18/11/2023 Patreon Devlog

Ramble

Hallo! Time for this week's update. It was a lousy week and our roof is leaking AGAIN. 💪💪

If you are thinking "Wow, Esh. Your roof leaks a lot." - you'd be right. We live under a massive gum tree that drops HUGE branches onto our *tile* roof. It's constantly cracking and breaking the tiles, causing leaks. 

Apparently this time it dropped a branch which STABBED INTO THE ROOF like a javelin. We only knew because a neighbour from up the street kindly informed us that our house had been impaled by an angry tree.

(And we can't remove the tree, no. It's in a neighbour's yard. LoL)

The leaky spot is about 1.5 metres from my desk. So that's going to be super fun to deal with because every inspection (and there will be several most likely) and all the repair work are going to make it impossible for me to do anything.)

*unenthusiastic and sarcastic cheering noises* 🎊

Anyway, that's going to be an on-going issue that will undoubtedly feature in future updates. Look forward to The Leaky Roof Saga II: Stabby Tree's Revenge in future devlogs!

Summary

• Caught back up to Ch 5 edit-wise
• Added in-game achievements to WSC
• Lore book 😩
• New BG + sketch

Writing

So as I mentioned, I decided that I really need to edit 1 full route and address the story changes before I finish the endings of the remaining 4 routes.

And that's what I've been working on writing-wise this week. I did pass 425k which was my next milestone. 💪💪

As per my usual MO, I have been fleshing things out. Not really cutting or changing a whole lot though. I've already edited some of these chapters multiple times so at this point, I've mostly been tweaking small things or catching continuity blips.

For instance, Wil might mention something that I now realise only happened in one specific scenario or choice sequence and I'll have to add in a small conditional so that it reads correctly no matter what you chose prior.

Things like that.

But of course I am making small changes as well.

Previously, I'd gotten up through Chapter 4 but had not started on Chapter 5 I don't think...

I am now almost to the end of Chapter 5. Just one more scene to edit.

So...a pause and real talk about the total estimated word count.

I haven't changed my spreadsheet yet because I don't usually alter my spreadsheets on the basis of where I expect revisions to take me word-count wise. The spreadsheet is based only on an estimate of the rough draft.

But. My previous estimate of 466,000 words was based on a couple of factors.

1. The length of the "common" content being 120,000 words
2. The length of Asher's route being 60,000 words
3. The fact that I expected Kav's route to be around 10-15k shorter than the other routes.

Currently, the "common" route is 132,000 words (from editing, fleshing things out, or adding more choices and conditional moments). Asher's route is already up to 63,000 words and is likely to get much closer to 65,000 words by the end. And Kav's route doesn't look like it's going to be that much shorter if it's shorter at all.

This means that the final word count is likely to be more like...520,000 - 550,000 words.

As I mentioned, I'm not editing my spreadsheet estimates. The rough draft will not be that long - just the final after revisions. So yeah. I think it is going to end up being a bigger game than planned...=w=

As usual. LoL

Art

Received a new BG and a new BG sketch - finally, FINALLY getting the infirmary done. It's the first BG we see on the ship so I'm excited to finally have it being worked on. There are still a few ship-related locations left...

The infirmary, of course. The observation deck, a rec room, a lab...and I think that'll be it for the ship.

The BG we got this week is a maintenance tube. It's very maintenance-y. My brain is struggle seeing this as a tube you cannot stand up in rather than a hallway. I think it's just the size of the text maybe? 

But it is meant to be a little cramped. A good place to hide for illicit smooches.

Just saying.

In other art news, I have been continuing to experiment with the colour slider and Wil's sprite. The thing about this tool is that you cannot dump your art in and throw in some swatches and call it a day. You really have to figure out the best way to colour your sprites and the best way to set up the swatches.

One of the issues I've had is making sure the *head* and *body* are recoloured the same. this is trickier than it sounds because the face typically requires more highlighting than the body but that can throw the recolouring off when it's being done automatically instead of by hand. So there's a lot of trying to play with how dark or light to make everything in order to get it recoloured properly.

I think, though, that I've more or less got a technique down for the grey scale and am ready to move into actually implementing it. So...we'll see how that goes.

Other

In-game achievements!

This is something I've been toying with for a while now since I currently have no plans to put WSC on Steam - which means there will be no other source of achievements for the game.

A dev friend - Feniks - has an achievements tool that you basically just drop into your game and have a working achievements system. All you have to do is customise the screen and add in the specific achievements.

So I thought I'd give it a try.

I ran a quick poll here on Patreon and most people voted that they like achievements while the rest don't really care.

That seems a good enough reason to go ahead and include them since it's not at all difficult.

So yeah. I mean, all I really had to do - as I said - was customise the screen a bit to make it match everything else. And I will have to add in the achievements themselves but that is an incredibly simple matter.

I will need to come up with icons but I already have some basic ones ready to go so...you know.

GS Stuff

There's not a whole lot to say about GS - I am still working on the lore book. I finished up adding all the content about Espers.

I added a section discussing some of the Esper abilities that are seen in the game and I didn't have a lot of that written so I had to write it as I went along.

I'm finally through the Esper-related content and am moving on to the next section which is about factions and groups.

There was a bit in this section that wasn't fully written as well since I breakdown some of the groups within Endgame, but never actually wrote up the descriptions. I have all of that written up and transferred into the official document and have started adding in the Mafia/Organised Crime stuff.

I am still not sure how long the lore book is going to be page-wise but it's crawling towards 200 pages so...more than that probably. LoL

Upcoming

• GS Lorebook
• Writing

So for the lore book I'm really hoping I can wrap that up soon. I think "Espers" was probably the biggest section other than a "People" section - which frankly I'm still undecided on including. Because it's just...a lot.

So hopefully I can make a lot of progress this week on the remaining content.

I will continue editing Asher's route. I'm about 40ish% through it but Chapter 6 and 7, I think, are the two chapters that will need the heaviest editing and fixing. So I am expecting it to be a little slower to get through those.

I have fixed a lot of continuity issues and tweaked information given to the player early on. So I do think that up to this point, things flow much better.

The next couple of chapters are where I'm really going to make some huge changes to the current set up and plot. Excited and nervous for how that is going to turn out but I think that once I have that done, it's going to make it much easier for me to write up the final chapters of the remaining LIs.