August Update

Hi everyone! Time for this month's wrap up and devlog already - coming to you a little early while I have time and am thinking about it.

As you all know, I released Chapter 7 earlier this month and if you haven't played it yet, I highly recommend checking it out . The next episode is, realistically, not that far away because it's already  to a point where I'm focusing on CGs and some remaining art.

So let's jump into what I've been up to the last couple of weeks!

Summary:

• Finished all the sprite expressions for Chapter 8 and 9
• Finished setting up the flowchart and unlock statements
• Finished setting up the new translation articles
• Finished a new character sprite
• Finished coding in music cues, BGs, and SFX
• Finished all CG sketches for Chapter 8
• Finished rendering Asher's CG
• Finished numerous new sprite additions
• Set up the ending screen

Art

This month, after releasing Chapter 7, I started working in earnest on Chapter 8. I've had a fair amount of art to do for this chapter including a new character sprite, expressions for two existing sprites whose faces haven't been shown until now, and a ton of new sprite variations (hair, clothes, etc).

I got a lot of the new sprite stuff done and have just one sprite left to complete.

I also sat down and sketched all the CGs for chapter 8 - I've only rendered Asher's but the others are all at least started and sketched out properly so they just need to be refined and rendered.

Wil is not appearing in these CGs as I know they'll be appearing in Chapter 10 so these are, once again, LI-only. This means they will be a little faster to get done than the couple CGs with Wil in them.

I also had a couple of BGs I needed to prep for use in game which that was, of course, taken care of mostly prior to Chapter 7 going out, but I had to work on a few of them after the fact too. But now all the Aether Station environments are set up and in the game.

Coding and Other

Like with Chapter 7, I had given myself somewhat of a head start with Chapter 8 and 9, starting expressions during beta and early access so that by the time Chapter 7 released, I'd already gotten the expressions nearly half done.

This allowed me to blow through them much faster than usual. And that's why I'm already done with expressions and already have flowcharts and other things out of the way as well.

I also got a lot of the other stuff done including the flowcharts which is the other big coding thing for each episode.

I have started the glossary articles and have all the new descriptive ones set up but still have to go in and add a few lore-related ones.

And realistically, there's not much coding left to do - pretty much everything is done and just needs to be fully tested.

As there is an ending available in Chapter 8, I also had to set up the ending screen for endings which is weird because it's been sitting there unavailable for ages and now suddenly...it's going to be used after all this time.

Upcoming Month

In the upcoming month I'll mostly be focusing on getting the art and remaining small things done for Chapter 8 and Chapter 9. Realistically, art is the main thing remaining. There some small residual coding things (like achievements) but the art is what is going to take the most time.

So I'll be focusing on that  before we go into beta.

If you haven't checked out Chapter 7 yet, now is a really good time to do so. Chapter 7 has been really well received and people are really excited for what comes next.

Anyway, that is all for this month. I expect that the next episode will at least by in beta by my next update here. Probably not in EA yet but beta seems likely before the end of September.

So I will see you all then.