Steamberry Studio

14/01/2024 Patreon Devlog

Added 2024-01-14 06:58:21 +0000 UTC

14/01/2024

Ramble

Hello everyone. Let's jump into this weeks's update.

Summary

Finished editing Asher's route
Worked on some route stat stuff
Worked on lorebook side stories...
- Then lost one to the aether. *pained smile*
New background sketches

Writing

I finished revising Asher's route. The final word count was 76,000 words. So...yeah. That turned out pretty much as expected.

What I was doing all week (before the week imploded and became upsetting) was actually doing some work on writing statistics and organisation.

I really wanted to take a look at the linear word counts for the game. My main reason for this is just trying to understand the branching structure a little better, which can tell me a lot about what the player experience will be and how much content is in what part of the game.

So I took some time, now that I have one route fully edited, to have a look at the branching and what's going on with it to get that sorted.

I also have been making a spreadsheet of the game variables.

Variables are used to track "game states" - you can think of every choice you make as establishing a specific state of events that have happened (vs those that have not). Not every state of the game is tracked in a specific way. Sometimes we track the state of things in a more cumulative way (this is typically what any sort of point metre is doing). But a lot of times we do track specific aspects of specific choices.

In a game like Gilded Shadows where the character routes are self contained so I don't necessarily have to remember things as much. But in When Stars Collide where everything is overlapping, there is a much greater need to remember what was said and to whom.

That just means there are a lot more variables to remember. And I decided that it would be helpful to have a proper spreadsheet of them.

I did some writing and editing but the first half the week was really more aimed around organising. And then the week imploded.

And the last half of the week was stupid and bad things happened and yeah. LoL

Art

Received two new BG sketches this week. One for a lab on the ship (I thought we were done with ship BGs but it turns out........NOPE! One more LoL!) and one for Daaz's apartment!