08/11 Patreon Devlog

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the late update this week. I was going to do it yesterday but ended up having a severe episode of vertigo that lasted most of the day. I was essentially limited to lying on my back and not moving all afternoon.

It was pretty horrible and I wasn't really able to do much at all.

Anyway, here is the devlog a day late

Summary:

• Reworked Jack's story climax and the ending chapters
• Jack's route is over 70% complete
• Started reworking and editing Magnus' synopsis in preparation for starting his route
• Received two new completed BGs
• Worked on a CG for Jack's route
• Coded in some BGs for Caleb's route

The Ramble:

This was a rough week with all the stressful things going on in the world and everyone around me being sick, then me getting sick as well. But here we are….Sunday. Whew.

I spent a huge portion of this week trying to revamp the ending to Jack's route. Jack has proven much more difficult to write than I anticipated. His early chapters weren't so bad but I started hitting problems midway through. I think it was partially due to an outside situation that I am not in control of - something frustrating, discouraging, and, most of all, very distracting. I don't want to get into it since it involves another creator (dramaaaa!), but it is something that has impacted my ability to focus on writing Jack's route without getting upset.

Though it's one of those things I've tried to make myself not care about, I am only human after all. I think that has played a huge role in my struggles to write this character and his route.

There were also several spontaneous plot developments that I really, really enjoy, but that required me to rework things a few times. And, honestly, I really had to do a lot of brainstorming to figure out ways to condense the ending without losing some of the plot elements I enjoy in his route. I reworked it numerous times and had numerous edit/brainstorm sessions where I spent a lot of time ruminating over what would work best for him. The good news is that I finally settled on something I think works pretty well. So the ending has been reworked and now I only have a few chapters left to write before Jack's route is done.

I've also gone back to solidify the plot for Maggie's route. Of course, I already have a synopsis in mind but with several routes, I've decided to scale the plot down a little and make the stories a bit more personal. Maggie's route is one of those. It's easy, when you've got such a vast setting, to create plots that end up being a little too overwhelming for a visual novel. This is largely due to limitations that you have with environments needed to tell a specific story, or even sprites. Bigger plots tend to need more side characters and that's something you have to limit in VNs.

So sometimes I do find myself having to backtrack and scale down a little to keep the assets manageable. I've overcome a few such limitations in Maggie's route, finding ways around them; which is good.

But I already have a growing list of sprite related stuff that's needed. Some of it is just...sprites. Characters I need art for. But some of it involves outfit changes and variations. Sometimes characters appear in ways I don't expect them to and I realise I need additional design elements for them.

For instance, I really didn't think I'd use Brenin in some of the contexts where he's now appeared. And I realised his initial outfit design won't be enough. He'll need some additional clothes as well. Trina was never supposed to appear without her mask or current outfit either. She has a face under there so removing the mask isn't an issue, but there is a scene where I have to show her from years prior, and that requires an additional hairstyle and outfit...and maybe pose as well.

Even Lance, needs an outfit I didn't originally account for, as I show him briefly in an image from before his hair started going white and before he moved to the Wastes. Normally, it's not that big a deal to do a small variation - for instance, the image of Lance only shows him from the shoulders up, so I don't have to technically draw an entire shirt. I could get away with just the collar and shoulders. But then I have to consider that there's an artbook to show such variations off in.

And for the art book, it would be nice to show Lance from at least the waist up. So that means at least doing a half-outfit change for him.

The same is true for a lot of Morgan's outfit changes. I don't have to do them full body if I don't want to. But at the same time, it's nice to spend the extra time to do it for the eventual art book. So I try to do that if I can.

ANYWAY...back to writing. I'll be starting Maggie's route after Jack's, so it's good to get some of the restructuring done now.

Maggie's route revolves a lot around just how villainous to make him. And I'm still undecided on that. I also had to change up a few things to account for changes to world building and certain characters from other routes. (The one council member the player actually meets and sees comes across more sympathetic in the other routes where she appears; but she was quite harsh in Maggie's original synopsis. I had to fix that for continuity.)

It's nearly always necessary to rework my original route ideas and summaries because I do so much 'on the fly' plotting and world building that by the time I get to the later routes, some of the ideas just don't work anymore. (This is why I could never do an episodic style release). Sometimes I abandon ideas, only to somewhat return to them later on as well. When I initially reworked Jack's plot, I abandoned an idea that would have had some Endgame characters showing up toward the end.

And now it looks like I've come back to that plot idea. So that's always an interesting development. I've also really gotten to play around with Brenin (the antagonist) as a character in this route. He's gone through a lot of development and I think it comes across much more sympathetic in Jack's route. That's largely from just getting to spend more time with him as a character. So far he's only shown up very briefly; too briefly to really get a full read on his motivations.

Not sure how he'll come across in the remaining routes, though.

Anyway, we've gotten two additional BGs this week (on the same day. LoL)

The artists are kind of working at the same pace so it'll be another few weeks before we get in the rest of the backgrounds. I'm looking forward to it!

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

I think I showed off sketches to at least one of these, if not both.

The first is a control room from the New Terra space station. Yes, it shows an image of Earth; that's been removed; I just don't have a smaller version of this BG so you guys get to see the one with earth. LoL

And a cave area from in the Twilight Wastes. It's nice to get in some more of the relatively few nature oriented environments. It's been a while!

Upcoming Week:

W R I T I N G.

I mean, that's where we've been for months. It's where we'll be staying for a while yet. I want to get the next two chapters complete for sure this week. Maybe the next three. It's probably a bit much to assume I can get Jack's potato draft done this week.

But I'm going to try. Hopefully there are fewer distractions than there have been over the last few weeks.

I may work more on getting environments coded into Caleb's route. Getting those set up would allow me to get the alpha version sent out to beta testers. Of course, we're still missing two BGs for Cor Solaris and I don't even have the sketches for them yet. So we don't quite have all the necessary assets yet....

But I can at least code in what we have.

Finally, I decided to commission out the wallpaper I owe patrons for meeting our last patreon goal. I don't really have the time to do it myself. So I turned it over to a trusted artist friend with a lot of talent. I'm looking forward to what she dooooes.

I showed her my ideas and sent her some references (including a slightly awkward one I had to apologise for in advance. Rofl!)

Anyway, that's all for this week. I shall see you next week!