24/11/2023 Patreon Devlog

Ramble

Helllll~o! Time for this week's update.

Leaky Roof Saga:

Someone came and verified the roof is leaking and it's going to become a bigger problem if it's not fixed ASAP.

Rain continues. Ceiling looks like it's going to become sentient soon and explode alien spores all over me.

🙃

Chaos continues. I did make progress this week but it feels like I did not. LoL.

Summary

• Working on Chapter 5.5
• Did some extraneous art for fun and relaxation
• Other Stuff (™)
• New BG stuff

Writing

Okay! So I have been working on chapter 5.5 which is actually shaping up to be a little longer than expected.

I did think we were going to hit the 15k mark for this chapter - which is actually still a bit short (quite short really) for a chapter in this game. That's why I've been thinking of it as a supplementary chapter.

It's now looking like it's going to be over 20k for sure. I'm not sure how much over 20k. 23,000 is the absolute minimum for this chapter but I would say probably 25k because there's a really big scene I need to write + the chapter resolution/wrap up.

And of course 25k is the rough draft. I know parts of it need to be fleshed out. So it's looking like it will shape up to be a pretty respectable chapter.

I think it actually really fleshes out the setting as well and makes it feel like there's more to the galaxy than this one ship and crew.

Plus, there are some new silly lines from Asher, which is always welcome.

Art

I did work on some art but mostly not game art...ha ha.

Just character art that I did for fun. Because sometimes I have fun instead of working. I have fun by....doing things that are related to work.

Ha ha ha.

Ha. 🥲

In other related news, I think I've settled on the colour range for the slider for Wil's sprite BUT...but.

I really am going to have to have my programmer set up the sprite because right now I cannot make the individual parts recolour properly.

So Wil's head and body look great.

And then the lips are grey scale. So that makes for some hilarious and disturbing imagery.  (NOT as disturbing as the time I accidentally had the lips set up to be the same as the hair colours. LoL. That was hilarious).

So yeah - finishing up the colour sliders is back burner until the programmer has time to do it.

Other

I am thinking of hiring a secondary BG artist to take over some of the current background list and do a few extra BGs for me.

I've reached out to someone and we've been chatting back and forth. We now just need to solidify the agreement and move forward.

The current background artist is doing great and is making steady progress; it's just that there are a lot of BGs and it'll get done faster if I split up the work. Plus, every time I want to add more environments for different scenes, it's just going to add to production time. So...yeah.

We'll see how that goes!

I did finally get the new infirmary BG, which I'm happy about. And a sketch for the 'observation deck' - which is one I'm really excited to see. OwO

So yeah!

GS Stuff

Worked on the profiles.

I also worked on some of the additional stories and snippets. I've been adding them to the lore book but also just finishing up writing some of the side stories I wanted to get included. Some "LI PoV" stuff, or explorations of what might happen after some of the bad endings, and stuff like that!

Upcoming

Writing, lore book...and that's it.

Hopefully not being taken over by the alien life form clearly growing in my ceiling and feeding off the rain....

Purgatory continues.

As a side note - I try not to talk about it too much but I've been having some health issues (chronic pain related) that have actually been making it quite difficult to work for long periods of time. This is honestly taking a pretty big toll on my productivity. I've been fairly open about the issues with my hand - though I think I haven't always been clear that sometimes due to the pain in my right shoulder, wrist, and hand, it's actually difficult to type because the pain extends down into my fingers as well.

I haven't really talked much about having issues in one of my legs that prevents me from being able to sit or stand for long periods at a time.

This can make it quite difficult to just be at my desk drawing or typing. I have ways to cope with and manage the issues but this past week has been particularly bad. I guess it's a "flare up" (though I don't usually use those words to talk about my chronic pain issue but I guess it's appropriate....).

Anyway. Yeah. I'm hoping it calms down in the upcoming weeks. The weather has been really weird lately so I'm assuming that's why there's been such a sharp increase in pain. ;o;