03/03/2024 Devlog

Ramble

Hallooo! Time for this week's update. It was a pretty good week. Nicky returned from being overseas for two weeks so that's been a bit of a distraction for the last couple of days.

But it was only for a week and now he's travelling again. It was nice to have him back, even if he was loud.

Onto game updates.

Summary

• Revised Chapter 5
• Proofread Ch 5 and formatted it
• Still updating menu screens
• Continuing the David run
• Sprite improvements
• BLINKING? *blink blink*

Writing

I am done editing chapter 5! OMG. It has been a SLOG. This chapter was so long. *crying*

I had to do a fair amount of revision which isn't surprising.

Repetition Fixes:

One of the issues I've run into is just repetition...

Initially, in regards to other people interacting with the MC, we had a progression like this:

In Chapter 2 the others are focusing on MC's physical well-being. How are they recovering?

In Chapter 3 they start focusing more on the MC's emotional well-being. How are they adjusting to the situation?

And then in Chapter 4, originally, the characters were starting to query about the MC's future plans. Are you going to stick around once we get back to populated space?

This issue is that I inserted a new chapter between the old Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.

And what ended up happening is that some of the questions of the MC's well-being that felt natural before, now start to feel a little repetitive.

So I've been finding and fixing a lot of those conversations about the MC's adjustment/well-being. I think I'll have to continue to clean those up once I can do a smooth playthrough in Renpy because that sort of thing can be hard to spot in the linear script but become way more obvious as you're reading in the game.

But yeah, this has been one big area of revision.

Otherwise I'm just cleaning up continuity issues that are related to some of the major plot edits I made to Asher's route.

Route Lock-in

One of the other issues with Chapter 5 is the route lock-in itself. I have gone back and forth on how to handle the lock in.

The simplest strategy is to allow the player to choose through one specific choice.

The struggle I have when overlapping route games like this allow a direct choice is that sometimes it creates a quite hollow experience. This is especially true, I think, in games that allow you to flirt with everyone through the whole game while forcing you to interact with them all equally. But it's an issue in other games as well.

My struggle is when the MC has been openly flirting and/or spending time with other people, then is allowed to suddenly commit themselves to one character...and no one talks about the fact they were playing the field five seconds prior to that.

Not only do the other characters not acknowledge the MC was flirting around. But the MC themselves usually acts as if they're super devoted to this one person as if they weren't eyeing up everyone equally. There's usually no narrative indication of their heart turning more towards this one person gradually. It just happens very suddenly.

As a writer, this scenario just annoyed me and I didn't want to allow it (or force myself to write six additional variations to account for instances where the player raised their score "too high" with multiple characters and it needed to be discussed.)

So a single choice option like this was never on the table for route lock-in.

The other main option would be mapping the lock-in exclusively to the point system and turning it into a true tournament style where your choices cumulatively decide which route you end up on. The issue is that I have several things I dislike about this strategy as well.

1. Unless you have really clear sign-posting it can be difficult for people to figure out how to get on the route they want.
2. You need really meticulous point tracking because you have to know everyone's possible total points, how many points the player has with every character, and then how those totals line up to each other. When the route selection happens you really need to know all the possible scenarios. What happens if no one's score is high enough? Is it possible to have a two-way tie? A three-way tie? What happens in those scenarios? Etc. Etc.
3. BALANCING. One thing I really would want to avoid in this method is having the official lock-in happen at chapter 5 when, secretly, the player is already locked into a love interest in Chapter 3 or something because they've accidentally gotten one person so high the others could never catch up. Ideally, in a tournament, at least two people remain viable options until the very end of the tournament. That is incredibly difficult to make happen.

So the point is that I've altered the route selection multiple times - making it more complex, simplifying it, etc etc.

Eventually I settled on (to no one's surprise), a hybrid option. It's a combination of your score up until the lock-in section, as well as a few specific choices.

There is a little bit of a tournament aspect but there are also specific choices you have to make in order to get on an LI's route. And some of those choices will or will not be available to you depending on what your affinity with the target character is.

This greatly simplifies the process and avoids the pitfalls mentioned above (or lessens them significantly).

So I'm really happy with that.

Moving On

I'm now moving into Chapter 6, which I've called "Chapter 5.5" in the past. It's the most recently added chapter which I added in primarily for pacing control - and some plot development.

This chapter hasn't been revised at all really so I definitely need to clean it up a lot, I'm sure.

Art

I've received two new finished BG and a new sketch. BGs are 48% done.

I have also been saving and updating some sprite improvements and variations that have been done for a while but just need to be implemented. A lot of it is really small stuff that I think won't have much impact on its own but should have a cumulative impact of making some expressions a little more interesting.

But realistically, players aren't going to be able to tell I moved Kav's default brow position down by 5 pixels even if I can tell that it flattens his neutral expression and makes his other expressions more dramatic by comparison.

Other

Finally sent out the lore and art books.

Also, I added blinking. Ha ha.

Blinking is something I've been wanting to add to games for a while because I do feel like it adds a little more life to the character's faces. But it always seemed like a pain in the ass, given how my sprites are set up.

A friend has worked on a plug in that made it incredibly simple to add them. So that's been really cool

And now everyone blinks. Ha ha

Still tweaking things like blinking speed and what have you but yeah! Blinking!

    WhenStarsCollide-Snapshot - 3 March 2024 - Watch Video

Upcoming

Revising Chapter 6.

That's probably it, really as far as game development/work - at least what I'll be focusing on.

I always work on multiple things but have one main focus which, this week, is revising chapter six.

Trying to get everything edited up to the ending split so I can finish drafting stuff and yeah. Got a ways to go!

ALSO....someone asked me what is the difference between revising and proofreading...

You can think of it as revising means major edits and rewrites. This could mean cutting out two sentences or rewording an entire section of dialogue.

Proofreading is checking for spelling/grammar issues and doesn't involve major rewrites.

It's too hard to both revise and proofread at the some time so I essentially do these separately. I do a revision sweep of a whole chapter, fixing major issues...then I do another full sweep of the chapter but this time will be proofreading and looking for small errors.

Typically, after I format the code for Renpy and start looking at it inside the game, it means more revisions and fixes. And then more proofreading but that kind of hapens as we go along.

Anyway, yeah! That is all for this week and I will see you next time!