Devlog 21/08

 Hallo everyone!

Time for this weeks update! I was going to try to get it up a little earlier but had to pause several times due to interruptions.

I feel like this was a productive week in terms of breadth of stuff accomplished. So here we go! 

Summary:

• Got Caleb's script fully imported
• Completed Ari's route editing
• Completed Ari's first CG
• Acquired four new BG sketches
• Completed Caissa's editing
• Imported Ari up to chapter 7

The Ramble:

So this week was a busy week! 

We got our BG artists all working on a new round of BGs. This week we acquired four new sketches. Keira tends to sketch a BG, then work to complete it. I think that's the method Son does as well. Vui tends to sketch  multiple BGs, then works on rendering that group before moving to the next group.

So within the next week I expect to maybe get a couple of finished BGs and some more sketches. This is our first time working with Son Huynh but I'm really hoping it turns out well. His style is a good match so I'm hoping he supplements our existing artists well.

Okay so beyond BG stuff, I worked on Ari's first CG. It was already mostly complete - I really just needed to shade Ari's hair - and have been planning what the other BGs in the route will be.

And finally….onto the writing component.

So I finished editing Caissa's route. It was pretty easy and went pretty fast. For the most part, the heavier edits were toward the latter part of the route which is pretty normal since there's more plot happening in those routes. 

So far, I think Caissa's route needed the fewest edits, though. I also completed Ari's edits but his route needed more than Caissa's. It makes sense because he was the first route I wrote and that means I spent some time getting a feel for how I wanted to handle the branching.  I also found a few small inconsistencies that had to be fixed as well.

Overall, those routes went by MUCH faster than Caleb's which was a right mess. 

So now I'm focusing on getting everything imported to the game engine. It takes about an hour per chapter, and all the routes have 14 chapters.

Caleb's route is entirely imported. I ran through it once just try to catch any obvious errors. Because of the personality branching and that aspect, it's necessary to test multiple times to really see all the content but I've gone through it once to make sure it works mor or less.

Now I'm working on importing Ari's route and am on chapter eight.

As I mentioned last week, I always run the chapters through an editing software before importing them. It's pretty fast because it's focusing on high level grammar issues rather than things like structure and story. 

This software (prowriting aid) lets me do multiple types of checks and can do anything from catch "echoes" (basically when you use the same word more than once in very close proximity), overused words like "just" or even if you're over using phrases like "I felt like…" 

I can also do a basic grammar/spelling check that is a little more accurate and thorough than Scrivener or Word. So that catches a lot of my missing (or needed) commas and helps with consistency for hyphens and things like that.

It does a style check that points out if I'm relying too heavily on passive voice or using too many adverbs.

There are also a lot of other check it can do but those are the three I rely on most. It's really helpful for just doing a final clean up of the writing before it goes into the game. 

It's not infallible by any stretch. I'm sure it missing things and sometimes it's not necessarily as helpful because…*thinks how to express it*

First of all, sometimes repeated words happen because of branching. So if there are three personality branches with similar information in them but different overall tone to how it's relayed, I might use similar phrasing. So maybe the word "just" is used in all three branches. It picks that up even though it's not really a normal overuse of the word.

It also yells a lot about some of the formatting I use specifically for Renpy so I've had to learn to ignore when the software is annoyed at my formatting tags or the way I use " " around everything.

And sometimes, like any editing software, it's suggestions are outright silly or wrong. But, as a whole, I can do a lot of cleaning up with this software so I find it pretty useful. 

Anyway, it takes around 45 minutes per chapter to run through those three checks, then another ten or so to actually import the chapter and reformat everything. So overall, about 1 hour per chapter. 

I have around 20 chapters left to do so there's about 20 hours of work importing before I move on and start focusing on writing Jack's route.

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

This week in backgrounds……..

And CG sneak peek

Upcoming Week:

Finish importing Ari, finish importing Caissa...then start working on the next batch of routes, starting with Jack...then Magnus, then Lance.

Of the three I kind of expect Magnus to be the most difficult one but we'll see!

I expect to finish importing Caissa's route by early next week so I'll hopefully be well into Jack's route by our next update - barring any unforeseen issues!