21/04/2024 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

21/04/2024

Ramble

Halloo~~oo! Time for this week's update. 

Summary

• Editing Chapter 8

Writing

So I have been editing chapter 8...

I got a bit stuck in chapter 8 when I didn't expect to. But there were a lot of contributing factors that led to this being a bit more tricky to revise than anticipated.

Chapter 8 is the chapter where the plot really starts rolling. WSC is a much more, in my opinion, character-focused story than intricate plot so up until this point, there have been allusions to the plot and events that are foreshadowing the plot. But it's been really focused on the character interactions to this point.

This is really the first chapter where the 'chickens start coming to roost' so to speak. Even though the story antagonists have actually been present in the story until now, this is one of the first bigger, lengthier interactions with one of them, for example. So it does have that aspect.

Secondly, there is just the issue of adding the "No LI" variations. Usually this means a couple of isolated scenes but due a specific common route scenario in this chapter, there actually had to be a ton of smaller variations that I added in. And those are always a bit trickier because you have to manage multiple entry and exit points within a larger scene to make sure it all flows well.

And, of course, I did have to draft an extra version of some of those isolated scenes too.

Additionally there are a couple of sections that have individual LI interactions....that are all very similar. I try, as much as possible, to make sure I don't have complete copy-pasta through LI interactions and that if it's an extended scene, there's a lot of variation in the interactions and conversation and things that get discussed. 

But for some of the smaller variations that happen within a larger common scene, the LI variations need to be mostly similar so that later events are predicated on 6 very different interactions that happened earlier.

If possible, I try to use variables to make as much of the content as possible shared versus repeated but that gets hard if you're having different characters that need to be on screen talking. So there is this balance between the shared content (that is the same on every play through) and the similar content that is, well, similar but slightly different....and any repeated content that unfortunately has to be identical but also has to be in the script multiple times.

So there was a section where Past!Esh clearly was leaving it to Future!Esh to flesh those little interactions out and revise to make each one a little unique. One reason I don't like to use straight copy-pasta even if the moment has to be similar across the character interactions is just that each character has different speaking patterns. Daaz might use slightly bigger/fancier words than Asher, Raif tends to be more blunt and casual, often leaving the beginnings of sentences off (IE, he will say "That so?" instead of "Is that so?"). And so on. So even if two characters are communicating the same thing, I often want them to say it in different ways. 

And....yeah. There was a section where I didn't fully do that when drafting. 

I don't usually leave problems like that for Future!me, but this script has been so exhausting to write that I reckon I was just too tired to do it in the moment. So unfortunately...I am now...Future!Esh. And I had to take care of the problem that I left for myself. 

So yeah. That took a bit of time as well. 

And finally, as I was reading through this one section, I just realised I needed a lot more variable checks than I had written into the story. It wasn't that I didn't have any in there; I just didn't really account for all the possible variable states and realised that there were additional if/then situations to take into consideration for this section of the text. 

So I got stuck in this one common section for quite a long time and added about 4000 words of content in the form of variations and "no LI" scenarios. 

Oof. It was pretty tiring.

And that was all just common route stuff.

Of course, there are the character scenarios to edit as well. And I'm now nearly done with those.

So yeah. I thought this would be a fairly straightforward chapter to edit. I was wrong. It's also 58000 words of content. So. LoL

Art 

New news on the art/BG front...

Other

From my last post you all know I've been working on a "game jam" game for Amare Festival with some other creatives. That project is nearly done. At this point it's coding the final touches and waiting on some assets from other people.

I'll let you all know when that one goes out - it's a fairly short project (especially for me) at just under 60,000 words and only two LIs.

I only wrote one of the routes myself and actually completed it several weeks ago. So about 35,000 words was written by me and the rest by someone else.

It's a very cute, fluffy, and plot-light story based on a dream I had a few years ago.

So I've obviously been working on that here and there especially with the Amare Fest deadline looming in under two weeks.

But at this point, the bulk of my work is done so that isn't taking up huge amounts of my time right now.

Upcoming

My goal is to get Chapter 8 wrapped up in the next couple of days and move on to chapter 9. Chapter 9 is a quite short chapter (Comparatively) at less than 30,000 words...but I am done trying to predict if that means it'll be easy. Ha ha.

Who knows what Past!Esh left for me to discover. 

Still. We are getting there. Slowly (SO SLOWLY) but surely.

See you all next week!