Method: Spent the first half of the day cleaning up my code in preparation for tests, as well as coding a neat little function that allows for room background frames to fade in/out (something that AGS itself doesn't provide). The idea was that I'd finish my revisions relatively quickly, and then add spend the bulk of the day adding more effects onto my existing cutscenes.
...Then, while randomly searching the forums, I discovered a module that not only solved a movement problem I'd been having but also does all the stuff I did yesterday. Only better.
Great.
So anyway that was a fantastically useful discovery that meant I had to rewrite the bulk of my code again. I think I've mostly got it working now, but... yeah. Bit frustrating. If only I'd thought to use 'tweening' as a search term last week.
Outcome: Anywho, today basically a whole day of backend stuff, with minimal new things to show off. But! I did have enough time to make a few changes to yesterday's prototype.
- Panels can now fade in and slide in at the same time. This adds a bit of visual flair. It also means that when a panel suddenly appears with no tweening/vfx, the latter is much more jarring and can be used to emphasise sudden action.
- Panels can move around! In the above demo, the player character's portrait moves up when they look "down" at the handle of the freezer. Very simple to do, looks cool, and the motion can indicate where certain characters are looking. Legit looking forward to experimenting more w this one.
- Not shown, but it's also possible to change the width and height of panels (so they expand/retract). Unfortunately it seems like the module only allows things to expand from left-to-right/top-to-bottom, so it kinda... doesn't look all that night with my panels. But! I'm sure I can find a use for this regardless.
- Objects can also be tweened, and moving Objects/GUIs in general is way less jittery than previous builds (yeehaw.)
This scene still isn't quite looking the way I'd like it to. Possible avenues of exploration tomorrow include;
- Getting the black borders to slide-in in time with the background changes when shoving your head in the freezer. (The idea being that it "zooms in" and gets more cramped)
- Maybe have the black borders in the second part be animated, squiggly black lines?
- Fix tweening on the animation of the arms.
- Have some mist come out of the freezer when the door is opened/experiment w/ other particle effects
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Maybe try polishing the artwork to see how it all looks together...?
- Maybe try applying this new module to my old scenes?