07/02 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

Hi everyone! 

Ditching the normal format for this as (wonder of wonders), launching the Kickstarter completely threw off my work schedule this week! LoL

First order of business, Progress:

I'm still working on Caissa, Chapter Six. I'm about half finished with it, I think. Plot starting to pick up and there are some fun moments between Caissa and Morgan as their relationship shifts and she starts to see a new side him (that slightly drives her nuts - in both good and bad ways).

I started sketching out a new sprite as well.

Second order of business, Kickstarter:

Our Kickstarter is in full swing right now and while it funded in the first day, there's a long month ahead of us to try to maybe make some stretch goals or to watch things plateau and not go anywhere (or go backwards! that's always fun, too.)

Just because we hit our funding goal on day one, it doesn't mean we're out of the woods so to speak. So while this is a slightly more chilled out experience than Changeling's Kickstarter, it's certainly got its own ups and downs.

Sprocket helped us kick things off by ending up in the hospital. Because she's just fun like that. LoL - Fortunately it wasn't anything too serious and she's back home recovering now after an unexpected surgery. 

We hit our early KS milestones really quickly as all our high tiers and one of our early bird tiers sold out. And then things slowed a bit, but continued a very steady crawl upward. We hit our goal about 13.5 hours into things. 

As of now, we are past our first stretch goal. But things go up and down with Kickstarter, sadly, so we've come close to losing the stretch goal a couple of times. It's hard to do know what the rest of the month holds.

On the note of that stretch goal:

Let's talk customisation! Right now the MC is what I'd call....semi-customisable. She's got 5 hair colours and 5 skin tones to pick from, as well as 6 personality traits to choose from.

The personality traits don't come into play too much in the demo - it alters two choice menus, and that's it. These have much greater impact on the actual story routes, though - through making locked choices available, or just creating small splits that the player won't notice unless they do a second playthrough. 

In terms of what the stretch goal definitely means in terms of customisation - 

we do intend to add eye colour as something the player can pick. This was originally not an option for story related reasons and just the magnitude of work. We will also be adding in 2-3 additional hair colours and skin colours. That might not sound like a lot, but...

This is what Morgan's sprite file looks like right now. Everything in here (minus the clothes and hair) will be duplicated for every additional skin tone (of which there will be 2-3). 

Her eyes alone take up 3 columns of this right now. If we add three eye colours, that duplicates her entire eye section three times. That means her eyes will take up 9 columns on their own (and that's not taking into account the additional skin colours).

Of course, this is all totally doable. And this isn't meant to complain at all. More just to show a visualisation of what sprite customisation actually entails behind the scenes! 

Of course, additional customisation also means any CG involving Morgan becomes a little more complex too. But at least we know she'll probably have her eyes closed in at least some of them! (Because only evil people kiss with their eyes open. OuO )

We have floated the idea of making some aspects of Morgan's back story customisable - such as allowing the player to choose what she was studying in school. I can think of some cool ways this could impact the story but I can also think of ways this would be problematic. So at this point I'm not totally sure about it. Caleb's route - I think - will be the definitive rule on that one since her study of ancient history and archaeology comes into play pretty heavily in his story. And I have to see how her having a different back story would impact that.

I'm also thinking of some other things we might be able to add - freckles, beauty marks, coloured streaks in the hair...I don't know. This is something we'll play around with and see what is fun and what is *doable* for us. Everything we add to customisation has to be reflected on the CGs and that's where the extra work really comes in.

It's easy to go all out with the sprite, but I have to keep things manageable on a CG level. 

So yeah, those are my thoughts on that subject matter! 

I won't begin any of this work until the KS is concluded because, at this point, it's unclear if we'll even retain this stretch goal. OwO (In fairness I think I actually already made additional sprite bases and hair colours a while back though...LoL)

Upcoming:

At any rate, I'll be trying to finish up this chapter over the weekend now that things have calmed down a little! 

This one and the next one are really fun moments in the route so I'm looking forward to getting them written.

Thank you all for everything! And I shall see you next week. I also have a couple of additional posts planned to show off some stuff that is in the works - and maybe some screen caps of GS common route, chapter four! >3 

I'm planning to work on some coding for that over the weekend too. So look forward to some up coming sneak peeks next week!