03/04/2021 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

Hi everyone! Time for this week's patreon devlog.

This Week's Summary:

• Edited Jack's route fully
• Added night tinted sprites through the common route
• Fixed a couple of small bugs in the flowchart
• Worked on a lance CG

The Ramble:

Hey everyone! This update is coming a little late in the day since I had a busy morning today.

So let us jump in!

The first thing to talk about this week is completing the first round of editing for Jack's route. All routes get at least three rounds of editing before the beta readers/alpha testers get their hands on it.

This was my first full structural edit where I try to catch continuity issues and other major problems. Jack's route was a little sparse and now it's the longest one. LoL. that's largely because his route is also the heaviest branched route so even though it has the longest full word count, it has the shortest linear word count (in other words, if you play the route from start to the finish of the best ending, it's still the shortest).

Not by much. All the routes are within a few thousand words of each other. But still. It just shows that Jack's route has a ton of branching in it. This is mostly due to Rory's presence. Since he can show up ...or not....this creates a few pretty significant branches and interactions through the route and a *ton* of really small variations wherever they might need to bring him up as either "Rory, the new guy we all know" or "That guy Morgan met that one time."  LoL

Anyway, editing chapter 13 was probably the hardest because I realised part of the way through that the climax scene was incredibly sparse. Like……SERIOUSLY sparse. I was essentially writing about 80% of that scene totally from scratch. I also had to re-choreograph it because my original flow of events (what little flow of events there was) didn't feel like it really resolved anything properly.

I'll probably have to clean that scene up more on future edits but for now it at least flows and makes sense. I really try not to leave huge gaps in my writing even for rough drafts. I try to, as much as possible, make sure everything flows properly but I really struggled with Jack's route a lot.

I was dealing with a plagiarism situation (which some of you know about) and Jack was the character most heavily…"borrowed" from. So it was really stressing me out and making it difficult to focus on his route. So the last couple of chapters were pretty messy.

But they are fixed now!

So in NON-writing news, I also went through and added night-tinted sprites to the common route everywhere it's dark enough to warrant tinting them. I still haven't figured out if I can tint Morgan's sprite or if I even want to. I kind of like keeping her brighter in the foreground so she doesn't blend in with everything else.

Anyway, adding the tinted sprites is fun since it results in some wacky glitches sometimes. 8D

I fixed a couple of small bugs in the flowchart where things weren't unlocking properly.

And I worked on a Lance CG which is not QUITE to a point where I can show it off yet because I need to re-do his hair. Sometimes I get lazy and I work from memory instead of pulling up the character sprite for reference. I don't know why I do this - it always creates work for myself because I inevitably get the hairstyle just slightly…..wrong.

As I did this time. So I'm going to go back and fix that, then maybe show the WIP next week.

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

This is a pretty tame glitch…Two Aris. Not terrible.....

But sometimes this happens. =w=

This happened because I originally used the un-tinted sprite here so all the sprite emotions were called using the normal sprite. And I just went through and pasted in the tinted version. But I missed one. So you can see the tinted sprite behind him then the mistaken command to show an un-tinted sprite just makes it appear on top. But because I didn't call his clothes at the same time (you only have to call a character's clothes the first time they show up - after that, the clothes stay until you hide them or change them) he shows up naked.

He's also wearing two hairstyles. Because why not?

Fun times.

Upcoming Week:

I'll probably start editing Magnus' route this week. I'm a little nervous because his route is already the second longest and I really can't afford to make it longer. But I also know it needs to be fleshed out in places. So I'm going to have to look for places I can trim in order to offset the additions.

If I do end up expanding his route by much, I'm going to have to go back to Caissa's route (the current shortest) and try to see where I can flesh it out. There *is* one scene I intend to flesh out in Caissa's route because it's a little abrupt right now and needs a better transition into the next scene. But I obviously can't justify adding fluff just to make the routes feel even.

So I don't know. I'm trying to make sure things are consistent since people complained about the Changeling routes not being similar in length.

I don't want people to feel Caissa wasn't "favoured" or something. But sometimes the character's motivations aren't as complex or the story itself isn't as complex. It has nothing to do with favourite or not. I love Caissa as a character and I love his route. Sometimes there just isn't any more to the story. But if I really need to, I can try to find places to add an additional interaction or something.

Anyway, I don't know what else I will work on. The Lance CG and…honestly, I'll probably script Jack's route and maybe make his chapter cards? Not sure! OwO I might also finally try to play test Ari's route properly and fully so it's ready for alpha testing.

But I will definitely see you guys and update you next week!

~Esh