Various UI Improvements

Today I've made a ton of UI improvements that were needed to the game. I've added a complete list to the update notes (which are still in progress) but here are some highlights:

•  Pressing numpad 5 will open up the travel window. You may have noticed before that the layout of the buttons are arranged similarly to a compass. With North being the topmost button, West being the middle left button, etc. Now you can use the numpad to walk in these directions.
• You can use numpad 7,8, and 9 for NW, N, and NE
• You can use numpad 4 and 6 for W and E
• You can use numpad 1, 2, and 3 for SW, S, and SE
• You can use numpad * to enter sleep mode
• You can use numpad 5 will exit the travel menu.
• Pressing the alt key will cause the available actions to show you a hotkey associated for each action. You can memorize them, or press alt a billion times before pressing an action to reference what button will trigger what action. 
• There will be some issues with this, but that's why alpha testing is good. When I release the update (keep your fingers crossed, hopefully later this week around Friday/Saturday) you all can help me find them :D
• (Older change, but not really mentioned on this blog) There is now an option window to customize your UI a little bit. It's not perfect, but you can change the following things:
• Colors for virtually all game buttons and text (foreground / background)
• Change the font and font size for the main text window
• Enable and Disable borders around the text boxes
• Change Text Alignment (not yet implemented)
• Make the game window maximize on loading or simply stay at the normal size
• Choose to stretch the graphics (default) or simply let them remain their native size. Making them *not* stretch is not recommended. It's lazy of me, but I got tired of constantly resizing every image so it would match the graphic window. VB automatically does this if this option is enabled so I don't need to bother. If you disable this, some images will go beyond the borders. I will definitely consider more options for the window including stretch to fit if people would like that.
• New Item Screen!
• No longer are there a billion buttons with each item and a clunky weird ass system of looking at, using, selling, and dropping items. You can just click on an item in a list of items to get a description. You can click use to use them, etc.
• There is the option to equip items in one of two item buttons. When you equip an item, it will appear on the main window and allow you to use the item WITHOUT going to the item screen. This has been implemented and works great.

That should be the bulk of the changes. I look forward to making this game available to test later this week (hopefully). Just don't expect too many changes yet. I keep saying this a lot, but I really don't want people to be expecting a lot of new content yet. This version was simply to redo the engine. While I'm rambling, let me once again just highlight the planned future development after this version (boy do I love bullet points):

• 0.10.6a : This will be a massive rehaul of the old engine. The new engine is based upon  the .NET framework and should be more accessible and ideally less buggy. I will open a "0.10.6a" bug report post for people to comment on. I will work on fixing your reports.
•  0.10.7a : The plan is to make finish this as quickly as humanly possible. I hope 0.10.6a is not very buggy...but that's a laughable prospect only because programming rarely proceeds perfectly. Once 0.10.7a is released, the game will enter "closed" development again (keep reading if you want to know what I mean).
• 0.20.0a : This is an internal test version. This will not be released on the blog. The intent is to release the game only at large intervals (every 0.20 versions, so 0.10.0a, 0.30.0a, 0.50a, etc.) so that every time a new version comes out you will have a larger amount of content available with each release. I don't want to release every version because then by 2 hours after a release you'll have explored every nook and cranny, that's no fun (for me :p)
• Did you really enjoy 0.10.6a? I hope you did. If so, and you were kind and spent some of your time kindly submitting bug reports, decided to write an event, or helped in some other way you have a chance of being invited to test 0.20.0a! I can't guarantee you all will get a chance to help test it, but I will invite you based on a lot of factors that matter only to me really :p
• (Note: Don't ask for 0.20.0a if you don't recieve a copy, it's not for everyone's consumption. Please wait until 0.30.0a. If you do ask me, I will never give you an invite for a beta. I know that sounds harsh but I want to shield my mailbox ahead of time just in case :p)
• 0.30.0a : This will be the next big release after 0.10.7a. This will feature a ton of new content. The starting city of Pornicle will be completed and roughly half of the surrounding area around Pornicle will be completed. The game will now feature the combat system (which may or may not be half implemented) AND the sex system (think of a combat system but based upon sex instead) will be in place. You will be able to push the transformations you can get into Pornicle to higher levels and start receiving some more extreme events and transformations. I feel 0.30.0a will give everyone an almost complete example of my goals for the game.

Vacation

I'll be going on vacation for about five days. When I return, I plan to get the rest of the events transferred to 0.10.6a. If all goes well, I'll have 0.10.6a up and running by the end of next week :)

Market Events and the Update Log

Things are going smoothly, market events should be finished in the next day or so...I'm about half-way done with them. That just leaves the park and river and then 0.10.6a will be released.

For those who are interested, I've been regularly updating the 0.10.6a update notes. While obviously 0.10.6a is not released yet, it's worth checking in every once and awhile to see what's in store for the next version.

Couple Screenshots

I decided to post a couple screenshots. One is just a picture of the game with a random interaction with the police officer outside of the apartment. The other gives you a quick glance at the new inventory window. You'll notice that there also is a carrying capacity. Like most RPGs, key items are mysteriously weightless.

"Usel" tem?! WTF?

Random Interaction with Police Officer

Items work!

Just a mini-update for now. Items work, yay! Now I need to figure out how to make multiple pages of items (groan). That shouldn't be too hard though.

Also: I've been adding patch notes  to the Update Notes page as they develop. This will give you a preview as to what changes are in store for 0.10.6a (not counting bonus bugs!)

Just a general progress report

Thought I'd give an update, things are going along nicely (albeit a bit slower then I wished). Items are still being a bit tricky but it's nothing I won't be able to tackle. Here is where I'm at currently:

Current Progress for 0.10.6a

• Starting Events
• Apartment Events
• Including a new one made by Echorid ;)
• A female version of this event needs to be written still, I plan to do so.(Echorid took care of this, and actually gave me an idea of some items to add to the odd peddler in the market)
• Jail Events
• Lucid Dream Events
• Residential Street Events
• Marketplace Events
• Park Events
• River Events

Items

   Items and their usage is taking a bit longer then I anticipated to implement, thus the streets are taking a bit longer =\. That said, it shouldn't take too long. It's nothing compared to the difficulty of making the event parser.

Making some progress.

First the always exciting progress report!

• Starting Events
• Apartment Events
• Including a new one made by Echorid ;)
• A female version of this event needs to be written still, I plan to do so.
• Jail Events
• Lucid Dream Events
• Residential Street Events
• Marketplace Events
• Park Events
• River Events

I want to get at least the residential streets done today, if not the marketplace. The event editor rocks and makes this process much easier. I should also make a note that that Echorid's redone lucid dream events have been redone and are included!

Speaking of the event creator, I made another update to it again:

• New Stuff
• Added an option flag to display if the player has does NOT have a cock. This is useful for female only events.
• Added a  version number at the top of the event editor.
• Bug Fixes
• Fixed the variable change command so it now adds the initial " [ " bracket.
• Fixed a bug where the multicock flag would not appear.

While I understand no one really has a use for the event creator, if anyone wants to toy around with it the newest version will be up minutes after this post.

Tacoking needs to get some fresh air and run some errands before updating the game further, days off are hard to come by so I need to get the most out of them ;)

Event Creator Updated!

   I've updated the event creator to actually save debug information. I am now working on getting the apartment events translated into the new game system code. So far so good. A Checklist if you will:

• Starting Events
• Apartment Events
• Including a new one made by Echorid ;)
• Jail Events
• Lucid Dream Events
• Residential Street Events
• Marketplace Events
• Park Events
• River Events

When I finish with all the above, the game will have been converted from Liberty Basic to Visual Basic. Now that I have my tools completed (Event Creator) it shouldn't take too long. I think I've given a week or two as the time frame. Hinge on two weeks but be happy if it takes less time.

Welcome to the Pornarium Blog

  Hey all!. I've been requested to set up a blog for some time. I have done so. Anytime I update the game I will post it here. My updates may be vague at times or simple, but I'll keep you all in the loop. An example of a vague entry may be:

"I have made the code less cluttered. It no longer makes me want to ram my head into a wall."



That said, again, I'll keep you all in the loop :)