04/09/2021 Patreon Devlog

09/04/2021

This Week's Summary:

• Coded sprite expressions up to chapter 11 in Lance's route
• About halfway through with Ch. 11 sprites
• Added four more sprites to the route
  • This required doing some sprite work as one sprite needed some adjustments and the other

The Ramble:

Hey everyone! Sorry this update is coming late in the day. I didn't forget today but I have had a lot going on this morning so I've been working on this off and on all day.

So this week I basically just did sprite expressions. That's it. I started the week with Lance's route started but I was partially through Ch. 1. I am now partially through Ch. 11.

That's a lot of progress for one week. LoL

But Lance's route has a lot of 1x1 scenes with Lance and Morgan only. That makes it go much, much faster. By comparison, the Endgame routes have a lot of group scenes - often with 5-7 characters popping in out of conversations or altercations.

Those take so much more time to set up properly.

I have had to pause to work on sprite things here and there. For instance, I needed to make Morgan some new outfits at one point. I don't recall if I did that before I started coding, or after. I did create an additional hairstyle for her (that I haven't implemented yet) at some point though.

Part of doing Lance's sprite involved implementing four new sprites to his route. Though his route is largely made up of just Lance and Morgan together, there are some side characters - six to be exact. And two "Bobs".

I have implemented four side characters - Edan, Finch, Lin, and Vireo.

I'll implement the rest as I get to them. (Two of them appear later in other routes so getting them completed means they'll already be set up by the time I get to the routes where they appear).

For some of the characters, I had to go in and create their expressions (I often don't fully flesh out expressions when I get the base sprite done) before importing them. One character is an android who is severely injured in the route. And I had to create his injury as well because I had it sketched out but had never rendered it.

So Wednesday was all about finishing up those sprites and importing them.

I was still able to make really good progress on the route. Chapters 11 and 12 are exclusively Morgan/Lance. Chapter 13 will be a bit of a chaotic chapter. As it usually is. And Chapter 14 will actually be a bit more difficult than usual as well.

Either way I expect to have Lance complete next week and I'll pause to work on some flowchart stuff then.

I've been thinking about the two remaining routes I need to do expressions for and I think both Caissa and Jack's route should go a little faster than the Endgame routes for the most part. Though there are a lot of side characters in Jack's route, when I was thinking of the scene layout - there aren't that many group scenes. Even though a lot of side characters cycle through, they're often engaging with Morgan in small groups. Either 1x1 or 2x1. So it should still go relatively quickly until about ¾ through the route.

The same is through for Caissa's route until about ⅔ of the way through, at which point it will get a little more tricky.

Either way I think they should at least go faster than, say, Caleb's route.

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

When you misplace a sprite and it takes several minutes to figure out it's not missing...just...placed badly.

Clearly very intelligent decisions await you all in this route. Nothing can POSSIBLY go wrong here.

Upcoming Week:

Obviously I'll be working to finish Lance's route. The next two chapters will go by fast. I'll have to pause to set up some new "Bobs" for Ch. 13, then also pause to get a couple of side characters set up for Ch. 14 as well.

But as I said, I still expect to have Lance's route set up soon. Then will set up flowcharts and hopefully push out Caleb's route for beta testing. Maaaaybe by the end of next week?  I'll set up Lance and Magnus' flow charts but I won't push their routes out at the same time as Caleb. I'll probably leave at least a week between them just for everyone's sanity.

And of course, when flowcharts are done, I'll start coding sprite expressions....*probably* for Caissa's route.

I feel like I've founded the corner a bit when it comes to sprite expressions and while two routes is still a lot, there's an end in sight for them. And then it'll be CGs!

It's clear the game won't release by the end of Q3 like I was hoping but I'm still going to shoot for "before the end of the year." Regardless when the exact release date is, progress is happening and it's very cool to see it coming together. OWO

I can't wait until updates are able to include teasers for game CGs >3

Anyway, that's it for now. See you all next week!