22/05/21 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

Hi everyone! Time for this week's patreon devlog. This week I finally have something interesting to say! LoL

This Week's Summary:

• Coded all the music into Ari's route
• Coded all the music into Caissa's route
• About 90% finished with coding the music into Caleb's route ('ll be finishing this up in the next couple of hours so it may as well be 100%)
• I made some edits to Caissa's route as well. Like...over 3000 words worth of edits. *sweats*
• New Sprite started
• Some sprite coding as I code music

The Ramble:

Soooo.

Laptop news first.

Laptop is behaving. It's condition seems to have improved. I am viewing with MUCH suspicion still. The repair process didn't go as smoothly as I hoped so I'm still suss.

But I haven't seen a BSOD in a week so that's a good sign because it was pretty daily there for a while.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

This week I started focusing on coding in music for the routes. I tackled Ari's route first, getting all music coded into his route. I had already started his route when my laptop sort of went nuts so his was pretty easy to get through.

I may tweak things later as I do more play testing but for now the music is coded.

I coded the music into Caissa's route but also found myself making a lot of edits as I went along (which, of course, slowed me down, so coding his music took way longer than it normally would.) Caissa's route was the shortest one by about 2k. My intent, for a while now, was to try to flesh out a few scenes to at least get his route more in line with the others in terms of length.

There was also another element to his story that I wanted to take a close look at and maybe make some edits to for clarity and reducing a story aspect I know may bother some players. A lot of my edits were focused in that area but as a result, I ended up fleshing out multiple scenes to expand on certain themes and clear some stuff up.

Caissa's route is similar in length to Ari's route but is more heavily branched which leads to an overall shorter play time if you're just considering the linear flow of the story. My goal is to have no more than 10,000 words difference between the shortest and longest routes in Gilded Shadows. Currently in terms of overall word count, the range is less than 10k. And now the linear word count is also less than 10k. So I feel much better about the length of Caissa's route.

When you have a route that comes up too short - or at least shorter than you want it - it can be difficult to flesh it out. Because you can't just add fluff or pad it out with nonsense. You can only what's necessary. It's way easier to cut content than add it in. So I'm relieved that I was able to flesh things out just by adding in what I think were necessary edits.

I also started coding the music into Caleb's route. I expect that, like Ari's route, Cale's route will have fewer music cues to work out than Caissa's route. There are a lot of long meetings in the Endgame routes where you don't really need music or tone shifts. Caleb's route is also the least branched because it's more plot heavy than some of the others.

Caissa's route is about 5% more branched that Caleb's - which doesn't sound like a lot, but definitely makes a difference. As a result, you have to juggle music cue across branches then make sure that when everything comes together there's a smooth joining up of the music.

Caleb's route will have a lot less of that than Caissa's route. Right now I'm just working through them in alphabetical order. Jack will be next, then Lance, then Magnus.

I did some sprite expression coding - mostly just a few things here and there as I was editing or coding in the music. And I've been making notes about sprite variations I know I need (like Reuben getting a black eye or Jack needing a cut on his lip. This way when I do go back to working on sprites as a focus, I have a list of things I know I need for existing sprites.

I have this little notebook full of notes in green marker. So that'll be fun when I eventually get to making all those fixes and additions.

One thing I'm really struggling is defining my CG moments. There are SO many good moments I want to illustrate and I can't do them all. It's so frustrating because I can't do 12 CGs per route and I totally could just based on good moments for them. It's just really hard to pick.

I have all the CG moments defined for Ari, Caleb, and Caissa. I'll be choosing the rest as I go through the remaining routes and coding for music. I have a lot of them defined - certain moments are sort of always a CG like either first or second kiss.

Other moments are kind of up in the air. I usually have the first CG of the route which tends to happen in the first or second chapter. Then obviously the first kiss, there will be another kiss/romantic CG in the first love scene, every route gets some kind of romantic CG in the "passionate" ending, then another in one of the bad endings. Officially, I've promised 5 CGs per route but honestly?

I'm going for seven. I just think the routes are too long to be sustained with 5 CGs. So...I have two "random" CGs that are just moments I personally wanted to see illustrated. But then I'm also defining "extra" CGs. You know. Just in case I totally lose my mind at some point and want to illustrate some of these scenes that are making me want to draw them.

So...yeah.

I did also work on a new sprite. This is a backer character. Specifically, Foxy's character Mara who is Van's wife. She appears a fair bit in the Endgame routes. You can see her below. It's not finished yet. But it will be.

I worked on another sprite as well, but she is still a bald sketch so I'm not showing her off.

And yeah, a lot of time this week was spent testing my laptop and trying to see if it's fixed or not...

I did a lot of using another project as a guinea pig to see if it was going to implode on me if I was using all my usual heavy programs - like photoshop, renpy, etc. That's what I did during the weekend and on Monday though I usually only work on this project really late at night (ostensibly to stop myself stressing and dreaming about Gilded Shadows. Which DID NOT WORK last night. *side eyes Magnus, whose art files made a cameo in last night's dream*). Anyway after Monday was finally when I was convinced it would be safe to work on Gilded Shadows again.

Anyway, I ended up making a lot of unexpected progress on my side project. But I figured if I was going to risk getting files corrupted and things from random crashes, I didn't want to be working on GS when that happened. If I was going to spend hours drawing or writing or coding, only to lose all that work to a BSOD, I wanted it to be a project I'm NOT as emotionally invested in.

If I lost that much GS work, I'd be devastated. LoL If I lose that much work from When Stars Collide....I'll SURVIVE. Like, it would be *annoying*, but I could shrug it off. LoL

Wasn't how I intended to spend my weekend, but sometimes it's just like that, I guess. So yeah, WSC is now dubbed "The guinea pig" project. I may do a post about it sometime if people are interested in seeing it. But this game is not getting completed *anytime* soon.

I usually work on this project a few times a week from like 11PM to 1AM so it's definitely back burner to GS and will remain that way as long as GS is unfinished. LoL

Sneak Peeks and Previews:

Anyway, Mara, the king's knight. Her uniform has a simpler overall design than others because her ability involves phasing through walls. And they keep it simple for various reasons relating to her ability.

Upcoming Week:

Now that I have GS on a machine where I can (hopefully) work in peace, I'll be trying to finish up coding the music across all the routes.

I'm not sure how long that will take because I do have to at least skim-read while I code and I inevitably make edits and fixes as I go. Sometimes I get distracted fixing things and realise I've not coded any music into the chapter. LoL

I'll probably keep doing sprite work too. Working on The Guinea Pig project kind of got me into a sprite drawing mood so I'll probably at least finish up Mara's two additional outfits and expressions. And maybe get to Celeste's sprite first. I think I'm going to be working on the 'appears frequently' side characters first before I start working on the one-shot side characters and extras.

As always I'm keeping a list of needed assets as I go so I know exactly what variations I'm missing for everyone. (Like that time Reuben gets a black eye in Caissa's route).

With the laptop seeming better I hope I can get back into a good coding groove and make a lot of progress in the upcoming days to make up for the days I couldn't really work. ;A;