23/05 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

 Hello everyone!

I totally forgot to update yesterday! I think the Thursday update threw me off and somehow my brain decided at some point that I'd already updated?

I don't even know. Let us jump in.

Writing:

What all have I done in writing? Well, I finished the potato draft of Chapter Six for Caleb's route. I still need to spruce it up a little since it's pretty bare bones. But the plot is starting to go somewhere now and Morgan is finally going on her first assignment. Caleb isn't happy about it.

I also set Caleb's route aside on Friday evening and did some editing and cleaning up in Ari's route. I did a full edit of his first two chapters. When you're doing a structural edit like this, it's really hard to go chapter by chapter because it's very possible I'll end up changing something in Chapter….Four or something, and need to go back to make some continuity changes in earlier chapters. But for now, I've gone through the first two chapters and done a fair amount of cleaning up. I was able to cut about 500 - 600 words? (Ari's route started at just over 109k and now is about 108.5k). 

So you guys may be wondering why I'm making a big deal of cutting content. And it's actually because my edits usually involve expanding rather than cutting. And actually, not going to lie, I would love to get the routes down to 90k each. I don't think that's going to happen. There's just no way I can cut 18,000 words from Ari's route. It is not going to happen. What I don't want to do is edit Ari's route - which is the longest right now - up to like 115k or 120k because I'm trying to keep all routes within 5-10k of one another. If Ari's route goes up substantially, it means the word count goal for everything goes up. So I'm actually trying to bring his word count down. It's really important in early chapters because in later chapters, I may feel the need to expand on the branching or add one more bad endings. So to compensate for content I suspect I'm going to want to add in later chapters, I want to try to trim down early chapters.

I know some people get really sad about the idea of cutting content but the stuff I'm cutting needs to be cut. I'm not cutting out huge chunks of content right now - I'm cutting three lines here, four lines there, one line over there. And a lot of extraneous words as well like unnecessary adverbs or repetitive content. 

The purpose of cutting is not just to reduce the length, it genuinely is to make it a better reading experience. And from a writing perspective, it was way better to be in a position of needing to cut rather than needing to add content.

Going back to edit at this point is actually proving really useful because I can refresh myself on things I've kind of forgotten - small details I established in Ari's route, but have forgotten by the time I got to Calebs, for instance. (For instance, I forgot what I named the organ system that relates to psi in the human body. In Caleb's route, it's literally called "The thingie" LoL). 

Also, there are things I've changed since Ari's route, so I can correct some of that as I edit and pull Ari into alignment with Caleb. The other thing that tends to happen is that my style of branches changes across routes. When you're not following a rigid formula, it's natural for the way we do things to shift. That's why Corvin's route - the first one I wrote - is quite different from Ewan's route structurally. It's not a terribly bad thing for routes to vary, but I am trying to keep them a little more consistent this time.

Editing Ari's route right now is a really good refresher on how I handled the customisation branching and the like. 

Anyway, apart from that, the other writing I did just involved making some minor edits to Caleb's character in the common route to tone down his personality a little. I think I'll also have to edit some of the early chapters of his route to do the same. But that'll happen later on. I'm not editing his route until it's complete.

(And I'll still get Ari and Caissa edited first).

Art:

We haven't seen any new BGs this week. Just one sketch for Caissa's greenhouse.

I made some really minor sprite variations for Ari and Caleb in the cafe scene in Chapter Four - but they're not implemented yet. 

Coding: 

I would say the big coding change that happened this week was a decision I made about Lance's route.

For those of you who've been around a while, you know that Lance's route was going to be locked. The player was going to have to play Magnus' route and Caissa's route first, due to some reveals at the very start of Lance's route, which I felt would potentially be diminished in other routes if Lance was played first. 

I dithered for a really long time on whether to lock Lance's route or have some kind of spoiler warning.

I'll be honest? I don't really like locked routes or any sort of forced play order. I think the problem that you run into with that is sometimes forcing players to experience content they aren't interested in. And I know that when I have to play a route I don't like, I basically skip through it. And by forcing a play of Magnus' and Caissa' route to get to Lance…

I am doing a couple of things to the player that I don't want to do -

First, I'm taking away their choice of what content to play in what order. All games have a flow to them - you can't play the ending of the route before you play the beginning. But that's not the same as taking away the route order in a game like Gilded Shadows. Especially for players who dislike Magnus or Caissa (or both) but who like Lance. 

Second, I'm kind of forcing my opinion about the importance of certain reveals onto the player. I'm saying X reveal is more important in Y route. So therefore you have to play the route the way I say. The problem is that players may not agree with this. Players may get to Lance's route and feel like it wasn't that big a deal and they had to play content they didn't want to play for no reason.

Finally - and for me, I think this is the biggest issue I have with locked content - it comes down to forcing some players to literally skip through routes they don't want to play. When I think back to playing Nameless, I remember how much I hated Yuri as a character. I just really strongly detested him. And I had to play his route - and honestly, it made me hate him even more. The same was the case in 7'Scarlet and Isora. I didn't like him. I had to play his route. He consistently pissed me off and I didn't enjoy it. I skimmed through both of the routes without reading some scenes because I was bored and annoyed and not enjoying it.

The idea of forcing a player to set the game to "skip" just to get through some of the routes I write so they can get to the one route they want to play just really strikes as really poor game design. "Skip" is largely there to help players get through replays for endings and things. It's not really there to be used through an entire route and if I'm setting the game up in a way that some players will use it to get through two routes they don't want to play…

I feel like I've done a poor job setting up the game in the first place.

So that's kind of why I prefer not to have a locked route. There are just a lot of things about locked routes I don't particularly enjoy as a player so I was really frustrated when I found myself in a place as a developer, where I was kind of leaning that way.

I had been thinking that I could maybe set up a confirmation screen at the choice that puts the player on Lance's route. This screen would say "Yo. There are spoilers in this route. BE AWARE." This solves a lot of the issues I have with a locked route because it puts the decision of play order back into the player's hands. I wasn't really sure how to do it or what it should be like but when I played Ebon Light, I remembered that there were confirmation screens that came up every time you reach the part where one LI begins to court the MC.

I was thinking I might want to do this for the routes in GS anyway - just a "Hey, this puts you on this guy's route." - I do think the route selection moment in GS is way more obvious than in Changeling (which did sneak up on some people), but I just kind of like the feature in general. And, having learned way more about clear signposting in games so that the player knows what they're doing and why they're doing it...it was just something I was considering anyway. I think it's nice to make sure the player knows "HEY! THIS IS THE START OF THE ROUTE MY FRIEND."

So...all of that to say that I did decide to try out the confirmation screens instead of the locked route. I got a little code help from a friend and was able to set it up so that it works. And, you know? I have to say that I really like it and am really glad I did it.

It was just kind of a relief. I didn't realise just how much having Lance's route locked was bothering me until I realised how happy I was with the confirmation screen.

SO YEAH. That was a huge text wall of reasoning for what is a fairly small function change. But there ya go.

Demo:

We updated the demo release with all the new content. There's a lengthy devlog on Itch.io that details everything that is new. There's...a lot that is new. We made a significant amount of changes from the last demo.

Here is a short list of the changes that are in the new demo!

• Reuben encounter edited
• Reuben CG added
• Chapter Four added
• World Building name changes implemented
• Official music added
• Profiles and galleries for additional LIs added
• Additional customisation added
• Flowcharts added
• Faction scoring removed
• Title screen changed
• UI changes throughout the game
• Confirmation screens at the start of routes or pre-route content.
• Completion tracker removed

So if you guys haven't checked that out yet, go for it! OwO

Upcoming Week:

I will definitely finish revising Chapter Six - hopefully over the weekend.

I want to also start Chapter Seven and hopefully finish the potato draft.

And I will probably continue working on editing Ari's route on the side. So…

Basically, focusing on writing. Still. LoL