10/11/2024 Patreon Devlog

Hello everyone! Time for this week's update. 

Let's get into it.

Summary

• Finished setting up the unlock statements for Ch3 and Ch4 flowcharts (over 200 total)

• Finished all the expressions for the side characters through the Episode 2 content

• Finished Yren's expressions

• Finished Raif's expressions

• Started Asher's expressions

• Finished one of Asher's CGs finally

• Finished one of Noel's CGs

• Started one of Yren's CGs

  • CGs are now about 40% complete

• Worked on...an art book

Art 

This week I received a new finished BG for later on in the game and a new sketch!

And I also finished up with Asher's CG. I was mostly done with that one but needed to finish rendering out the background.

I started on and finished one of Noel's CGs. Another one that needed the background fully rendered in. He's standing in a location that is just off screen of the in-game background so I had to draw in most of what was behind him.

I like how the CG turned out (it's okay I'll hate it in two weeks, as is tradition).

And finally I started work on one of Yren's CGs.

Overall the CGs are about 40% complete. I still have quite a few to go but I'm just kind of working on them between doing other things and spacing it out so I don't hurt my hand.

Technically another bit of art related news this week is that I decided to compile an art book for Black Tea patrons.

I had gone back and forth on this for a while. Typically it's hard to release an art book until you actually have all the art but since the game is episodic anyway I decided that I can just update the art book with any new stuff each episode just like I'll be updating the guide and everything else.

The main reason for doing this is that a lot of times when it comes to art that goes in the game you get a small and sometimes highly cropped version of what I actually draw. So I've been wanting to release the full sized images but then got a little stuck on exactly how to do that - just zip them up and dump a file on Patreon?

I ultimately decided to go the 'more work' route and bundle it all into an art book that looks nice.

So here we are.

I've been putting that together here and there as well.

Coding and Other Stuff

This week I went through and added all the unlock statements for the flowchart. 

The flowchart is basically a multi-step process.

First I have to build the flowchart by creating the node layout for the flowchart page itself. But once that's done I have to go through the script and added an "unlock" statement for every single node that appears on the chart. This is what makes them light up as you encounter scenes.

For Episode 2 there are over 200 individual nodes

Like the GS flowcharts, the visual representation of the flowchart is simplified from the actual story branching. Certain things aren't represented on the flowchart because it would get too cluttered if I tried to put every single variation or branch on there. So a lot of times a scene may have several callbacks to earlier choice options or may branch in some way depending on things like who you sat next to back in chapter 1 - but those small variations don't get nodes of their own.

Even so, there were still more than 200 nodes for Episode 2. 

Beyond that, I worked on sprite expressions.

I went through and coded expressions for all the side characters who appear (Lerin, Fraise, Gates, and Kaeto) to get those out of the way. And now I've started on the love interests. Given how many expression changes Wil had, I would imagine each LI will have somewhere between 300-400 expression changes.

It's a little hard to quantify expressions accurately but I would say they're about 70% coded at this point. I really am trying to do a little a day because it is so tedious and actually gives me a migraine if I do too much at once.

In this episode, certain characters appear less in the common portion of the routes because Wil is working either on the bridge or with Daaz. 

If Wil is working on the bridge, well, Raif, Yren and Kav don't work on the bridge. If Wil is working with Daaz in the cargo hold, none of the others are present.

Obviously all the characters have the same amount of 1x1 content but during those common scenes certain characters aren't appearing as much.

This definitely doesn't continue past these chapters because the focus of the plot shifts away from the sort of 'every day ship duties' and into other areas.

But these two chapters are really set up to establish Wil as trying to settle back into normal life (which, for them, means doing everyday things like repairs and item cataloguing.)

This means certain characters will need more work when it comes to expression coding since they're a little more present in these two chapters.

Upcoming Week

• Continuing work on the Yren CG

• Maybe starting one of Kav's CGs (if I finish Yren's)

• Finishing up sprite expressions

• Probably the bonus scene if I have time

I'm getting to the point that the only necessities left on my list (as in 'I absolutely cannot release anything without this stuff being done) are the CGs and the expressions.

The bonus scene is a bonus - I can technically release the episode without it. The guide is a bonus. I can definitely release beta testing without it...

And I can technically release the beta version without all the CGs as long as I get them done before the full release. So yeah! I feel like I made good progress this week and will continue to just trundle along getting stuff done