28/02 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Welcome to this week's patreon devlog!

Writing
This week I finished writing Chapter Nine and have gotten most of the way through Chapter Ten. This chapter involves a love scene so it's a little slower getting through the end of it (especially because there is branching based on romance level and whether or not the player has the scenes toggled on and off. So I have to decide how things join up and flow, etc.)

I am hoping to get Chapter Ten completed by the end of the weekend, and get started on Eleven. I think Eleven will flow fast as it's a character and relationship oriented chapter vs heavy on action and plot. 

Chapter Nine has been fun to work on because it involves a lengthy scene with Caissa's father, Keres, who we've previously only encountered a few times - usually briefly. Even though he's kind of this imposing figure looming over the entire route, this is the first time the player gets to know much about him and his motivations, so it was fun to get to show another side of him.

Art:
I think at my last update, I was just getting started on the new customisation things and then I basically did all that on Saturday.

So for those of you who missed it, I did add additional customisation options to Morgan. Saving the files was...an ordeal. She currently has nearly 800 files in her folder and that does not include all the hair and outfit options she will have.

Otherwise, I did not do too much art this week. I need a break after the customisation escapades! 

That said, I have reached out to a new background artist! Several, actually. 

We still intend to work with Vui - our previous artist - but there are so many BGs needed that I started to worry about whether one person would really be able to complete them all. Vui is also getting much busier with other projects - it's something that makes me really happy for him, but also means his turnaround time has slowed down.

And I really just don't want to overburden him.

So I've been on the lookout for other artists with very similar styles to him. My hope is that we can group backgrounds according to location and have 1 artist work on all related backgrounds. That way any style differences are also less jarring. For instance, if all the backgrounds in Caissa's mansion are managed by Artist A while all the backgrounds in Endgame's HQ are managed by Artist B….it means it won't be as jarring to see any small style differences. You won't even see those BGs within the same route.

Using several artists means we'll get our BGs faster and if one person has to back out of the project, we'll still have others lined up to continue doing our environment artwork.

Not really related to *art* per se, but I've also been giving a lot of thought to our soundtrack and what we intend to get this time around. We do have a composer picked out - someone we've been in talks with since last year, actually.

He is incredibly talented and his music has only gotten better in the six months I've known him.

I have to say I'm really, really excited about the possibility of working with him. I don't want the soundtrack for this game to be the usual, boopy VN stuff. I want something truly beautiful and amazing to listen to.

I really think Tobi will provide that. And I'm super happy to be able to work with him.

Coding:
Aside from playing around with the new beta testing tool, I didn't actually do much coding this week! The testing tool is pretty useful though. It's not a complicated thing but it does create an overlay that allows testers to make notes at specific lines when there are typos or bugs.

The limitation I see right now is that it does not allow for notations on screens - which means any bugs or typos found in the gallery pages will have to be typed manually. 

I did also code (rather obviously at this point) a new customisation page. I basically modelled it after my original page - it's just bigger now basically. That page didn't take too long but I really wanted to get it set up so I could test the new customisation and find any issues with file names or things like that.

Upcoming Week:
I think, again, this is going to be a writing heavy week. I may set writing aside for a little while to update Morgan's first CG with the new customisation options. I need to make some palette for myself, though, for future use. Especially the…….

Eyebrows, of course. 

There are only six eyebrow colours to choose from but those colours are not actually exactly the same across all skin tones. Particularly the lighter three shades. There was no shade of light grey that looked good across all skin tones, so "light grey" for skin 8 is not the same as "light grey" for skin 1 or skin 4.

So I need to make a reference sheet for myself for easy recolouring going forward. I really need to do that before I work on her CG. 

So yeah. That's kind of my plan for art.

I'll also be finishing Chapter Ten, working on Chapter Eleven. And if I'm really diligent, maybe I'll get to start on Chapter Twelve as well! 

Anyway, that's all for this week's ramble! See you all next time!