20/08/2022 Patreon Devlog

20/08/2022

Hi everyone! Posting at the normal time this week! LoL!

This Week's Summary:

• Finished coding in sprite expressions
• Some minor sprite fixes
• Finished coding in audio (music and SFX - including some new SFX)
• Finished 1 CG including all the recolouring
• Made minor tweaks to Quill's intro CG (of the 'no one can tell but me' variety. LoL)
• Started coding in glossary links

The Ramble:

So this week I finally finished coding in all the sprite expressions with the exception of the minor characters. Technically their expressions are coded but they have no art yet so the game just shows a placeholder sprite. But in the end, they make up a teeeeensy portion of all the overall expressions.

Even if I'm being super generous and assuming that, combined, they have 50 expression changes, that is probably 1% of the overall total. So even if I have to make adjustments when their sprites are done, it's a very small amount of work. Expressions are, for all intents and purposes, complete.

I also finished adding all the audio - that includes music and SFX throughout the route. I had to get a few additional sounds, but not too many this time around. And that portion of coding is done.

I made some minor changes to Quill's intro sprite - nothing major...

I mostly added some shading around his eyes and changed the lighting a little. I did also complete another CG that was in progress - I made it a long time ago. Probably close to when I first started doing any CGs for the other routes. It was meant to be for Jack but then didn't align to the blocking of the scene, so I thought maybe I'd use it for Reuben (since it just had the bases sketched in) and ultimately decided to use it for Quill since it fit his scene.

But it required a lot of re-drawing and fixing. I had to completely re-draw Morgan's face and hair, and also do substantial redrawing of Quill's face and hair. But I cleaned it up, fixed it and did all the recolouring for (and file saving) - so it just needs to be coded!

I went through the route and plotted out where all the other CGs will be. Usually, I have a few specific CG moments in mind but as I write and code the route, I also make notes of where to put others. But I really have to look at where they are placed within the route so I don't have all the CGs clustered in the same three chapters, for example.

I always have certain moments that will get a CG no matter where they are in the route - First kiss, love scene, best ending, bad ending. The others, I try to space out as I can so often scenes I like get ruled out because they happen in the same chapter as one of the four "definite" CGs.

Anyway! So yeah. That is done now too.

And I think that covers everything I managed to get done this week!

Sneak Peeks:

Upcoming Week:

Okay so this week I think I'm going to focus on flowcharts and glossary links. I'd really like to have those finished before beta testing this time around. And I will probably (maybe) try to get the remaining sprite art completed as well.

My hand has been giving me some trouble again so I'm trying to be really careful about spacing out the artwork and not over-doing it.

I have all the flowcharts templated out so I just need to make the official images and code it all in.

So yeah. I'm not sure when, exactly, I will start beta testing this route. I'm torn on whether to do it before the CGs are complete or just wait until they're done so we don't have to go back to re-do them. The CGs are the "biggest" remaining chunk of work though. Once I get to those and finish them, it will really just be the usual list of small things to finish up.

So the route is definitely coming along! It's around 80% complete now so I just need to finish up the last things and ship it off to be tested. 😤😤

That's it for now - see you all next week.