02/03/2024 Patreon Devlog

Helloooo~oooo everyone! Time for this week's update.

Summary

• Sketched all six CGs

• Lined and flatted some CGs

  • Asher

  • Daaz

  • Kav

• Finished Asher's CG

• Completed the one remaining sprite for this episode

Art 

This week I was focused almost entirely on working on the CGs. I decided this time around that was going to at least sketch out all the CGs right at the start then render them out one by one.

So I did get all the CGs sketched out and several of them fully lined and flatted (IE lined with flat colours added).

Doing the line art and flat colours is actually the longest part of the process for this game. This is mostly due to all of Wil's options - particularly the hairstyles which do take a while.

I decided to start rendering after lining and flatting the first three CGs - mostly to give my hand a break (line art is quite hard on my hand). Hence I finished Asher's CG.

Then I remembered I actually still have one sprite to do. So...I quickly (...sort of) got that sprite done. And it's finally...........FINALLY out of the way.

I have been putting off that sprite for so long because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with it and I didn't know how I wanted him to look and I kept going back and forth over long hair or short hair and what kind of pose and what kind of clothes.

And finally I just sat down and drew him. And he's done. And I think he turned out well. So we are now good.

There are a couple of remaining major character sprites I'll have to do down the line but the two I had to do for Chapter 5 are quite important so I'm glad they're finally out of the way.

Coding and Other Stuff

I guess I added the unlock statements for the flowchart this week too. I think I did it the day after my last update so it feels like it was a part of that week's work. 

Putting in the unlock statements doesn't take too long. It's basically a day of work when it's just one chapter to do like this episode.

And that literally entails going through scene by scene to unlock bits. The only tricky part is that the flowchart is massively simplified compared to what is actually going behind the scene. This is just because there are so many small variations and things that including everything on the flowchart would make them even more huge.

There is one scene in Chapter 5 that, on the flowchart is represented with this sort of flow:

But this is more accurate to what happens and you can see it's much bigger because of all the small variations getting represented. Some of those bubbles represent 2-3 line variations calling back to previous choices and the like.

But since the flowcharts are already massive, I feel like it's just nicer to simplify, remove the smaller variations and leave the bigger branches only. It also makes the flowchart more symmetrical and easier to follow in my opinion.

So when I talk about the flowchart being simplified, this is an example of what I mean.

But yes, the flowchart is now unlockable (though it still needs testing of course).

Upcoming Week

CGs....I'd really like to get one more CG complete before tossing the route to the beta testers. I feel like their getting to see the CGs first is a little reward for anyone who does help out with typos and errors. 

I don't want to wait until they're all done - because that's probably two more weeks but I do think I want to try to finish one more. With those that are already lined and flatted - that's a day, day and a half of work to do art and then a little extra time for coding.

The CGs are the last remaining thing I think on my to do list beyond testing. So Yeah. Beta should honestly be maybe half a week to a week away for Chapter 5.