14/08 Patreon Devlog

Hey guys! 

Time for this week's devlog. On a Friday morning, no less!

WONDER OF WONDERS.

Anyway, let us jump in!

Summary:

• Got Caleb's script imported up to Ch. 10
• Completed Ari's route editing up to Ch. 10
• Completed one of Caleb's route CGs
• Acquired one new BG artwork

The Ramble:

WHEW. Starting with Caleb's script importing. 

So before I actually import the script to Ren'py, I try to run them through my editing software to catch any residual typos or small grammar issues that should be fixed. (I actually did forget to do this for the first 2 chapters. LoL. Oops.)

This is usually pretty fast because the corrections are typos or missing words or "Hey, you've used the word 'just' like 54523343 times. Please remove some??"

It's just a final pass on cleaning up the writing before it actually goes into the game. As I've mentioned, importing the script is fairly easy. It's really about reformatting a word document style script into code. There's a lot of find/replace and a lot of indenting and adding missing colons or proper scoring and conditional statements, etc. 

Then I have to run a few checks for any errors and make sure the game boots up with the new content in place. 

What I do not do at this stage is add assets or fine-tune the scoring or actual play-testing of the route. I just want the content in the engine and I want the to load. That's it.

Anyway, I have five more chapters of Caleb's route to import. I haven't decided if I'm going to actually code in placeholder backgrounds or just leave it for now. We'll see. I'll probably end up coding in placeholders. Unfortunately, the rate the BG artists working (one is at 1 BG per week and the other is at 1 BG per...3 weeks...and we're still trying to get a third person on the project), it'll be a while before I have Caleb or Ari's backgrounds. We have some from the EG headquarters but only 3-4. 

Vui has completed his current batch and hopefully he's still up to do about...10 more for us because we'll be giving him some of the remaining EG backgrounds we haven't given to Keira.

ANYway...

Ari's route, as expected, is much easier to edit than Caleb's route. It's really far polished in general because I didn't have as hard a time writing it in the first place. Where Caleb's route was like 90% revising and rewriting, Ari's route is 90% deleting adverbs and the word 'just.' LoL Ch. 10 did get some more substantial rewriting done though.

Chapter 10 is where the first major romantic developments happen. Everything has been building to this point, and this is where things can overflow a bit, as it were. There were a lot of conditional statements I removed in this chapter. Ari's route was the first one I wrote so I was still getting the hang of how to do the personality aspect.

There were a few places where I had a personality branch but they were either really short or they weren't really all that different from each other. So I ended up removing some that felt superfluous.

A lot of times if you have a really short branch, you have to ask yourself if it's worth it to have a new dialogue block that's only 2 sentences long. It *can* be worth it if you're referring to a choice back in the common route or something because it helps establish that choices are long-lasting and continue to be relevant through the game. But sometimes you have the think about players skipping through the game for replaying endings or whatever - and are they really going to appreciate that the game stops skipping for *one* line that is slightly different? 

I know I get a little exasperated for minor things like this when I'm replaying. Sometimes it really can't be helped but if possible I try to avoid it if it's not necessary.

I also had the infamous shower scene set up as a conditional scene which...looking back, I'm not sure why I did that. But I removed the condition there, so that scene happens no matter what. There was also just some other branching that felt a little convoluted and needed to be cleaned up some. 

I've started on Ch. 11, which is an action based chapter. I'm not sure how easy/hard it will be to edit. I know that there is a significant branch about midway through. So I'm dubious how well that's set up; it may need some re-working.

We shall see! 

FINALLY. CG artwork.

Sometimes I just get a little antsy to work on CGs so I can feel like something is happening other than writing. So I ended up doing the first CG that will appear in Caleb's route. It's also a fairly simple CG since Caleb appears alone and he's just sitting there reading.

I worked on a spreadsheet to start sorting out the CG moments. I think a lot of people assume this is a fairly straightforward process but unfortunately, you do have to kind of consider how the CGs will be spread through the route, how long the route is, how they should be spaced, etc.

I didn't really do this extremely in Changeling and I'm trying to space them out better in GS. I'd really like to have one "Bad Ending" CG per route. One love scene will get a (NON NUDE - LoL) illustration. The other happens in the "best ending" so I don't know that it'll be illustrated in every route as I may choose to illustration another moment in the ending instead. So that's three CGs. 

I was really torn on whether I should do 5 or 7 per route. And I'm kind of leaning toward shooting for 7. But I'm still only promising 5 just in case 7 proves to be too much for me. 7 CGs per route * 9 love interests = 63 CGs.

And that's not taking into account that there are 6 CGs in the common route already. If I throw in an additional introductory CG for the 3 LIs that don't appear in the common route - that way everyone gets the same amount, it's actually 8 CGs per love interest + at least one additional CG just of Morgan. That's 73 CGs. Rofl.

So yeah.

Um. Idk. 7 per route is the goal. But we'll see! 

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

This week in backgrounds…another back alley! LoL

Unfortunately, the Triad/New Albion/Braesil have *such* a different feel to them than Pythia and Cestrescir that even though we do have a "back alley" for those cities, I just can't reuse it. It's going to feel really out of place against the cleaner, less overtly cyberpunk feeling of the day side cities. So I needed another back alley.

As a side note, Vui always does such a fantastic job at taking a modern image reference and "futurising" it. (I enjoy that all his signs are very vague - "Bank", "Bookstore", "Cafe" - LoL.

I often go in and change the signs to something more specific, so I imagine that bank sign will change. 

(We will also get a night version of this image.)

And a cropped-in version of Caleb's CG for those who have not seen it on the server! (The background in this is just a placeholder because I don't have the background this CG actually needs yet. LoL)

The in-game version will be larger than this - this is just a cropped sneak peek. But ultimately, this is the image. Caleb reading. 

Upcoming Week:

More of the same. I will continue importing Caleb's route until it is complete.

I will continue editing Ari's route until it is complete.

When Ari's route is fully edited, I will start to import it and start editing Caissa's route. 

I will maybe work on the first CG of Ari's route. It's also already partially complete and I have the BG for that one - it's one of the few Endgame backgrounds I already have. 

So yeah, that's what's coming up next week! Hope you enjoyed this week's ramble!

~Esh