30/11/2023 Devlog

Hello everyone! It's been about a month since my last update so I am checking in with you all on WSC. I have been trying to write this update for three days! LoL

I lost the whole thing at one point because I (stupidly) was drafting it in-browser.)

Here we are at last.

Writing

The current word count is 438,000 words and 94% of the way to the target word count. 

That said.

After my last update, when I finished Chapter 9, I decided I really needed to edit one full route before I could actually finish the ending sequences for the final routes. This is just due to the amount of changes I know I needed to make through Chapter 5, 6, and 7 and how those will affect the story climax and resolution.

So that is what I started working on.

When I hit Chapter 6, I felt like I needed a transition sequence between Chapter 5 and Chapter 6.

As I started plotting out this transition...

The transition scene became a transition chapter. 🤔

I am not just trying to add filler to boost the word count; I really intended this game to be shorter, as I've said. It's just that I keep feeling the pacing is a little too fast, which I think is often an issue in games structured like this one because of, well, the structure. I don't want to go into it too much but I feel the structure sometimes lends itself to the pacing being a bit fast, due to trying to balance the character relationships with the plot development without (hopefully) bloating the word count too much.

This new chapter (currently dubbed 5.5 in the draft, but it will be chapter 6 in the game) serves as a pause between two major events and takes some time to properly set up the next thing that's going to happen while also showing life on the ship and some character interactions - which is one of the things I feel is a little lacking.

I think it will be a good addition but the chapter may be a little short compared to the others. I'm not too worried about that because I can just release it along with another chapter. I'm not fussed about "episodes" being a single chapter really. Episodes will be however many chapters it needs to be to make an interesting episode.

(I should also say that my early outline had 13 chapters. Then I condensed chapters and got it down to 11. Now it's back to 13. So...full circle and all that).

I am still on track to hit my original target (466k) by the end of the year. That is not the same as finishing the draft though. LoL).

I am already feeling better about the early chapters and I think I've already solidified a lot of the plot things I wasn't happy about.

Artwork

I believe this month I have received three new BGs + a new sketch.

There are still something like 25 backgrounds left and I think I may hire a secondary artist to take on a few of those and a few extras I decided I want. (Because of course I decided I want more).

I've been working, as well, on getting Wil's sprite set up to be recoloured using a colour slider - this would mean that the player will have more skin tones to choose from a whole range of them rather than three) while also reducing my workload since I wouldn't actually have to recolour by hand any more. 

Instead of recolouring manually, I would be able to create a single grey scale version of Wil in the image, then have the shader recolour it for me.

Using a shader is pretty tricky for 2D art like mine though. My manually recoloured art has a pretty wide range of colours in the skin tone for example. Shadows are cooler while certain areas are rosy. Highlights change from cooler toned to warmer toned as the skin tone deepens. 

This can be really difficult to recreate in a simple colour shader. So difficult that I've pretty much shied away from them entirely because they tended to flatten my art out in a way that would make Wil look at odds with the rest of the game art.

A while back a developer friend of mine, Feniks, made a colour shader. I didn't think I would be able to use it but decided to give it a try anyway. And I was surprised that the results were...better than I thought. Not perfect. But close enough to my original art that I genuinely started to consider if using the colour slider would be possible.

At the same time I started experimenting, Feniks began sort of separately working to improve their shader. Each step of the process resulted in better and better recolours.

And currently, their recolour tool for Ren'py is probably the best shader option available to indie devs. 

Using it, I can essentially re-create my colouring technique pretty exactly. Of course, there's some experimentation required to figure out how best to set up the art files and everything but I think I have that mostly squared away. It's just about getting the sprite itself functional in the game now. So...yeah.

That happened.

Other

I added in-game achievements to WSC as well. This is also courtesy of a tool that Feniks made for easy implementation of achievements.

So those will now be a thing. I'm excited about them because I think I'll be able to do some really funny things with those. I'm looking forward to it.

Upcoming month(s)

Writing. Forever!

My main goal this upcoming month is to definitely finish editing Asher's route. 

One of the main reasons the ending sequences are a bit tricky is that I'm trying to give each character a unique ending sequence so that events play out a bit differently. This will hopefully help the player feel they're not just getting the exact same story every time.

This is really hard when 80% of the route is the same thing. Ultimately the ending sequences have to be similar but I'm really trying to make them as dissimilar as possible.

That's one reason I really felt I needed to get the earlier events nailed down before I tried to craft 4 additional ending variations (to the two I already have) for the remaining characters. And that edit is coming along well.

I will continue to write for the next weeks and I will see you all one more time before the end of the year. I'm actually quite pleased without the game is shaping up - even if it's a bit bigger than the "small(ish) game" I was originally planning for. 🤣🤣

See you next time!

~Esh