Don't take anything for granted
The biggest downside building your own engine are the tiny little features we usually don't even realize they exist, although I have a special love for developing them, unfortunately these details are not super exciting to talk about.
These last days I've been working on the dialog system. Things like, dialog open, progress, text reveal animation... A visual novel engine has these features for free, and people don't realize how complex this can get behind the curtains.
So here is the first images of this effect:
I had already developed the font loading and text rendering, but I had to glue all the pieces together to have the dialog system.
I'll have to spend some time in here as this topic still have more to be done: A dialog editor in the engine, localization framework, user interaction and etc...
I'm planning to post details about implementation in a later stage when I have an alpha build released, so right now I will dedicate all my free time towards developing the game almost exclusively.
The game is 15.5% complete and 30% ready for alpha release.