Hey, it’s December! That means 2021 is almost over. While it didn’t suck like 2020, it still… kiiiiinda sucked. We can now begin throwing out ill-fated hopes that 2022 will be the year things start going better.

Let’s start with game news! I finished writing a scene this week, yay. But the bulk of the work I was doing was something that… doesn’t really fit on all those neat dials I’ve been using to track progress. It’s something I’ve been kinda wanting to do for a while, and that’s “UI Improvements”. That’s not really the best fit either; let me explain!

As I learn more about what I can do with the game, it’s more stuff I want to have done. I want Mythos to be presented in a cool way, since just the writing alone may not be enough for some people. Plus I’m basically like a crow, wanting to put in all the shinies. I’m not going to go overboard and put in like… a combat system, or mini-games, or anything like that. I mean general presentation-related items.

This week, I made two nice changes. First, I cleaned up the interface for when you’re presented with a choice. I thought the Ren’Py default looked a little strange, plus the choices had huge-ass gaps between them that made it look way too spread out for my tastes. Now we got something cleaner.

I kinda wanna move the location of the choices somewhere, but I don’t think that’d really work. If I move it to either side, it could be blocking the images in even worse ways. I can’t move it to where the text box is, because sometimes the text box has information on the choice you’re making. It’s most likely going to stay right in the middle.

Speaking of the text box — I’ve made a subtle change so that the white letters have a little bit of a black outline, which can help readability.

Seems like a pretty small change, right? You probably can’t even tell I did it. But you can when I show you… THIS!

Where did the dialogue box go?! Did I get rid of it? 

No, you fool! I’ve given you… OPTIONS!

There’s now a new slider on the bottom-left of the Preferences screen that allows you to set the Dialogue Box Opacity to whatever you want. Even at the highest level, it’s not completely opaque — there are reasons you may need to see if there’s something behind the box (Achievement hunters take note). But now you can have it totally clear if you want to see Tara’s ass as much as possible or something.

Now I’m on to some personal life stuff that kinda affects game development, but not really. If you only wanna see the progress points, skip this part and go to the dials.

So I’ve been hit with some sadness this week. Not sure what caused it, but I’ve been doubting myself, thinking people don’t care about Mythos, etc. Seasonal depression? Holiday blues? Who’s to say? It’s just that pervasive feeling of “does anybody even care?” Why am I telling you this? Am I going to stop working on the game? No, of course not — but I’ve always promised 100% transparency about where things are with Mythos, and this is part of it. 

It’s a pretty quiet time in general, so I don’t see much talk about the game. Combined with my absolute hatred of the Christmas season, and some shitty things going on at my mortal job, it’s made for a pretty morose Nine. I’m taking the weekend off (which is usually when I get a bulk of the Mythos work done) to decompress a bit. It’ll likely pass sooner rather than later. 

??? Stuff completed:

• Complete Side Image Revamp (135 images)
• Story Flow Chart
• Scene: Apologies to the Serling Estate
• Scene: A Little Help from my Friends
• Scene: Yeah, About That…

Stuff in progress:

• Creation of a few more characters (0/? – starting from scratch 🙁 )
• UI Improvements
• Scene: Shantay, You Stay (Writing)
• Scene: It Goes to 11 (Writing Complete, now Rendering)

Stuff to do:

• Scene: Ah, My Goddess! 
• Scene: Touched by an Angel
• Scene: Fuck the Police
• Scene: Ventrilo Harassment
• Scene: It’s Been Revoked
• Scene: Who Ya Gonna Call?
• Scene: Cry Little Sister (Was writing, but scrapped what I had)
• Scene: Fancy
• Scene: The Lyin’ Bitch and her Wardrobe
• Scene: My Immortal
• Scene: Magic, the Gathering
• Scene: Grumpy Old Men
• Scene: Werther’s Original
• Sex Animations (0/8 – if I do them?)
• New Music Tracks (1/7, maybe?)
• Chapter Three Title Screen (yay, more work for Morgi)
• Fight Ascians on the Moon (0/???)

Keep the Legends Alive!

– Nine