Welcome to this update post (26) for "a ghostly desire".

THANK YOU for your interest in this project!

The game engine swap has been going on for almost three month now
and I want to share a little update log.

I have divided the process of the swap into different phases.

First step:
These are the basics, for the game itself.
- Individual locations
- Connections between locations
- Interactable objects and interactions itself (output when interacted by the player)
This first step involved 499 single tasks, I had to do, to have the "basic world" playable
and logic-wise connected to travel through every single location in AGD and interact
with everything, which is possible like in the old engine!


Second step:
This step included the integration of every NPC animation within th game world.
Like: Dayna sitting on the couch or working in shed or Nancy standing on the Ranch.
There are currently 25 world animations wihtin AGD, that had to be integrated!


Additional to that:
During all of this above, I had to prepare the new coming "portrait-images",
which is common to use within Ren'py.
Since this did not exit in the old engine, I had to do them from scratch.
Based on the current character count in AGD it would(!) end up with round
about 770 new base portrait images.
For one character  with one expression it always have a "day" and "night"
and a "looking left"/"looking right" version (32 basic portraits per NPC).
I am currently working with 8 impressions.
Of course, not every character requires everything mentiond but several
character requires several outfits or/and halfnude/nude versions.

To throw around some numbers again:
Base portraits done: 177 of 768
Nude portraits done: 72 of 183
Additional story portraits done: 68

Also new for the upcoming portrait images are new portrait
backgrounds, which looks a lot better behind the characters instead of
looking at the regular location screen!
The old interact images are still in the game and refine the story that are told
instead of having all the time only the portrait images talking to each other.
Which, I hope, makes it more dynamic to experience the storys and the different
situations within those storys!

Third step:
Now the real game logic starts!
Based on the ingame days I started to add the main story line day by day.
Supporters already know, that I release every ingame day as a version to test
around and to get some spoilers before anyone else,  until the next
version (alpha 0.7) finally comes.
I also adjusted a lot of stuff.
I have rewritten a lot of conversations to make the storys a bit more
intense in some situations.
In terms of "content", however, it still remains the same in the end.
I didn't change any plots or anything.
..just make it a bit even more believable for the player experience!
(..at least I hope so! :) )

But I have changed some things for convinience .
Due to the main story line, the main character now
think about what to do next, after a previous step is done..
Not always but often enough.
On day one, Dayna is interactable within the living room and will give
some hints what to do next, in case a player don't know.
I removed some "useless" decisions that a player could make,
especially due to the "banking secret" quest line.
I rearranged several stuff on day 1 and day 2, to make the questing-part of the
game even more liniar and to have a more understandable "timeline" while playing 
through  those days.

Additional to that, I integrated the money system already, even if the influence of money
is not really importet at the current state of the game.
A new shower event will be there to discover with alpha 0.7!

Currently I am at the end of ingame "day 2 of 3" and will finish that within the next couple of days!
Day 3 will be the latest "engine swap-day" and day 4 is then 0.7 already!

Fourth step:
All door events must be integrated!
That includes 27 individual events.
(incl day 3 and day 4 gets its events with alpha 0.8)

Fifth Step:
The picture collecting game, the tablet and the spycam feature!.
The gallery on mc's desk and the hidden pictures will
be integrated, almost at the end of the engine swap, just because
it is easier to implement it, if the logic around is done.
Also the tablet and all the functions around it will be done at the end
of the engine swap.
The spycam feature is from now on also a "seperate" event.
If a player don't buy the cam, it doesn't matter, within the old
engine, this wasn't possible due to questline dependencies

Conclusion:
Still a lot of work to do!
..to setup a game within a new engine from scratch is a shitload of work.
Especially if you don't use any copypaste code from anyone..

The second of august would be the 6month mark, which is (+-) my average
"new-release-frequence".. but to be honest, I don't think that I will hit it for alpha 0.7
My current goal is to finish the full swap until then.
But as I said, to recreate almost 2,5 years of work from scratch is nuts, but it's still fun
and I am on it!
I am really looking forward to keep working on the alpha 0.7 regularly instead of re-doing
"old" stuff day by day..

If you want to keep track of the progress or wanna
have a look what is already done in particular:
https://trello.com/b/UJheZYEv/a-ghostly-desire

best
~Sitho