14/01/2023 Patreon Devlog (Patreon)

Hallo! Time for this week's devlog! So let us jump in!

This Week's Summary:

• Fully scripted
• Flowchart mock-ups made
• Flowchart images started (¾ of the way finished)
• Preliminary scoring set up
• Preliminary BGs coded in
• Reuben-specific BGs are formatted and coded in

The Ramble:

Okay so this week I got Reuben's route fully scripted into Ren'py. His final word count is just over 109,000 words, bringing the script total up to 926,000 words.

I did his preliminary scoring though this is likely to get tweaked as we get into testing. I also have his backgrounds tentatively coded in (just the scene shifts) but these will need some tweaking too. I did go through and figure out what BGs I needed to edit and prep since not all of his BGs were in the game yet. So I did that as well!

I did a very fast play test of his route to make sure the BGs were coded correctly and fixed several errors with BGs and variables. 💪

And finally, I started on flowcharts. I made the initial mock-ups in simple mind (a flowchart software), then started reformatting them in photoshop using the proper images.

I am most of the way through that part but have not started coding them yet.

When making Reuben's flowcharts, I realised that most of his branching comes in the form of a ton of small variations rather than big or winding branches like some of the other routes. I think this makes sense given that his route is so focused on a complex criminal investigation and I couldn't stray too far from the main path without my word count exploding.

Since I'm now in the part of development where I have 30,000,001 small things to tick off a long list, I set up a proper to-do list for myself so I can go through it and gradually remove things as well as just keep track of things like the types of BG animations I want to do or what sprite variations I need.

Sneak Peeks:

LOOK! *points dramatically*

Upcoming Week:

Next week I will be finishing the flowcharts and beyond that, I'm not sure. Probably coding in music and SFX next. And, maybe, BG animations.

The sprites and CGs are the other "big" things remaining after flowcharts and I don't think I want to start on either of those immediately after doing the flowcharts. So I'll probably tick some small things off the list first.

It's so nice to have an update summary that says more than "I wrote stuff". 🤣