Patreon Devlog 20/03 (Patreon)

Hi Everyone!

First off, I apologise for the lack of devlog last week. Things have been a little crazy around my house and with the pandemic issue, I was just having some issues regarding devlogs and what to say and how to update people.

I did update on tumblr and for those who read that, you may recall me saying that my spouse would be working from home but I didn't expect it to be a huge distraction.

…

Narrator: It was, in fact, a huge distraction.

I feel like people who don't work from home all the time struggle to grasp that people who do work from home all the time like actually…….work. And don't like interruptions. So this week I had to battle my husband wanting to have conversations, or wanting to cook lunch, or wanting me to help with laundry. And that was on top of him basically being on the phone with his team non-stop.

It actually has been incredibly difficult to write.

I set up a new work space upstairs that either he or I can use. I actually set it up for him but, weirdly, I'm the one using it at the moment while he's downstairs in my usual spot.

So yes. This was definitely a week of adjustments. That doesn't mean there's been no progress this week. I just didn't progress where I originally planned to.

Writing:

So I did not work much on Caissa's route unfortunately. While I can code and do art and other things when there are distractions and interruptions, writing really requires me to be able to focus. 

And I can't write when there's someone four feet from me talking loudly into a phone for hours on end. 

That said, I did do writing this week - but what I actually worked on was edits to the common route - edits to facilitate the inclusion of Reuben's route at some point.

I extended the meeting scene very slightly.

Reuben's partner, Wynter (a backer's character) now makes a brief appearance when Reuben first approaches the MC. There are some minor additions to the conversation with Reuben due to Wynter's inclusion in the story as well.

And I added a new little moment for the sake of being able to include Reuben's CG.

As I read through the scene I have, I realised that there really wasn't a good "CG Moment" in Reuben's scene. Which, of course, when I wrote the scene I wasn't thinking in terms of CGs anyway. At any rate, I did have to write a few lines of narration to be that moment.

In the other LI introductions, Morgan always gets a choice at one point that allows the player to interact positively or less positively (though in Caleb's case it's more like…….negatively or less negatively. LoL). 

I ultimately decided not to include a choice in Reuben's section. The main reason is that there's just not a good place for one, really. I can't always insert a choice into a place where there's not a natural spot for one. I may change my mind on this later but as of right now, there's no choice within Reuben's scene because it wasn't really structured in a way for a choice to be there.

There is a CG now, though!

Art:

The main thing I did this week in art was work on Reuben's introductory CG. I was able to get that finished. And placed into the game. I had some trouble deciding where to put the CG though. My original plan was to have it happen sometime during their conversation at the cafe. 

But then I really struggled to find a spot in their conversation where it would work. I also looked at having it be as he was leaving - but I didn't like that idea because it would be similar to Jack. And, again, there really just wasn't a good spot for it.

I ended up writing a few extra lines that made transitioning to a CG during the conversation with Morgan a little easier. And so in the end, I kind of went with my original idea to put the CG during their conversation at the cafe.

(Please ignore the two icons in the upper left. These are related to a beta testing plugin I currently have set up. It's not some weird new game feature or anything.)

In other art news, I finally got around to recolouring Morgan's CG to include all the new customisation.

It went from 9 files for this CG to….67. WHY SO MANY? 

One word:

Eyebrows.

LoL

Anyway, that's all coded now as well. 

In other art related news, we've been working with BG artists to get started on our backgrounds.

So we've gotten some sketches of Lance's house! You can see some of those here.

Coding: 

This week in coding...I didn't do too much. But I did do...some stuff.

• I coded the update to Morgan's CG.
• I coded Reuben's CG in.
• I removed the faction scoring and the icons that would flash in the corners when you made choices in the common route.
• I finished coding the music for chapter four. Though I still need to do sound effects.

Upcoming Weeks:

Caissa's route is still to be completed and honestly I'm hoping I can just get a huge amount of that done this weekend. With all the madness at the moment, it's making it really hard for me to have a quiet workplace in order to write. But I need to get this done even if I have to hide myself in a room and allow my family to eat each other.

Other things I need to do:

• Finish and code Wynter's expressions so I can put his sprite in the game.
• Finish and code Vanessa's expressions so I can put her sprite in the game.
• Finish and code Bad Guy #1 so I can put his sprite in the game

I also realised that the inclusion of three additional LIs means that certain screens are going to have to be redesigned and added. Though Reuben has a CG - he doesn't have a gallery. And the gallery page has a list of characters on the side; and the original six are the only ones there. So I'll have to fix that.

I also want to make a couple of small fixes to the GUI. For instance, right now you can't access the gallery and glossary from in the game. You have to navigate back to the main menu and open them from there. This is inconvenient for the player so I want to get links to these screens into the side menu.

I'm also thinking of re-doing the ending screen. Originally, I was going to give everyone their own page like I did in Changeling. But I'm realising that GS will have far fewer endings per character (even though the entire game may have only slightly fewer than Changeling simply due to the fact there are 9 LIs).

Because each character has so few, it makes their individual ending lists look kind of...sparse. So I think it might be better to reorganise the endings into a single list. 

At any rate, those are all just minor things that I can do at any point. But if I'm finding myself unable to write due to Distractions (™), that's the kind of stuff I'll probably be working on.

Anyway, that's all for now.

There's a lot going on in the world right now and a lot that is worrying and unpleasant. We're going to continue to try to work on the game without being distracted by those things but I won't lie. As the situation worsens, we may find that development gets disrupted in unexpected ways.

That said, I am going to do my best to continue to work on my part regardless of what delays or situations are out of my hands.

I hope you're all safe, healthy, and doing well.

We will see you next week!