Hello hello and welcome to my devlog, I am here with another update to share! There were a few things that caused this delay however I will continue trying my best to keep the updates weekly if I can! Thank you for being patient and understanding! :]
For those interested in playing the demo, here's the link!
I ran out of typing room in my last post so I'm going to continue where I left off:
The afternoon settings/routes were already being worked on previously and I have a bit of them finished and they now lead into day 4! There's possibly one or two left but I took a pause here.
- There were going to be certain CG's you could encounter but I decided to scrap at least two of them because they would be on the screen for about two or three sentences and weren't really necessary.
- There were also a few dialog changes as I was going through everything. There was a certain event trigger that could happen and I decided to adjust the situation that occurs because it was a bit too unexpected. I really like the new outcome you can get from it now. :]
At some point I said I might condense one or two routes together if certain ones had a lot of similarities or if adding a specific branch itself isn't really necessary to have. I had two different choices you could make that would lead into their own unique branch. I decided to make them go into another branch instead.
- This is because the choices were pretty benign and giving them a unique route wouldn't make much sense? You'd have to really go out of your way to even find these branches and it felt random since Noah wouldn't know anything about it.
For the last few routes that I have left to work on that go into Day 4, I'm brainstorming which settings they'll lead into again. I went through them and realized some could go a bit differently from what I originally had planned so things slowed down a bit here. What happens for the most(?) part in them will still be the same but just takes place at a different time. Once I got a fair amount done I took a pause here as well.
- I'm still testing this but I adjusted the visual effect that appears on your screen when something is causing you to rapidly lose health(?) to make it more noticeable on the screen, I'm still brainstorming it but I kind of like how it looks now.
- The process for them have been a bit slow but I'm mainly just pacing myself and making sure what I'm writing fits what's going on. I'm getting a decent flow of how I want them to go but also keeping them fairly unique enough to flesh things out. :]
- For one of them specifically, there's a choice you can make that drastically extends things out more. I talked to my new play tester about it and we bounced out ideas with how it would lead. In the end, they gave me a thumbs up to go with an idea I had for it and I took what they suggested and mixed some of it in there somewhere else too. I'll eventually come back to this one because it may require more CG's. :]
Lastly, for one of the longest routes in the game I decided to unpin it and work on it.
To those who answered my question in my last update post, thank you!
I took what you all have said into consideration! :]
- I ended up adjusting one part of it but only slightly. The choices and conversations will still be the same however they'll only progress to a certain limit before possibly branching elsewhere instead. The remaining portions will still occur but just somewhere else.
- For the other part, I had to go in there and heavily clean it up. There was a lot going on and it got complicated trying to figure out what goes where. It had been some time since I checked on since it can go in several different directions so I had to organize a lot of the old code so it can flow better. This took up a good amount of time because I really wanted to take time out to fix this while I knew what I wanted to do. I ended up making specific choices lead down one specific path, this had to be done because if I didn't there would be too many branches and that would be incredibly overwhelming for me to try and sort out.
- There were also a few minor dialog changes along with some small grammar adjustments to fit what you see visually.
Here are some of the overall bug fixes so far for some of the routes:
- Grammar mistakes
- Random kitchen scene happening in areas where it shouldn't
- Random living room scene happening in areas where it shouldn't
- CG glitch that caused a random black screen to appear
- Hp loss not signaling appropriately
- Certain CG's not transitioning properly
- SFX's volume adjustment
- A specific CG staying on the screen for longer than intended
- A certain route jumping into another separate route
- Certain backgrounds misaligned with the dialog in a specific choice
Thank you guys for all your support on this! I wholeheartedly appreciate the support and encouragement! :]