27/01/2024 Patreon Devlog

Hello everyone. Here is this weeks dev log!

Ramble

It was another really hard week for me over here.

I was thinking earlier this week about how when you're really used to a baseline of chronic pain and your day-to-day usually involves coping with it and pushing through it to get things done, sometimes you don't really how much you are doing that until the pain hits a flare up and you're in the middle of it being frustrated that you're not more productive.

Only to realise that of course you're not being productive. You are living life through a haze of pretty severe pain and it hurts to do most activities. And it sucks.

My chronic pain has been gradually worsening for the last few weeks. Because it's been so gradual, I just kept working through it without giving it much thought because I'm very used to working through the ups and downs.

But about mid-way through this week I realised that I had been pushing myself to work through pretty severe pain for days on end like it was nothing. I've been exhausted and frustrated and getting gradually more dispirited because it's been so hard to get work done.

The thing is that people always encourage me to "take a break" and "rest" when I'm not feeling great - and I try to do that.

But when you create things (when you write, draw, whatever), it can be really hard to take a break from that. I can't take a break from my brain. Often, even when I'm trying to not think about my stories, my brain is feeding me ideas (and you learn fast as a writer to write that stuff down if you don't want to forget."

So taking a break is easier said than done.

Point is that I've been running on fumes for a while and progress is a bit slow at the moment. Here's hoping I start feeling better soon.

Summary

• Started a new Yren art for Patreon
• More flowchart progress
• Finished editing all of chapter 2
• Coded chapter 2
• Did more maths
• Lore book final short - rough draft complete

Writing

This week I ended up doing more editing than anything else because my hands have been hurting a lot which means typing is actually a bit painful. It's fine if I'm doing small amounts of typing but it's been difficult to sit and type for hours on end.

I did finish the rough draft for the final lore book story but still need to edit it to clean it up a bit. I am so ready to be done with the lore book and art book and release them into the wild. The last short has been tricky because I was really stuck on it

But at least the rough draft is done. Just have to edit and put in the book it will be done. 💪💪

I ended up editing all of Chapter 2 for WSC and elected to go ahead and code that.

We are still a very long way off from being able to release even a beta version of the next chapters but once it's edited, there is no reason to not code it too.

I'm currently doing a slow replay of Chapter 1 and taking notes of any continuity related fixes I need to make.

It's so easy to forget what has been mentioned or in what branches and looking at the entire script, it can be difficult to catch those. Meanwhile, reading the script in the game where I can only see one branch at a time, those issues are much more apparent.

Sometimes it's an issue of future variations not matching earlier variations but other times it's an issue of me repeating things the MC already knows.

For instance, I realised that Fraise tells MC in chapter one that The Ophelia is a research and exploration vessel that does some "resource gathering." But this is something that also gets mentioned in chapter two as if it's new information.

So I will need to edit it a little since Wil already knows that information and won't need to hear it again in the same format.

Essentially I'm looking for and cleaning up moments like that.

One of the other interesting results of having chapter 2 coded is a closer look at the real word count of the game. (This is difficult for the prologue and Ch 1 due to the fact that numerous edits have happened in Renpy, which means I don't really have an accurate pre-coded word count for those parts of the game any more.)

This makes it impossible for me to really get a feel for the word count loss that happens when translating the raw script into code.

The raw script for chapter two is 53000 words but the code script is 48502 words. So you can see that I lost a fair amount of words during the translation of the script into Renpy code.

For those who are wondering why this loss happens and who haven't seen the explanation before, it's a combination of a few different things regarding differences in how Ren'py counts words vs word processing software.

One benefit of this is being able to examine ways that people are most likely going to engage with the content.

• How much "playable content" is in the episode (IE how long would it take someone to 100% the content)?
• How much time would it take someone to play through just one path of the episode and then, how much content is left over?

I can figure all this out with the pre-coded word counts but of course it's more accurate with the coded word counts.

This is all just, as I said, another way of looking at how people are going to probably engage with the content.

Art

I did work on a new Yren art a bit but my hands have been too hurty for much drawing. So I've just worked on it a bit here and there. It's not done yet.

My BG artists have somehow synched up their drawing schedules.

The last finished artworks I got from them were about a day apart. They both handed in new sketches on the exact same day this time. LoL It's pretty funny because they were on wildly different schedules starting out and have just somehow synched up.

BGs are around...43% done or something? I have a pie chart somewhere but I forget the exact percentage. Between 40-45% somewhere. LoL

So yeah...still have a ways to go on that one for sure.

I have been thinking about (but have made no solid plans on) the chapter 2 CGs. It would be nice to start working on those too.

Early CGs are always a bit boring because the characters often aren't really interacting with each other in interesting ways - just talking and getting to know each other a bit.

Other

Fen continues to work on and improve the flowcharts, which is exciting.

There are still a lot of things that have to happen before I can release even a beta of the first episode:

• Flowchart code/tool has to be completed;
• Flowcharts then have to be coded into the game.
• Wil's sprite has to be updated
• Several screens still need to be completed
  • The affinity indicators
  • The gallery
  • The glossary needs to be finalised (it's still incomplete)
• Music and SFX coding for Ch2
• Sprite expressions for Ch 2
• One additional sprite (Cim, Raif's assistant)

There are some other things that wouldn't be necessary for a *beta* but would be necessary for a official release:

• Ch 2 CGs have to be created and coded
• Two additional BGs. The artist was supposed to get these done as part of his first batch but I think he just forgot so I'm going to need to remind him because these BGs are used in the prologue and I really want to have all the BGs updated before I release the first episode.

So yeah, still a fair amount to do before we're to that point.

Upcoming

I don't know. This one is tough honestly. I didn't get a lot done this week because pain. 🤕🤕 And I don't really know what this coming week will look like in that regard. Pain isn't really better than it's been all week so I don't know if it's going to improve.

I've been trying to keep heat packs on everything that can be heated but it's also been really hot here. Which makes heat packs uncomfortable (cold packs don't really relieve the pain as much).

Point is. I'm very hurty. I'm trying to balance taking breaks and also just getting stuff done.

So I will work on STUFF in the upcoming week but I don't know what. Editing, coding, testing, writing...hopefully.

See you then!