29/11 Update (Patreon)

Hey Everyone! 

Here is this week's Patreon devlog!

Writing:

So this week in writing, I worked on the Crimson interlude a bit. I most of it written. There is a choice sequence at the end (which is what puts you on either Jack or Caissa's route and I still have to write out those scenarios. So basically I'm probably around half(ish) done with it.

I also had to go back and make some fixes and changes to Common, Chapter Four due to a plot/lore thing that got added to the world building during Ari's route.

This sort of thing isn't uncommon for me while I'm writing which is why I can probably never do a chapter-at-a-time release. Going back to make continuity fixes is just a part of my process.

It's one reason I wanted to get Ari's route kicked out first. This route deals a lot with the Esper world building and lore. Other routes deal more with specific situations going on or other parts of the lore while Ari's route is more focused on his and Morgan's personal growth. And, therefore, we learn a lot about Espers in general.

I'm hoping by doing his route first, it'll keep me from having to do too many continuity fixes about this topic. However, since other routes deal with other types of Espers...who knows?

Art:

I've been really trying to crank out some artwork relating to the Kickstarter. So I've finished four of the special wallpapers (Jack's is finished, but wasn't when I started drafting this post, hence the above picture) - obviously, there will be six.

These are a higher tier reward than the basic wallpapers will be. The basic wallpapers just use game art - the sprites, the intro CGs - and have a bit of character information on them. The special wallpapers are more...eye candy.

They'll be exclusive to the KS and won't be in the art book. So no one but backers (and probably higher tier patrons) will have access to the full images.) 

I'm not entirely sure yet what I'm going to do about the KS additional love interests (Reuben and Sasaki most likely.)

I'm not sure if - should we meet those stretch goals - I'll create wallpapers for them or not. They will probably get added to the YCH roster so people can have YCH artwork with them but I'm not sure that they'll end up in the wallpapers or not. 

I also randomly made some changes to Sasaki's sprite - mostly around the legs as I wasn't entirely happy with his pose. The pose wasn't even be visible in the game. But it may end up being in some promo art and things like that so I guess it's good to make it look nicer.

I started designing an additional outfit change for all Endgame characters. It's essentially like a combat or body armour style uniform. They'll all be more or less the same in design. IT's, again, something mentioned in Ari's route. And I was trying to avoid doing it for a long time, but I think it works for the worldbuilding. 

Coding: 

I already released the latest demo update so some of the coding updates are already out there in the wild. But just to recap…

I changed the look of the buttons on the skin/hair customisation page. We had received some feedback of people trying to click on the colour swatches and not realising you had to hover over the text. This was also something I constantly did myself - even right after I designed the page. So it's been on my to-do list to fix for a while now.

I was going to hold off because additional customisation is a stretch goal for the Kickstarter. And if we make that goal, it will require re-doing the entire page. And I really didn't want to redo it twice. But…

In the end, I went ahead and fixed it.

I also added a back button on the customisation screens. This was something I had intended to have there from the start, but just accidentally left off. We did get one (slightly snarky) bit of feedback about it. But it was already on the to do list anyway. 

And since I was working on those pages, I decided to just go ahead and add it.

We also added a small completion counter to the endings screen. 

My reason for doing this is two fold…

First, I just think they're cool. I stumbled on a page explaining how to set it up for renpy and it seemed really easy, so I was like "Why not?"

The other thing is that with Changeling we did get a couple of people saying that they felt the choices didn't really do much. They "just gave some different dialogue."

The thing is, your cumulative choices in Changeling made some significant differences in scenes that would unlock. The story itself had a similar resolution but I do feel the choices made a significant difference. 30% of that game is in branching. Over 205,000 words are choice or status dependent. That's more than some entire games. So to have people say they didn't feel the game had replay value or that they felt the choices didn't do much was a little frustrating.

Because I know it may seem that when you aren't looking at the back end or numbers, but it's really just (in my humble opinion) not true.

Having a replay counter will allow people to see how much content remains. So if someone plays through each route one time and sees that they only have 70% of the game completed, it tells them there's still kind of a lot of content in there that they haven't seen.

I don't know for sure that we'll keep the counter. I think it'll depend on testing and feedback. But for now, it's something I want to try out to see if it helps people feel they're getting more value for their money, or contributing to a greater sense of satisfaction when they get it to 100%.

Demo:

Of course, the other news is that I went ahead and released Chapter Two this week. It wasn't supposed to be until next week but next week has a lot of other stuff going on for me. And I really wanted to get this release out of the way so I wasn't stressing about it next week.

Chapter Three will probably be released mid-end of January 2020.

Upcoming Week:

So last week I said I was going to finish up the bases for the second YCH artwork...and then I started working on the special wallpapers instead and never actually finished that.

Why do I even make plans for myself? I never follow them.

This upcoming week is going to be really busy for me. I'm honestly not sure how much art I'll be able to do. I may find myself taking whatever spare moments I have to write instead of breaking out the tablet to do artwork.

I'm not really sure if I'll have much time to focus on work at all. 

But we'll see what happens. Usually I try to snag whatever time I can to work on things so I may get some stuff done regardless.