Down to the last bits...

With today's progress update, there's just four pictures remaining (well, if you look closely, there's a tiny edge to one of the other scenes still, that needs some wrapping up, but for all intents and purposes, four remaining). That means we're getting real close now, so I wanted to zoom in a bit and share with you what's going on, and what comes next.

The last scenes of this chapter

The first two remaining scenes are closely linked. It's a big whopping sequence, requiring the creation of two new locations, redoing an existing one in a different time of day, has the conversation paper dolls but also characters interacting in a complex way, and with a few different camera angles for it all to boot. 

I think it's the most important sequence in this chapter, and it's a bit do-or-die, as botching this will have this chapter fall flat on it's face. It's also one I've been looking forward to creating for quite a while, and one I hope will, in time, leave you as excited to play as I am to make it.

The final two scenes (the second one is the bonus scene) are less involved. They're still a little complex, but there's some re-use of materials created earlier, and they're quite a bit smaller in scope than the first two. Still, I feel it's important to end the chapter on high and that means there's quite a bit of effort going in there. 

The bonus scene will be a little different from the ones that came before.

So after that, it's done, right?

Well, yeah, in a way. That's all the content wrapped. Then the work comes to get it released. It's the bottom line there on that update graph.

(I greyed out the unimportant stuff and put some numbers in there for easier discussion.)

1. Internal QA. That big wrench indicator fills up as I basically run through the game a bunch of times, testing all the paths, looking for graphics glitches, making sure there's no serious problems, touching up dialog and renders, and so on. 

2. The beta (the three cog-spyglass thingies). Once I'm satisfied it's ready to be shown to the world, we have the beta testing. Those that are in an eligible tier and want to participate can get a build of the game at this time. It's still in a rough state at that moment, and it will have tons of typo's and the occasional bug and glitch, so there's good reasons to wait for the official release, even if you're eligible. That period usually runs for a week, and there's typically two or three beta releases during that time, hence the three cog thingies. 

3. The Android build. We kinda dodged a bullet with the last release, as that slipped in at just a fraction under 2GB, which is the upper limit for Android AKPs. This time 'round, the size of the game is definitely going over that, so that needs attention. I'll try and tackle this one in parallel to the beta.

4. The gallery. It's a really tedious job to get them up to date, but it must be done before the release as well. This too will happen in parallel to the beta if all goes well.

5. Shipping. The actual last step. Making the final builds and distributions. Updating the credits. Remembering that that's the wrong order and rebuilding the final builds and distributions. Noticing an annoying typo. Rebuilding the final builds and distributions. Eh, you get the picture. Even though I'm usually quite jittery at this time, it's not that big of a job, but it still needs to happen, so it gets an icon. 

So, that's the steps remaining. Chapter 6 is nearing completion, and by the time the first two of those remaining scenes are checked off, I will probably be able to give a more precise indication of when it's going out.

You said something about Android?

Yeah. Android builds are limited to 2 GB in size, and there's no way around that. With the resources for chapter 6, we'll definitely be going over that limit. That means I need to branch off the Android source and compress the images for it significantly more than they currently are. 

That will lead to some reduction in image quality, but with Android screens being smaller than desktop screens, that should be less noticeable than it would be on a larger screen. And if there's particular images where the effect is very noticeable, there's always a possibility to replace those with lossless versions on a case-by-case basis.

So, how big is chapter 6 anyways?

Hmmm, hard to say at this point since I've not yet been able to play it end to end, but at the end of chapter 5, the game contained just under 7,000 individual images (which was double the number chapter 4 shipped with). 

Right now it's slowly crawling up to 12,000. The number is a little bit misleading as renders in later chapters - including this one - get chopped up into more individual images than in the earlier chapters, to create more moving bits. But at the very least, it would suggest it's at least every bit as big as chapter 5 was.