25/08/2024 Patreon Devlog

Hello everyone! Time for this week's update!

Let's jump in!

Summary

• Finished Noel's playthrough

• Started Kav's playthrough

• Finally got the colour slider in the game with the help of Windchimes who was slightly traumatised by Wil's teeth.

• Worked on the guide for reasons

• Coded all of Wil's expressions through Chapter 2

• New Music room coded

• New Gallery coded

Features

So the main NEW thing this week is that the colour slider for Wil's skin is finally in the game. Currently Wil's hair is still only either silver or black. There are just story reasons and practical reasons for not implementing a  slider for Wil's hair.

The skin tone though, now has a slider and a much larger range than the original three.

Another thing I am trying to work in is a list of potential default names for Wil.

Play Testing

I finished Noel's play test and have started on Kav's playtest. I've already had to make a couple of changes and additions as I realised some early choices and other things were really geared towards Kav...not existing.

And I realised they were going to come across strangely as they currently are. So I've made some additions.

By the way, when I first coded the game, it was like 616,000 words or something. Yeah. It's up to 621,000 now. 

That's mostly from me adding in new choices and new choice options. This is mostly from coming across choices that only had three options where I felt I really needed one for each LI. Or places in some LI routes where there was a long stretch with no choices, etc.

The choices in this game are not geared towards plot changes so much as MC reactions or relationship development and character scenarios so it's often not difficult to add in minor options and additions if I need to. So yeah.

I ended up having to revisit the guide. Initially I got in my head that because Kav doesn't show up until Chapter Three, that none of the choices through Ch 1 and Ch 2 mattered for him and I could just not not make guide pages for him.

But as I started his test play, of course, I realised that was wrong.

First of all, there ARE choices in early chapters that align to Kav and demonstrate affinity for him. In other words, there are choices that give you "kav points" early on. And I actually added a few more instances of it.

Also, it occurred to me that due to one place in chapter four where the game looks at who you have the highest affinity with and gives you content based on that, I needed to make sure that players targeting Kav actually have the ability to get him in the lead despite the handicap that he has a disadvantage in the point area due to showing up so much later.

This means that his early chapter path is really about avoiding raising points too high with anyone else so that you can quickly get your affinity with him higher. 

The point is that I needed to go back and create a proper guide for the first two chapters of Kav's path.

And finally I finished coding all of Wil's expressions through chapter two. Ugh. 

I still have to do the LIs. But MC usually makes up half the expressions in a given section of text. Chapter two is nearly 50,000 words so it's actually a really big chunk of story to code expressions in.

Upcoming Week

This week my main goals are to:

• Finish Kav's playtest

• Start Daaz's playtest

• Make some kind of progress on expressions

• Finish Noel's CG

• Prep a couple of BGs for the game

• Edit and code the bonus scenes for Chapter 1

• Get started on the flowcharts (the base plug in was created by someone else for me so I have to just get my hands on the code and start working out how to sue it.