DevLog 07/29/25: Tweaks, Optimizations, & Skill Tutor 3.0

Happy July '26

This months Dev Log is focused on clean up I've done to the code, visual optimizatons, as well as a ui overhauls done that affects the whole project. Let's get right into it. 

Updated Title Screen:

Pretty straightforward. 

Window Skin Improvement:

There was a time where the window skin was really minimal. I hated that so I added a little bit of pop to the Main Menu UI with custom window and command backgrounds. That left all the other menus with a bit to be desired:

While I still appreciate the simplicity, in certain environments the legibility of some elements was tough. Also, I wanted to embrace color a bit more after the Main Menu overhaul. And so:

Taking visual queues from the new Title Screen background, I've updated the Window Skin for the game to utilize the same color pallet. 

This new  Window Skin will be used whenever a custom graphic isn't set for a menu, and carries over into the Text boxes that pop up as well. On the note of text boxes, they will no longer take up the full width of the screen when characters are talking, instead they'll be smaller and centered on the top or bottom of the screen for dialogue. 

Prologue Complete (again!):

I did a run of show for the game's prologue to make sure all switches, variables, and events were set up correctly. Surprise! They weren't after the last big code overhaul I did haha. As of today, NPCs move as they're supposed to, switches toggle when needed, and variable based eventing is handled appropriately. I also combed through dialogue to update any naming conventions were updated. While "complete" I will be doing another QoL update before the Demo is released to allow for more streamlined updates of names. Particularly those characters and terms. Instead of hardcoding names into dialogue, I will be using either escape codes or text replacements. This is particularly important as I will likely allow players to name the characters themselves. 

Displaying Skill Variations and Information:

I have a custom function that handles writing skill information into the Help Windows in battle and for the Grimoire Menu. In a previously update (shared on the forums) if skills had a "Support" variation the descriptions would sit side by side. With the font color used to help differentiate between "Assault" and "Support" variations of the skills. In battle, only the description of variation that would used was drawn.

Visually clean, but this created a limitation as to how long the skill description could be for each variation. If either description was too long, we ran the risk of a very cluttered help window. I decided to increase the height of the window and update the layout of the variation descriptions to better fit and be more straightforward.

The color cues still exist, but now the words "Assault" and "Support" appear so there is no confusion. I've also added in a separator between the Skill Name and descriptions to frame the section off a bit more.

Skill Tutor 3.0:

In DevLog 7 and  DevLog 8 I covered the revamped Skill Tutor. After updating the Main Menu I wondered which Menu to visually upgrade next, and landed on the Skill Tutors player would be visiting throughout their journeys. 

The Skill Tutor was already a unique scene that did a lot of work, so it definitely deserves its own pizzazz. Having such a frequented menu be visually so cookie cutter bothered me. So I leaned into the "Tutor" aspect of the scene.

Skill Tutors will almost exclusively exist within the various Academy locations in the game. As such the NPCs handling this functionality will have access to a nice chalkboard to help with their instruction. Functionally nothing has changed, though I did optimize text placement and removed redundant windows (like the command window) while moving the help window to be the top of the chalkboard. Now the selecteds Skill  description will appear there. (and a personal note to self to update the helpWindow to make sure we're showing the support description too! hurray for finding bugs at the end of a dev log!!!)

EDIT:

Fixed it!

Last edits to this scene will likely be an update to the cursor. I'm not super fond of the old purple cursor, but the new orange one isn't visible enough. Will play around with it. 

I didn't realize how much work really went into this last month but I am proud of the progress I've made so far. On a personal note I am moving August 1st and still on track for an end of August Demo release ^_^.  Fingers crossed that the next DevLog is categorized as "Major Launch".

Until then,

See You Online,

- Puppet