Pâte à Choux (Demo)

SWON Afterclass Yaptime Notes:

***READ ONLY AFTER PLAYING THE GAME***

I accidentally deleted my entire game description like ten minutes after class ended because I pressed enter on an old "edit game" tab :clown:.  My proof is that my classmates probably saw a longer description during our arcade playtime during class, but I cannot for the life of me remember it at the moment to retype it all.

• the cats were originally humans.  in my head.  however, cats are easier to draw than humans imo.  
• originally, there was a blue chef.  i don't know if you can tell what the blue chef became (hint hint the special extra extra exclusive ingredient LOL) but uh yea this game was about a cannibalistic chef.  
• the more sketchy artstyle IS intentional - i was inspired by that one character from across the spiderverse with the guitar; I remember reading about how the way he was animated being in a bunch of different layers, which helepd make his iconic comic book/scrapbook-like style.  I wanted a similar vibe in that the characters in this would look more like a scrapbook.  
• my greatest failure in making this demo: the sprites
  • the jar and completed Pâte à Choux pastries sprites are SWITCHED... i honestly don't know how that happened because it looks fine in the code
  • as i was turning in this assignment, I added the sprites in as the final step, as I wrote all the code before actually adding in the sprites and backgrounds into the images folder.  AT THIS POINT IN THE GAME DEVELOPMENT, BEFORE I ADDED THE SPRITES, the sprite positions were correct
    • Yoo - this is you.  yoo remains on the left side of the screen the ENTIRE TIME, WITH CHANGING EXPRESSIONS.  however, due to the weird stacking caused by actually adding the sprites into the images file, when I opened the game for arcade time in class, every sprite was stacked in the middle
      • rip the one sprite of Yoo where Yoo is the HUH cat meme (iykyk)
    • Rina - supposed to only be of the right side of the screen when she appears.  obviously, this didn't happen sob
    • Yvette - supposed to only be in the middle of the screen when she appears.  also, after she initially barrels out of the kitchen after delivering ingredients, her sprite doesn't disappear.  this is definitely my fault because I forgot to hide her sprite oops
    • I wonder if anybody noticed that Rina knew about your grandmother without you mentioning her hmmm

• improvements i wish to implement
  • fixing the sprites - i just yapped about the sprites for about 200 words, so uh... ig I would just redraw them in the original human designs I envisioned and maybe add more variety in expressions
  • something I've been contemplating if I ever had (a LOT) more time is creating a live2D idle for the sprites, though, I don't even know if you can upload that type of visual into ren'py as a sprite.  maybe one day...
  • I got feedback to make the dialogue less lengthy, or at least separating the dialogue so it isn't a wall of text, which is so valid (i mean, this yaptime post already is so...wordy)
  • i want to clean up the backgrounds while still maintaining the sketchy aspect, like my stream overlay (I was using procreate for all the visuals of this game instead of my usual in clip studio paint because my wacom, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, would not connect to my laptop sob)
  • Narrative big points: I want to add more hints into Rina's hidden unhinged-ness as a cannibal, and more hints that the blue ribbon chef (her name was Blair) became the special ingredient.  besides adding more content through the actual baking process (which would let you have more conversation with Rina), I wanted there to be breaks in the lessontime where Rina would leave and you would get to "talk" with Yvette, who helps you realize the horror of this cooking class
  • initially, I wanted to have and illustrate the entire baking process, and make more references to the past games in this series (Shoes-shows-You (Demo) and 书 (demo)), mostly in the environment (having the books from 书 on the empty shelves, implementing the parts of Shoes-Shows-You into the design of the chefs...and the jar LOL)
  • i thought we were also supposed to post the game on itch as a downloadable game, not as embedded into the itch page, so I probably need to fix that
  • for the itch page, I wanted the foreground to be the HUH cat version of Yoo as a repeated background, and the background background is just as it is (the kitchen background, but probably the updated better sketch version)
  • I also couldn't figure out how to italicize the text or add the accents to Pâte à Choux in-game.  I literally copy-pasted the italicized text example from the official ren'py page, but it still didn't italicize the text in-game, so i need to figure that out
  • i'm very thankful that we are able to receive feedback in class because holy moly game developing is DIFFICULT...but fun!

• shu MENTIONED!!!
  • as you may have noticed, this game series is shu-related.  who is shu?  a very cool person
  • Pâte à Choux --> Choux --> Choux is pronounced as shoo --> Shoo sounds like Shu --> there we go!
  • as you can see, the kitchen uses the complimentary colors of purple and yellow.  I think of all complimentary color pairs, purple and yellow is my favorite (unrelated to shu's color scheme because I liked it before I knew he existed).  I remember in studio art classes when they asked us to paint still lives using a complimentary color pair and I would take every chance I could to use purple and yellow.  I had to buy new purple and yellow acrylic paints because i kept running out due to my favoritism