monster Girl Quest NG+ Part 3 Demo Update (v. 3-7-2018)

Get the update here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/kgcduenz84m92am
The new areas are Gold Port and the pirate ship.

Two other things.

From now on, I'm probably just gonna release the updates one area at a time, rather than focusing on everything at once. This way, the updates will be more consistent from now. The next area should be ready fairly soon, since I'm going to have much more free time to work on NG+ soon.

Related to that, some people have been asking me for awhile if I take donations, or if I ever would. I said I wouldn't do it until I knew I would be able to work on NG+ consistently. Well, now most of my other obligations are going to be cleared up soon, so I should have more time to work on it now. So I decided to open a Paypal.

If you really want to donate money, you can do it here. Whatever amount you would choose to give, I would be grateful. https://www.paypal.me/EcstasyWasTaken

Of course, if I'm going to be accepting donations, that means I have more of an obligation to release updates frequently. I don't want to rip people off. unlike certain other developers So there won't be any year-long waits between NG+ updates now. I'm going to aim for having a new area finished and released at least once every two months. And for this release, at least, I'm going to be adding small content updates to it in the next few patches. Camp scenes, some UI fixes, and obviously fixes to any bugs that are found.

Also, if you do decide to use the Paypal link, you should know that it'll show the first and last names linked to your account, and I can see that. Obviously I'm not gonna do anything with that information, but I know people would prefer to stay anonymous with things like this. Just keep that in mind.

That's all. Enjoy the new area.

Quick note about the Discord server

 

Concerned Sylph to get your attention.

  

 

I guess some people aren't really familiar with how Discord works. I probably should have posted about this sooner.

You're supposed to download the Discord program, and then click the invite link. Once you do that, you just use the program to stay in the server. If you don't want to download anything, use discordapp.com. You aren't meant to click the invite link every single time you want to check the server. It's not like Mibbit.

Some people have been clicking it over and over again, and now they have over a dozen duplicate accounts on the server. Please don't do that. A couple people were banned for making duplicates every day, but I unbanned them now. If the Discord invite link wasn't working for you, that's probably why. It should work now.

That's all. Demo Still Soon™.









Also, if you make 15 Discord accounts on purpose now to annoy me, I'll just ban you. So don't do that, either.

Demo Soon

So about the demo...

First off, sorry I haven't posted anything for awhile. I was waiting to post when the demo was ready, but I keep getting held up by other things. I was actually going to upload it this weekend, but there are still a few bugs that need to be fixed, and I don't want to release something that's broken after making people wait for so long.

After that, I'm probably just going to release the areas one at a time as I finish them. Partly because it's easier to focus on one area at a time, and also because waiting this long between releases is just ridiculous. Hopefully, I'll be able to release updates more consistently soon. Hopefully for real, this time. I won't have anything else to do after May, anyway.

That's all. Demo Soon.

What to do next

So I'm kind of in an awkward situation right now.

Everything is almost finished, but I don't really have anything in a releasable state yet. I could string together what I have now and release it, but it would feel unfinished.

The biggest problem is that I don't have every girl's route quite finished yet. So if I release what I have, and you want a specific girl's route that isn't finished yet, then you'd be completely out of luck. That doesn't seem fair, so I'd rather at least get what I have up to a more complete state before releasing anything.

What I could do instead is release another demo area for now. There's one area in particular where I only need to finish one more CG and 2 more h-scenes before it's basically done. If you'd prefer, I can get that ready to release instead, and just release it in increments as I finish everything up.

I wanted to have something out this year, but that's obviously not going happen, and all I can really say is that I'm sorry about that. So now the question is, what do you want me to do for January? Do you want the next demo? Should I just release updates as I finish them? Or would you rather just wait and get it all at once?

For December

 

 A very unfitting Sylph picture.

Well, I had hoped that I would have good news to post about, but I really don't. I said that I wanted to have part 3 done by December, and it was on track during the Summer. But of course, that didn't work out. I got really busy in the Fall, and couldn't work on it as much as I had hoped. So it's not quite finished yet.

But I did say I would try to have something released in December. So once the semester is over (two weeks), I'm gonna be spending the rest of December getting what's done ready to release. It's not as much as I wanted, but it's still a decently-sized update. I'll try to have it done in December, but it might not be out until January.

I know it's frustrating, and I really don't mean to keep blue-balling everyone like this. But everything always seems to get really busy when I really don't want it to. It's unfortunate, but I'll try to have something out soon.

That's all. Sorry the news isn't better.

Fight Scripting

 

Just an Eden picture.

Sorry for the lack of update in August. I honestly just forgot to post something and didn't really have much to talk about.

Anyway, I do have some more good news.

The guy who made the wordwrap patch (Hiroku) is now working on tools to make development easier. Specifically, a program that I can use to help create scripts for fights.

Coding the fights is by far the most frustrating part of making NG+, and the fights are usually the buggiest parts of the game. Up until this point, I've had to make and edit the scripts in Notepad++, which is absolutely terrible. A lot of the process could easily be automated (since it's just copypasted code that every fight uses), which is what this new program is doing for me. Once it's finished, making NG+ fights should be much quicker and easier, which should hopefully speed up development by quite a bit.

That's all for now. I'm still working on town segments at the moment.