#weekly program update

Week of May 26th:

Accomplishments this week:

Some minor bug fixes & cleanup

Disabled some of the default keyboard shortcuts that were causing issues

Solved VN animation issues

Goals for next week:

Cleanup real-time texting and regular texting to write more similarly

Non-main menu save game bug fix

Beta testing is in progress! Join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server for more information.

Week of May 12th:

Accomplishments this week:

Many bug fixes for real-time texting -- it is now ready to be released as a fully-fledged new feature!

Fixed a problem with text message previews

Real-time texting properly returns you to the conversation after viewing a CG

No longer flickers the VN screen when finishing a real-time text conversation

Wrote up the user guide sections on real-time texting

Goals for next week:

Edit/improvements to the User Guide for cohesiveness

More real-time texting tests

Look into odd animation issues during VN mode

Bug fix needed for saving a game not at the main menu

Beta testing is in progress! Join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server for more information.

To learn more about the program, check out my #MysMe Program tag

Bonus:

Introducing: Mysterious Messenger!

Yup, it’s finally that time -- I’ll be distributing the program to beta testers for testing later in the week. I’ll have a post with more information on that shortly. I’ve also set up a Discord server to handle things like bug reports and file distribution. You don’t have to be a beta tester to join -- it’ll also be a place to follow program updates and discuss with like-minded members. Find the Discord Server here.

To learn more about the program, check out my #MysMe Program tag

And, in case you were looking for the usual update, here’s some info below the cut:

Week of March 31st:

Accomplishments this week:

Swipeable album CGs! I’m really proud of this one; I used drag-and-drop functions to have the program detect whether you’re swiping to the left or right. It skips over any locked images in the Album so you can view them all seamlessly

Wrote up a User Guide section on timed menus

Added a new hacked background + the slowed-down hacked background music

Added voice for Yoosung’s example phone call using Ren’Py’s auto-tag feature

Modified MC’s “phone” version so their dialogue disappears more quickly

Added a message when loading that says “You have X unread emails” etc

Goals for next week:

Came across an odd bug that crashes the game if you load up the same file twice in a row without doing anything after the first load; fix

One more ‘hacked’ background to hunt down

Look into allowing users to upload their own profile picture for MC (you can do this behind the scenes via simple code but you can only cycle through pre-programmed options in the game itself)

Beta testing is in progress! Join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server for more information.

To learn more about the program, check out my #MysMe Program tag

Bonus:

Week of May 5th:

Accomplishments this week:

Improvements to the text hub’s message preview to be less bug-prone

Text message notifications only show up once to notify you, rather than showing up after every chatroom if left unread

A few small bug fixes for real-time texting

Goals for next week:

More real-time texting bug fixes

Continue updating User Guide on real-time texting

Beta testing is in progress! Join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server for more information.

Week of April 28th:

Accomplishments this week:

Lots of progress on real-time texting! Fixed a bunch of animation issues, emojis and CGs display properly, and you can pause/play conversations like you do in chatrooms

Also I added a fancy animation to the footer when the conversation is done just ‘cause ^^

You can now back out of a real-time text message conversation, which essentially cancels the conversation much like hanging up a phone call

Text message popups work for real-time messaging, too! I made some improvements to the way they display so that variables don’t get cut off and the message preview won’t go on too long

Made some quick fixes for text message and email notifications so they can’t interrupt your phone calls or chatrooms

Goals for next week:

Get real-time texting ready for release! Aka cleaning up bugs -- backing out of viewing a CG full-screen causes some issues, as does viewing a real-time conversation after a VN

Continue updating User Guide on real-time texting

Modify text message notifications slightly so they don’t continue notifying the user even if they haven’t read the message yet

Beta testing is in progress! Join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server for more information.

Week of April 14th:

Accomplishments this week:

Real-time texting! It’s still quite buggy so I haven’t released an official update for it, but it’s looking pretty nice. It means that text messages act more like mini-chatrooms, where you can have a more real-time conversation with a particular character

Although Ren’Py doesn’t support the Python libraries I’d hoped to use to allow players to update their own profile pictures, I can, however give the user a folder they can drop an image in which will then be cropped and resized by the program without needing to name it something specific

I’ve made some improvements to the way you write text messages -- now it more closely resembles how you write chatroom code

Goals for next week:

Bug fixes! Especially for the real-time texting. In particular, there’s an animation bug once the messages go past a certain number

I also need to figure out how I’m going to handle the player being able to back out of text message conversations (or if I want to allow them to do that at all)

Consolidate some of the text message code for easier reading/parsing

User Guide section on the new real-time text messages

Beta testing is in progress! Join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server for more information.

To learn more about the program, check out my #MysMe Program tag

Bonus:

Week of March 17th:

Accomplishments this week:

"Hacked"/glitchy effect added! There's a variable you can toggle on/off to make the chatroom timeline do the glitch effect we see in Ray Route

Rewrote profile picture scaling so you can use higher-quality images now

Wrote up requested User Guide sections for things like customizing the route select screen and keeping a route locked until a certain condition is fulfilled

Added some fields to the Chat class so the program can auto-colour generic speech bubbles for you

Cleaned up code for the Settings screen and made it look nicer

Improvements to custom UI changes (animated choice buttons, better fits with the black-and-turquoise theme. Optional, of course, toggled from the Settings screen)

Goals for next week:

Create an example chatroom to showcase the additional "hacked" effects that can be used

Further test timed menus to possibly release as an additional feature

Thanks for your patience while I was travelling! The program is shaping up very well ^^

Beta testing is in progress! Join the Mysterious Messenger Discord server for more information.

To learn more about the program, check out my #MysMe Program tag

Bonus: