07/01/2024 Patreon Devlog

Ramble

Halloooo~oooo everyone! Time for this week's update. (Sorry for just now posting. I wrote this then forgot to post it. 🤣🤣

Summary

• Finished editing Ch 9 and Ch 10
• Brainstormed the final side stories for the lore book
• New finished background
• Worked on.....A CG. *dramatic music*

Writing

I finished revising Chapter 9 (Asher's path). This means that "common" route has been fully edited. All common scenes have had one major overhaul.

I also quickly finished up with Ch 10.

Asher's route still has two chapters left, which should be a little faster to get through.

So...here is where I am with the writing and word count.

By the end of last week I was thinking "Asher's route is going to end up at 75,000 words."

At that time, the common route content - including all branches and choices (bearing in mind that sometimes there are like..6 choices in a given menu) was about 157,000 words. It's currently about 159,000 words.

And I know that this is going to be longer.

This is because I did reach a point where I had to consider what happens to the player if they don't end up with a love interest. There isn't really a non-romantic or platonic path in the game but this means one of two things...

Either there's a default route (Asher would make the most sense) but the player gets off-ramped due to low stats. Or the player doesn't get put on a default route and still gets off-ramped relatively quickly due to not being with a love interest.

I never really liked the idea of a default route (even though I think that, with Asher's personality, it could make sense) so I ultimately decided that there's a short neutral path before off-ramping into endings. This does mean that in many cases I need a 7th scenario that is non-LI focused.

Initially the "off-ramping" was going to happen quickly enough after the LI lock-in that I wouldn't need too many neutral scenarios - like...literally in the next chapter.

This ended up feeling a bit rushed. There is an off-ramp there, but it's one that ended up making more sense to have set up as a player choice. This means if the player doesn't choose to off-ramp in chapter six, they stick around. And stick around....and stick around.

The final off-ramps happen in Chapter 9.

This very short (essentially 3 chapter long) neutral/no-LI situation increased the word count and will increase it more because some of the neutral scenarios actually still have to be written. I'm currently considering it part of the common route and counting the words as "common route" words, but I guess, in a lot of ways, there is kind of a short "non-love interest path" I could be counting separately.

Anyway, that was a bit of a rabbit trail. The point is that the non-LI-centric content is about 159,000 words right now.

Asher's route is 75,000 words (it's like 74,946 or something - but we round up in this house. LoL) and is likely to go up more as I change and flesh out the remaining chapters. I don't think it's going to hit 80,000 words but it's going to go over 75,000.

What I'm getting at is that I don't see any way for this project to stay under 600,000 words.

I try to make all the routes match closely word-count wise. So if I calculate ~75k for each love interest + ~160k for the common content...that's 610,000 words.

THAT SAID. I should point that this is the uncoded word count. That means it's higher than the final word count. Possibly by quite a lot. With Gilded Shadows, I lost about 50,000 words of the total word count during coding. So it's almost definite that the coded project will indeed be less than 600,000 words. Probably more like 550-560k.

I don't know the linear word count yet."Linear" word count is basically the length of one path through the story with one set of choices. Essentially how much the player sees on a single journey through the game.

I don't even know if I'll have the patience to sort that out honestly.

But maybe when Asher's route is finished, editing-wise.

Art

Received a new BG.

Worked on a CG.

So for a while now I've been saying I was going to work on some of the love scene CGs to work out the nudity question, etc.

I'm also getting a feel for Wil's hair situation and what that is going to be like to manage in CGs since I have to re-draw the hair 8 times in every CG.

So yeah - nothing to really show in that regard - right now its a grey, bald person with sketchy hair kissing a bright red person. And no one wants to see bald Wil.

(LOL flat colours sure are fun).

Maybe I'll show a sneak peak when it looks less disturbing. 🤣

Other

GS Stuff

Just trying to brainstorm some of the final stories. Unfortunately there were a few characters I never had any specific ideas for side stories, after stories, background stories or anything for.

So I was working to come up with something for them all.

Everyone has a concept now and I have been working on trying to flesh them out and get them written.

And re-do the Reuben one that I lost (which I think I mentioned on the server but not here. I had a WIP Reuben story I was working on and my laptop ate it).

So yeah. Still getting the extra story section finished up.

Upcoming

Editing Asher and finishing up lore book stuff.

It is useful to actually have some guidelines for myself to follow for the lorebook stuff.

And it's a relief to be past Chapter 9, which is the last chapter with "common" content.

The common content will unfortunately have to be edited and revised as I go through each route (though I imagine I'll have to make fewer and fewer tweaks) because I obviously have to make sure it reads smoothly for all the routes.

But it's nice to finally be done with common content and now I can edit the remaining bits without any consideration for the other love interest routes because the final chapters are entirely exclusive to each LI.