Friday Devlog

Hey Everyone! 

Just popping on to post this week's Patreon devlog.

Writing:

I'm really, really keen to finish Ari's route...quickly. I don't know if I'll be able to because I have a lot of other things to work on as well but I'm trying really hard. Right now it's around 84% of the way to target word count of 100k.

I finished up Chapter Ten (though it really is going to need a good edit!) and started Chapter Eleven. Eleven has some...extreme branching going on. 

One thing I wanted to do in GS was have the potential of side characters that are permanently impacted by the player's decisions. For instance - Rory (Fountain Guy) is a character that I want to potentially bring back as a side character based on the player's interactions with him in later interactions in the common route.

Basically, if the player makes certain choices then Rory comes back as a side character who is safe and working through the issues he's having in the Common Route. But if the player makes different choices...he doesn't come back (implication being he doesn't make it out of that situation okay).

This is something I want to do with other side characters as well - including one in Ari's route. There's a moment that can potentially go three very different ways. Branching is pretty tricky and the more variables you're juggling, the more you have to slow down and really think about continuity and other things.

In Changeling, routes had up to 45-47 choices in them. I think Elliot may have even gone over 50 choices. There were over 300 choices in the entire game. A lot of the choices also had 3 options rather than just two. And the game was, as a whole, about 30-35% branched.

Gilded Shadows is looking like it's going to have around 20 choice per route (less than half of Changeling's choice count) and most of them only have two options. Even with fewer choices the branching is still around 30%. So you can imagine that there's a lot going on in GS.

This means that even with more planning at the start, it takes a while to write because of the branching. At one point in chapter ten, I was juggling all of these:

-kissed ari previously

-did not kiss ari previously

-shower scene happened

-shower scene did not happen

-went to dinner with Trent (previously Trey)

-did not go to dinner with Trent

-had a conversation with Van about Ari's jealousy

-did not have that conversation

All these things would come up at different times and need different amounts of branching - sometimes one line and sometimes a lot more than that.

This is the kind of stuff that I have to slow down and think about as I write. And sometimes take a break to work out mentally how things are going to flow.

So yeah! That's what's going on with writing this week! 

Art:

We got one more completed BG- for a cafe I believe actually appears in Common, Chapter Four…(and will likely get reused for various routes as well.)

That is here:

There's a "day" and "night" version. Of course, since you can't see any windows, that just means the lighting shifts. LoL

The first time this cafe shows up is like...3 AM though so I may use the day version just because it feels like they'd have turned off their fancy evening lighting by then. I don't know. LoL

Still waiting on two more BGs for the common route. Both of them are vehicles which will probably get reused quite a bit.

I also worked on Caissa's intro CG - I posted the WIP here. It's actually complete now, which means all the LI intro CGs (a total of five since Lance does not get one...yet) are done. Woo!

I made a few changes/fixes to Magnus' introductory CG as I realised I'd forgotten his glasses and he is wearing them in that scene. And, idk. He just wasn't looking like himself. His face was too narrow, his eyes too high, his eyes were also a different shade of blue somehow. So I tried to make him look a little more like his sprite. 

We also got the first of our chibis - Magnus. Here:

Coding: 

I coded imported the introductory scenes with Magnus and Caissa. I was able to get both scenes coded - complete with their respective CGs. A sizeable portion of the chapter remains to be coded, though. And we're missing one of the BGs we need for it (I have a sketch to use as a placeholder though).

I also had to code Magnus' sprite, as I hadn't done that yet. Fortunately, everyone has mostly the same expressions this time so I'm able to re-use a lot of code sprite to sprite and just alter mostly their clothes and hair (since those differ sprite to sprite.)

Having said that - some sprites do have slightly different expressions. Caissa has a sneering mouth no one else has, Magnus has...a lot of smiles. LoL But for the most par, I can reuse the expression code as long as I name the files the same way.

Amusingly, I made one small writing/coding fix...I changed Trey's name from Trey to Trent. LoL

(A NOTE ON WHY IT CHANGED)

He's gone through several names and I settled on Trey because it just sounds like kind of a jerk-name. Trey was originally more of an antagonist in Ari's route. But the baton was passed to someone else to be the antagonist so Trey became more of an innocent bystander. And suddenly "Trey" felt like it no longer fit.

I was going to change his name to something else, but then a friend accidentally called him "Trent" and I was like "AHA" and stole it. LoL True facts. This is how naming stuff works.)

Upcoming Week:

I feel like I keep being really ambitious about what I intend to do in a given week, then all the time gets eaten up by writing, and other things fall by the wayside. 

THIS week...here are my goals:

-Finish coding Common, chapter three

-finish Ari, Chapter Eleven

-Maybe do some more YCH artwork 

Also a reminder that the monthly dev talk should be on Monday (my Monday).......unless I forget. Again. OXO; In which case I will probably remember and do it on Tuesday! LoL

But I am determined to not forget!

I will see you all then!

~Esh