24/04 Patreon Devlog

Hi everyone!

Popping in with this week's devlog and update! I may have rambled.

Brace for impact and all that! 

Writing:

So this week, I finished editing Chapter Three and started working on Chapter Four. I was hoping to be a little further along with Four, but I ended up doing some other dev stuff this week as well, so that ended up taking time away from writing.

But the writing is progressing, and Caleb's route is nearly 30% toward the final goal.

Chapter Four is where we starting getting hints of what the plot may entail. I also want to focus a lot on repairing Caleb and Morgan's relationship.

Unlike other characters, Caleb and Morgan start out on pretty bad terms because of the kidnapping. Players can be really hard on LIs when it comes to their flaws, so I have to go out of my way to repair - not just *Morgan's* impression of Caleb, but the player's impression of him as well.

There's a much more intimate relationship between the reader and MC in a visual novel, so sometimes it's not enough to just consider what works for Morgan. I also have to consider the player when I start developing this relationship.

A lot of people really hate Caleb by the end of the common route. He's going to have to work hard to win them back over. LoL

ON a totally unrelated not. I decided on a basic set up for the game volitant - which gets several mentions in the story. The rules of the game will never be talked about but...I reckon someone is going to ask at some point. And now I have something to tell them!

I also made up a name for the material Van's cybernetics are made from and did...*gasp* research about metals, allows, and all that fun stuff. So now that is a piece of world-building, too! 

Art:

We've received some new BG sketches, some new BGs. Right now, we have three artists working on Backgrounds - one for New Terra, one for Caissa's Mansion, and one for various places.

The last one is the one that did all of the Lance interiors, and now they're starting to work on some of the backgrounds for Delphine, Pythia, and Cestrescir.

This is an area in the lower decks of New Terra, where all the "untouchables" of society live. It's not the clean, pretty place where the rest of the citizens get to live. It's old, decrepit, dirty…

And more than a little shady.

Coding: 

So, by now, you all know I'm working on the possibility of adding flowcharts into the game as a visual to help players see their path through the story.

This week I did a lot of playing with designs. Partially because I did want to kind of settle on a general look. But working with the visual elements also really helps me understand the various things that are going to go into coding these story maps.

For instance, as I started making mockups, I realised that a single flowchart for each full route would be *massive* - probably at least 9000 pixels long. This is about 7 times longer than the screen resolution, so the player would have to do a lot of scrolling to see the latter chapters.

I also realised it would be somewhat difficult to track progress through the stories unless I somehow marked where the start of each chapter was on the flowchart.

This led me to the decision to break the flowcharts down by chapter, which impacted the screen design as well as my general thoughts for what I want the charts to look like.

I toyed with the idea of a purely symbol based chart (sort of like the branching maps in The Letter) but ultimately, I think I've decided to go with a text based one. 

Again, it'll be much easier for the player to track their progress. (Also, Sprocket deemed it "too bubbly" and said she didn't like it. LoL)

Right now, the game has a counter that tracks your completion percentage. My struggle this counter is that it doesn't really help the player in any way beyond showing if there are dialogue blocks they haven't seen. It doesn't show where the missing content is in the story. To that end, I feel almost like it might add more frustration than anything. If you're at 99%, you don't know whether the 1% you're missing is in Lance's route, Ari's route...or somewhere else.

In addition, the fact that something like the MC's hair colour can impact content also adds a level of complexity there. A lot of players are not going to expect that playing with a different appearance will affect their story. This is something I can potentially relay via a flow chart, but not through a simple counter.

Some people expressed the flowcharts might be "jarring", as they pull players from the story and remind them they're playing a game. I feel like this is fine, though. Visual novels *are* games. There isn't an issue with reminding the player of this by providing ways to view the story in this way. 

I'm planning to maybe play around with actually trying to code one of the flowcharts to see if my idea is going to work. My big hurdle right now is not being entirely sure how to set up the code for a flowchart that tracks the player's story path.

In addition, I've begun to think about new designs for some of the screens in the game which rely on having six love interests. The main screen that needs to be re-designed is the title screen.

Other screens like the profiles page, or the gallery page really just needs the new names added. The main menu, however, needs...a complete overhaul.

I actually really struggled with this because right now, the main menu is the hub you use to get get everywhere else in the game. But 9 LIs + 7 buttons was too much. There was absolutely no way all that would fit on one screen.

So, in the end, we have to add an "Extras" page (much like the one Changeling had) in order to limit the buttons on the main menu. This gave me enough room to put artwork of all the love interests. 

Like our current main menu, I intend to have the images switch from black and white to colour once that route has been cleared.

Contemplating designs for screens also made me finally come to a resolute decision about how to handle the three additional LIs.

I was really torn, for a while, over whether or not to include them as part of the main game, but raise the price to reflect the additional 9 - 12 hours of content…

Or to sell them as a separate DLC.

I finally decided that DLC is just too much of a pain for me to want to deal with, and that I'd rather include all 9 love interests as part of a whole game. (That said, I still intend to release the extra 9 as an update so as not to substantially delay the release of the project).

So that was something else I've been working on/ruminating on.

Music:

Since my last patreon update, we received 1.5 new tracks from Tobi. One was a brand new track, as the "Twilight Wastes" theme, and one was a polished up version of the New Terra theme (which we already had - this is just a more complete version of it).

Upcoming Week:

Art:

GIAOV art is has shown sketches for 5 locations in Delphine and will be working to render out those sketches.

Keira is has shown a new sketch for Caissa's mansion and will be working to render that out.

Fuyu has completed a new BG for New Terra and will be starting a new one (for which we haven't see na sketch yet! 

Music:

Tobi still has three tracks he has not started, and he still needs to polish and revise tracks that are already partially complete. He'll be continuing to work on this in the upcoming week.

Writing:

I'll be writing and writing and writing. Finishing up Chapter Four, for sure. Hopefully starting on Chapter Five.

Coding:

Experimenting with the flow charts and potentially getting some of the new screens set up!

Anyway, that's all for this week's ramble! See you all next week!