27/03/2020 Patreon Devlog

Hi everyone! Time for this week's patreon devlog.

This Week's Summary:

• Finished Lance's route
• Edited through Jack Chapter 5
  • Original Six are complete and 54% edited
  • 712,000 words
• Coded Ari's BGs
• Coded new BGs into the game
• Double checked Ari's scoring
• Labeled his choices

The Ramble:

And I did it! The rough draft for the base game is complete. I finished on March 22, nearly a month ahead of my self-imposed deadline.

I have spent the last few days working but also feeling like I have no idea what to focus on.

I started editing Jack's route - Jack, Magnus, and Lance all need to have their first edit done - and got part of the way through Chapter Five. Chapter Five had some of the most substantial edits so far compared to the other chapters:

• I changed an entire sequence where Morgan interacts with a new person who has just arrived at the Court. This is a scene where the player can potentially encounter Rory if they save him during the common route. For some of the scenes involving Rory, there is a different side character/extra that Morgan interacts with instead. But I want to try to keep "Lucas" moments from tracking too similarly to Rory's moments. I don't want it to just be a stand in for Rory. So I edited the Lucas version of the scene so it's even less like Rory's version of the scene.
• There was also a moment later on in the chapter that I initially had set up as a personality based branch. But now there is a full choice menu there (with one choice potentially locked behind a personality trait.) That required me to do some editing of that section and also write up a new scenario

Editing is going fine but I did decide to get away from any sort of writing for a while…

So I coded all the BG scene transitions in Ari's route. Initially I had to use a lot of placeholder BGs because some of the environment art just wasn't really prepped for use in the game yet. I took care of that as well so I could replace the placeholder images with the appropriate background artwork.

For the most part, prepping just involves things like cropping or resizing - but sometimes I have to create new variations and the like. Sometimes I do a colour overlay that makes all the BGs from a specific location fit together a bit better visually.

I also took the time to double check Ari's scoring and quickly try to achieve all his endings. (I think he only has three unless I'm missing a bad ending somewhere….)

I also went through and labelled all his choices according to personality traits. I'm considering...adding a option. Right now we have labels for all the traits + a neutral option. I'm considering adding an "affectionate" because there are some choices that are purely affection/care driven and don't align well to one of the traits.

Undecided on that for now.

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

In BGs this week, we received this one environment. This is a close up of part of Lance's yard. the main image we have for this area is just a really wide angle from an elevated position so I wanted an image that was a little closer to the ground, essentially.

And....here it is.

Upcoming Week:

Editing for sure. I may also start coding in music for the three coded routes. Coding in BGs usually only takes a few hours but music is a bit more involved. Even so...I may at least start working on that this week.

I need to do a full play test of Ari's route at some point so it's ready for alpha testing. I'm not sure when I'll get to that.

I've also been starting to make lists of CGs and Sprites I need to create so I can keep track of progress on art. OWO.

I have two in-progress CGs. I may work on them a bit as well. I have a new (semi-minor) feature I want to put in the game. It needs some visuals done (UI type of visuals) so I am thinking I will work on those and maybe work on getting it set up and coded too. OWO

WHO KNOWS? There are so many things to do and with rough drafts done, I can work on *anything.* So exciting. xD

Anyway, see you all then!