Patreon Devlog 27/03

Hi Everyone!

Things are continuing to be really crazy and it's been a huge struggle to continue to write through it all. But we are persevering.

So let's jump into our update!

Writing:

I got my potato draft of Caissa's route done and am now working on edits of the last two chapters. These chapters are INCREDIBLY rough. I wanted to finish Cai's route by the end of February. The Kickstarter slowed me down through Feb. (which I kind of expected) but then I wanted to finish it in the two weeks prior to getting our KS funds as I knew the weeks after receiving funds would be crazy.

That is when the pandemic issue began to ramp up which turned into a huge distraction. That meant more writing delays. 

The house has just been really busy and with my spouse doing a lot of calls and work directly related to the pandemic, that means it's been extra hard to focus since the current issue is just in my face constantly.

I've had to move to a new workspace, give up my headset (he needed a good one for his voice calls), forego making tea (LoL) because he's working near the kitchen and is constantly on voice and video calls…

It's been a much larger disruption than I anticipated, to be honest.

And this has all been through me trying to write the most difficult chapter of the route - which is the story climax. So...yes. I don't intend to whine, but that has definitely slowed me down a bit.

That said, I'm nearly done and I expect that Caissa's route is going to end up around the same as Ari's - maybe a little shorter. 105k is my estimate. 

But we'll see when I'm done editing! 

Art:

This week there wasn't anything art related that happened.

One of our BG artists has been ill so we didn't get anything from her. The other artist is working on a batch of 4 backgrounds and we don't have updates from them either. 

Maybe next week! 

One thing I did do - which is semi-art related - was write up more background descriptions. Honestly, writing the descriptions to be able to commission BGs, and hunting down references...this is so time consuming and tedious.

Because this is a science fiction setting, finding references to just show what the heck I mean when I say "A futuristic lab" can take a really long time. I feel like I spent hours this week scouring the internet for references. 

And because it's a futuristic setting, it's often not enough to just say "An office that looks like X." I have to find reference or inspiration images for the room, for the desk, for chairs, for any furniture or items in the room.

I did a lot of that this week.

It's irritating because it's work and it's necessary...but even if I spend 8 hours on that, there's nothing to show for it by the end of the week. It feels like wasted time, though I know it isn't.

Coding: 

This week in coding...I didn't do too much. 

Music:

So last year a composer reached out to us about Gilded Shadows. I really liked his sound but at the time we weren't looking for a composer because we didn't have funds to commission anyone yet. But we told him that we'd consider working with him and would maybe contact him in a few months.

He was really excited about the project and composed some sample tracks to just give us an idea of what he might be able to produce for us.

We stayed in contact with Tobi all through the holidays and beginning of January. And through the Kickstarter…

And all the way up until now.

We ended up commissioning him and he's begun work constructing our soundtrack.

Tobi is a really great composer. You can find him on instagram here if you want to hear some of his music.

He's shown a great deal of passion for working on Gilded Shadows which...to be honest...is kind of rare for a freelancer. We've worked with tons of freelancers and, for many of them, commissions are just a job. And they don't always exhibit a huge amount of passion for their commissions. That's fine because we're not paying them for passion. But it's always great to work with someone who seems to enjoy the project.

What I really love about Tobi is that he views the soundtrack as a cohesive whole rather than a set of separate tracks  for separate situations. Because of this, there should be a lot of carry over of various themes and instrumentation between the tracks, making the soundtrack more connected.

He does a lot of planning and it's really made me incredibly excited to see how things are going to go with our music this time around.

Anyway, this week we heard a couple of WIPs, including this track for our main theme. It's not finished yet and it cuts off awkwardly at the end because it will be designed to loop (looping tracks nearly always cut off abruptly if you listen to them through just once.

Working with Tobi has probably been the highlight of this week and I feel really fortunate to have met such a great composer for Gilded Shadows! 

Upcoming Weeks:

I do expect to finally finish editing the last bits of Caissa's route this week - possibly over the weekend, actually.

After that, I will turn my attention to the common route. Now, some work on the common route is already done. I did that due to the distractions from writing. In order to get the beta for the demo update out, I really have three sprites I need to get finished and implemented:

Vanessa (who appears briefly at the end of Common, Chapter Four)

Wynter (who has now been written into Common, Chapter Two)

Bad Guy #1 (who also appears briefly at the end of Common, Chapter Four).

Vanessa potentially needs a few more expressions, and needs her files saved and coded. I'm not sure if I have completely finished her expressions or not.

Wynter needs all his expressions done. I haven't done anything but his base expression. Then, of course, he needs to be coded as well.

Bad Guy #1 has most of his face hidden with sunglasses (like a proper bad guy) so he actually doesn't need any expressions. He needs some shading done on his hands and needs to have his weapon drawn. Then he'll need to be coded as well. 

I expect to be mostly working on that stuff next week. Depending on how long it takes (honestly, it shouldn't take long), that could mean an alpha update going for testing to a few beta testers as early as the middle/end of next week. And then a release for beta testers soon after that.

I will also be starting on writing Caleb's route as soon as all that is done.

And that is all the stuff I expect to be coming up.

One final update is that for those of you who have access to our monthly dev talks - I've been doing them on the last Monday of the month but I believe I'll be swapping to the last Sunday. This is mostly because with Nicky working from home, doing voice chats during the week is much harder...so it's probably better to shoot for a weekend.

That means we'll be doing that VC this Sunday. If you want to show up for it, I might livestream some sprite related things or we can just talk about the game and all the things going on with it! 

See you next time! 

~Esh