01/06/2024 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

Ramble

Helloooooo~o everyone! ╰(°▽°)╯ Time for this week's update.

Summary

• Working on Chapter 10 revisions

  • About 85% through it

• New BG arrived!

• ...a....a.....CG!?

Writing

I finished editing Kav, Noel, and Raif! Huzzah. Yren is the only one left in Chapter 10. I was secretly hoping, by the end of the week, that I could finish Yren too. But, sadly, not quite.

This puts me at about 85% of the way through this chapter. 

One thing I did not anticipate was that Raif and Yren's content being a bit shorter than the other characters in the game. I knew their content was a little a on the low side compared to the others...

The final word count I'm aiming for per character for this chapter is around 12,000 words. This is divided up amongst three LI-related scenes with some common content interspersed between them.The amount is just based on where Asher's final count ended when I revised his route previously. Daaz, Kav, and Noel were all at about 9000 words and a lot of their fleshing out was in the love scene, with a little scattered in the other two scenes as well.

So I had to do a fair amount of fleshing out. A lot of it was in the love scene section. Another substantial amount was in a "date" sequence that happens in the next character scene.

Raif and Yren were actually more like 8000 words in length. I think this was just the result of me being extremely tired by the time I got to that point of drafting so I just wasn't fleshing out their conversations and things to the same degree as the others.

Additionally, the third scene, which follows a common scene, has a transition sequence at the start that leads into the LI content. This transition scene isn't fully identical across LIs but it is very similar and the same set of events is described. One of the reasons I didn't have this bit as part of the common scene is that there are enough small variations that I thought it would be more annoying to include multiple conditional statements than to just rewrite the portion of text since it's only around 500-700 words (depending on the character.)

That said, another way I can tell I was really tired when I got to Raif and Yren because that transition section in both of their scenes had been completely copy/pasted from other routes...

I literally did not even change the character names yet. (～￣▽￣)～ So those sections needed to be rewritten and the rest of their content has to be fleshed out a bit.

But yeah, nearly done with the monster chapter as a whole.

I do think it's going to be around 93000 words by the time I'm done. So definitely the longest chapter by a fair amount. Now that's pre-coded. And I've been losing somewhere between 3000 - 5000 words per chapter while coding. Which means the coded word count is probably going to be somewhere between 88000 - 90000 words. But that's still longer than the previous longest chapter which was like...76000 (I think?) in game.

But yeah. MOVING ON.

Art 

Got a new BG from one of the artists! Sloooowly finishing up the BGs. The BGs are something like 70% done now? 

I also started...CG stuff for chapter 2.

I've been debating for a while now just how many CGs there will be and if there will be CGs every chapter, etc, etc.

My current thinking on the CG-front is...

I think I do want CGs in every chapter (if possible. I hate speaking in absolutes because there may be a chapter when I just can't scrape CGs out of the available content...). 

BUT.

Wil is probably not going to appear in the majority of them. One thing I learned with Gilded Shadows is that with customisation the difficult aspect is the CG situation. There are a couple of ways to mitigate this - the most obvious being to not show the MC in as many CGs. I do still want the MC in SOME CGs (particularly the important moments or relationship oriented moments).

I will just be very particular about when, where, and how I include the main character.

On that topic, I've found that early story/route chapters tend to be a bit difficult because there are often just not interesting places to even put CGs. Early on, characters are often just sitting and talking. Or standing and talking. Or walking and talking. 

Chapter 1 CGs in Stars are literally the characters sitting which was fairly easy because you meet all the characters in a single location where they are sitting at a table. So it was kind of useful for introduction CGs.

Chapter 2 is much trickier. I mean I was poring over the chapter yesterday trying to figure out what were some good CG moments. Chapter 2 is such an establishing chapter that there really weren't any particular moments that screamed "This would make a great illustration" so it was really about picking the places that would feel the least random.

One other consideration I was thinking about in this chapter is whether to take an organic or formulaic approach to where the CGs happen. So what I mean by that is do all the characters get a CG in the same moment or not? Because each character shares the same chronological flow, it means that all the specific moments happen at the same time for each character. This doesn't mean the routes are identical but just that story beats happen at the same places more or less.

So if in Chapter 4, Scene 5, the LI meets up with Wil for an after-dinner conversation. That conversation happens for all characters. Maybe everyone meets Wil in a different spot on the ship and maybe they talk about completely different things but they all have a conversation in a location at the same point in the story.

So the question is whether every character in every chapter gets a CG at the exact same moment (formulaic approach) or do I potentially illustrate different moments for different characters based on what seems interesting. So one character might have a CG in Chapter 4, Scene 5. But another character may get a CG in Chapter 4, Scene 2.

There are pros and cons to each strategy. Using a formulaic approach means the player can easily predict where all the CGs are because they all will happen at roughly the same spot. It also ensures "equity" - because the same moment is always being illustrated, it means that it's less likely that one character will feel like their CGs were more interesting or sexier or more romantic or whatever. 

The drawback is that it means all the CGs are pretty similar to each other. Basically a character swap for every CG rather than CGs feeling more unique to each character. 

The Chapter 1 CG is kind of an example of this because all the characters are illustrated at the exact same moment, in the same spot, and roughly the same position (I mean...they're all sitting even if the specific pose is varied).

With the other strategy, it just means more variety as a whole. CGs would be placed in what I felt was the best moment for that character. This might mean that I illustrate the same moment for everyone because it's the best placement for everyone in that chapter. For instance, the first kiss for every character will be illustrated. That's undeniably going to be the best story moment for every character in that chapter. But a lot of times...maybe the scene 2 conversation had a more interesting CG moment for some characters while the scene 4 conversation had a more interesting CG moment for other characters. So in this scenario I'd be able to pick the more interesting moment for each character instead of making them all the same.

The drawback is that the more variety there is in the CGs the more likely it is that people will potentially feel like Character C didn't have as great a CG as some of the others. 

Now...I always tend to lean towards organic over formulaic when I can. So I'm definitely already leaning towards not forcing myself to adhere to a specific formula in this regard. I will still keep the CGs equitable in the sense that I will not do a dual character CG for one character but not the others. They will all either be solo CGs for the chapter or dual-character CGs for the chapter. Or I won't give one character a spicy CG but not the others. In that regard I want them to feel like they are treated equally.

But I don't want to force myself to put a CG for someone in a particular spot when I feel there's a better spot for them elsewhere in that chapter.

Other

Upcoming Week

I definitely will finish Yren's Chapter 10 edits in the next couple of days. After that I will proofread (meaning doing a spelling/grammar check), format the code in the game...

And then move on to addressing the ending chapters for each character. Chapter 10 is the last chapter with any shared content. The remaining three chapters for each character are unique to them.

The first thing I'll do is give Asher's another read through to refresh my memory on how his events play out. I'll probably do some revisions. I always do.

Then I'll revise Daaz's ending which is fully drafted. I think...maybe I can get all that done in the upcoming week. And after that...

We'll just have to see where things stand by my next update!