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Sup guys hope everyone's doing well. I want to thank everyone who has played Connected so far and everyone who has offered their support for this game's development so far as well. It's been almost 2 weeks since I released the first half of Ch. 3 and I've received plenty of praise as well as some criticisms here and there. I want to talk about the latter for a second. I feel like I have so much I wanna say and talk about but I don't really see how I can make this a short post, so forgive me if I begin to ramble or circle around a point too long.
So, I've said this before, but while I do very much appreciate the kind words I've received from Connected so far, I'm not particularly fond of certain aspects, most notably the first chapter. The writing in Connected has gotten some criticism for being very verbose, which I entirely agree with. It was actually a criticism I had before I even released the first chapter but certain conditions forced me to just get the ball rolling prematurely. That said I still tried to make it the best I could and a lot of you guys love it regardless, again, I'm glad.
Thing is, I
know I can do a better job and I
want to do a better job. I want to create a game in which I can be proud of from start to finish. I don't want to settle with anything less than the best product I can put out with my current level and while praise is great, I don't think I would be able to get any better if I don't listen to that criticism from others and myself.
All that being said, I want to give Connected a small revamp to correct some of the issues I have, but I want to be very clear on what I mean when I say revamp. I don't mean I want to change anything that has made Connected the kind of story it is so far, no. Ayana & friends aren't changing. All I want to do is take what has been written so far and revise it a bit while also updating the character models of the MC, Susan, and Gloria so Connected can be one consistent game without constantly changing character models and constantly changing the perspective of narration.
This also doesn't mean I'm starting from scratch, no. I just want to update certain things, that's all. Chapter 3's second half is still being written and it actually might feel longer than the first half, which is good. The majority of this revamp's changes should be noticeable in the first chapter. The second chapter should go unchanged for the most part with the exception of changing Gloria's and Susan's character models for the updated versions I made some time ago, plus the change from first-person narration to second-person, which is what Ch3's second half is currently being written in, which I think works better for me. First-person tends to set me up for the trap because I'm writing down the MC's every other thought and my mind just keeps going which makes me have the MC regurgitate every little thing I might be thinking about at the moment.
I think this is the best time to do this because Connected is still a small and changeable game. If I were to wait any longer, it would totally be out of my hands, so this is the best time to make any small changes I see fit.
The image above is me just testing out some things for the revamp. You can say it's the first look at the revamped version of the first scene of Chapter 1. This is a test, but I don't expect the scene to look much different from this. But I'm just testing light, clothes, poses, and how much can fit in a scene for right now. Once I feel confident in the scene, the renders will just fly out, since each scene is already set in stone for me.
I don't see the revamp itself taking too long because all I'm doing is taking what is established and seeing what changes can be made, as well as updating the renders of Ch. 1 and some of the renders of Ch. 2, but I still do have a lot of work to do because I want things to move in a consistent, timely fashion. First I wanna finish writing Ch. 3. After I do that I can focus on revising Ch. 1 & 2.
I'm here if you guys have any questions about anything I just said, but TL;DR, I'm not that proud of certain things about Connected so far and improvements can be made relatively quick and easy barring few roadblocks here & there. So I'm choosing to make them.
So yeah, I think that's everything on this matter I wanted to say. Definitely a very long post, I know, but organizing my thoughts has never been a strength of mine. I still feel like I have more I wanna talk about so expect more to come after this post if I feel like it's worth talking about.
