26/03/2022

19/03/2022

This Week's Summary:

• Finished playtesting Magnus' Route
  • CG tweaks
  • Mini CG
  • SFX
  • Visual effects
  • Etc
  • Content Guide
• Made a new Itch.io page (Draft
• Starting setting a new demo file
• Lots of other CG tweaks
• Worked on alt text situation
• Maybe did some writing???

The Ramble:

Hey everyone! So this week's ramble!

First of all, this week I finished my SLOW playtest with David (Microsoft's default voice) LoL. I was able to find and fix a TON of errors so it was well worth it. But damn. That was tiring. LoL

As usual, I added SFX and other missing assets into the route as I played and corrected typos. I will probably do a pass through the common route but not with David. The common route has been tested extensively by this point and I think it's probably not needed. But I do want to do a playthrough and check for continuity issues as some developments in the route may necessitate some changes to early interactions.

Another thing I did this week was a CG check. I just kind of went through and checked the CGs for any that I wasn't totally happy with and felt I could make *easy* fixes to improve. I'm not doing any major fixes - for the most part nothing that involves re-drawing any of Morgan's parts. It's such an ordeal to correct Morgan because everything is recoloured and it often means re-colouring AGAIN and resaving all her variations. But if there are small fixes I can make then I am willing to do those.

I did make corrections to a few CGs and need to get those new files into the game.

I also remembered that Yuu had a little anomaly that needed to be fixed in one of his expressions, so I did that. (He appears a lot in Magnus' route so I re-discovered the issue while playtesting). I also changed his hair slightly. *again* LoL

I was going to say that I worked on writing Quill's route this week but to be honest...I'm about 99% certain I dreamed that?? Or maybe I didn't. I honestly cannot remember if this actually happened or if I had some kind of vivid writing dream (which, honestly, has happened before). I *might* have worked on writing?? LoL I don't know. 🤣

I now am back to a check list of things I need to do before we can release. Obviously, testing will continue up until release but I have a lot of polishing and "admin" things to do.

I want to create a new demo file with some asset and content updates (no expansion - just updates). But this means essentially duplicating the project and scaling things back, then making sure I don't break anything. Which I worked on yesterday.

And I need to make a new game page for the full game on itch.io.

So I started doing that as well.

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

Nothing this week unfortunately. I didn't take any clips. I'll try to post some long and short ones mid-week for you!

Upcoming Week:

Okay so this up coming week, I will be working on ticking things off the "Small Thing To Do List."

Finishing alt text - working on the demo version, working on the new page, making some hyperlink issues in the glossary, finishing the alt text, etc.

We are still at the 99.9% stage and will probably be here for a while. There are just a lot of things to finish up. But we are SO CLOSE.

I'm going to try to push out an updated beta for people to test glossary stuff.

Anyway, for those who want some fun game stats...

The base game will release with:

Just over 700,000 words with each route averaging about 108,000 words. At 250 words per minute, this means the game should have over 40 hours of playable content on release.

There are 52 full, unique CGs not counting the variations and mini-CGs, but a total of 73 CG images if you count the variations and the min-CGs too.

There are over 200 backgrounds if you count all the variations (such as the day/evening/night versions) and around 40 character sprites (not counting the unnamed Bobs).

Morgan's sprite file includes over 900 individual files at this point. And even though there are only 73 CG images total that the player sees in the game, there are over 1200 files in the CG folder because of Morgan's customisation.

In case there is anyone wondering why everything is taking so long and why testing and double checking and polishing is such an ordeal...well, this game is huge.

So yeah. Leaving you with those numbers, I will see you all next week! 

~Esh