Trembling Essence Devlog 21:☕️Recovery month!☕️
Hiiii hellooo guys, hope the month of September has treated you all well and 🍁🍂HAPPY FALL SEASON🍁🍂! I tried my best to condense things but here's a fairly long(?) transparent update on how things are going behind the scenes.
After getting the results from shop #2 saying that my hard drive is most likely "dead" I went straight into "Recovery mode" to get things back to how things used to be BUT with a new approach after everything I've learned since then.
As a small recap here's everything that's most likely gone:
- All game development progress from March up until July 24th
- The "guide-mark" + other things I had written in my notes
- Day 4
- The new user interface for the game + resources
- Certain folders etc. / Anything I had saved on the laptop and not on the back up hard drive.
It sucks but the only thing I can do is start everything that I'm missing over from scratch which again, will take a good chunk of my time to go through AND I DO NOT want to accidently give myself another episode of "burn out" like I did earlier this year.
With that being said, there was some stuff I did recover:
The first thing I did was redownload Renpy and adjusted things back to my liking and then I took time out to recover my drawing tablet program. By sheer luck I never threw the box away and found the instructions that came with it and I was able to recover most of it! I'm very happy to be doodling again but my art style will be wonky for a while because I haven't been able to draw anything since the crash. Not too long after this I ended up finding some of Noah's Voice lines from an old draft folder but sadly, it's not all of them so I'll have to keep looking. :,,D
After all of this I began backing everything up and keeping tabs by using a big calendar I ordered some time ago. I don't think I talked much about it but the old one I was using was too tiny and I didn't have enough room to write everything down so I upgraded to a bigger one! I was also given some cute stickers to decorate it so I use them as little "check-marks" when I complete something, reminders, etc. I still have a lot to go as far as backing everything up/going through recovered files but I'm making progress even if it's a little slow here and there. :D
Once I felt comfortable enough I booted Trembling Essence back up and this is where things started to slow down a bit.
User interface + game resources:
Since I lost the new user-interface from the crash, it became fairly troublesome trying do re-do everything so I took my time with breaks in between until I got certain parts back up and running again. Thankfully I still have the screenshots from back then so I used them as a reference.
Original version:
(*Please know that the Credit support names in the "Original version" are not real and were just place holders while I tested things out. :P)
New version:
One of the things I wanted to make priority was redoing the "Credits" tab. This is dedicated to those on the "Sweet honey jar" tier on my ->[Patreon] and my play testers that have been here since the very beginning!(Thank you!) From now on this will continue to get updated at the end of each month so I can keep track of the months of support! :D
Unfortunately I lost the different font sets I used in the "Original version" from the crash so for right now, I'll leave it alone until I come across different fonts that might make me change them again. Overall I cleaned up some minor spelling errors, spacing, etc. until I got it fairly close to what I like!
User interface: Gallery....
After I got done with that I went on to redo.... the "Gallery" tab.... Trying to figure all of this out back in early spring was one of several things that lead to my "burn out" so I'm trying to be extra careful to not do that again. Redoing the "Credits" tab gave me a decent guideline on how to do certain things but because of how long it's been, trying to remember all of what I did for each tab is very difficult. One thing I ended up doing is picking apart my old "Endings" gallery and taking what I needed and going on from there. Surprisingly enough this made things easier for me and helped in areas where I was struggling.
Achievements tab:
Once I got situated I started with the "Achievements tab". THANKFULLY I still have the old image file because I only remembered 3 of the Achievements you could earn so I filled it back out. It took a few hours but I eventually figured it out decently enough to get it back together.
Art collection:
Next is the "Art collection"..... After spending some time trying to get this one right, I now believe this part is what took up so much time back then. I won't go too far into talking about it because this would take up a lot of space but there was too much on/off trouble shooting before I was finally able to stabilize it. There's more work to be done so I don't feel comfortable enough saying it's 100% complete but I will take a break from messing with it since I've gotten to a part I can easily return back to.
As for the "Concept Art", "Character Bio", and "Endings" I haven't gotten there yet.
Recovering/backing up everything amongst other things is going to continue taking a good chunk of my time going into 🎃 🦇🍬 👻Spooky month🎃 🦇🍬 👻 but I do want to put time aside to do Noahween polls especially since I can draw again!
Once I'm done with my surprise poll art for Patreon first, I'll do one if I have enough time! :,]
**I'd also like to say this for those that are new here, close to the end of each year I tend to get very busy and this usually starts around 🎃 👻Spooky month🎃 👻 but because of everything that has happened since July a lot of what I had planned got delayed so I can't 100% guarantee how things will go into the end of this year but I'm hoping for the best!
Trembling Essence[New Update]-⚙️Quality of life hotfix⚙️:
I talked a little bit about this ->[Here!] but I do plan on doing a future update to the game! This mainly includes fixing/adding things to the demo I've seen floating around that were suggestions. I don't have a planned date on when this update will arrive but it is something I want to let it be known once I get more grounded. :[]
For right now this is all I can share otherwise, thank you guys so much for all of the continued support while I continue recovering/redoing everything that's most likely gone from the crash. :,D