I know I told myself I'd leave Book 1 alone, but I was working on a sequence from Book 2, testing out a new technique. I was originally going to just render a static image, then bring it into After Effects to add effects, then take a single screenshot and use ingame. Except I managed to get it to loop cleanly into a 2 min video, and it looked pretty awesome running in the background instead of just a static image.
Having done that, I started thinking about doing it to the rest of Book 2. And I will; it's a reasonably cheap way to add impact to cool magic sequences, without spending days and days like I do on the big cutscenes. But I always wanted people to play the full game from beginning to end, and I started to worry that by the time I finally finish Book 3, Book 1 will look terribly, terribly dated.
So I had a bright idea; why not go back and add in this kind of animating effects to some of the key non-animated moments in Book 1? (Here an experienced project manager would go "oh no, you didn't....", but... well, yes I did). There's 30+ new animations of this kind, ranging from small throw-away scenes like this one:
... to entirely new videos replacing what was previously static images for umpf, like here. My favorite, which I also used as the Book 1 Remaster branding, was Treason's Reward. It's a shot from Act V's End sequence, where Emily states "I pledge to reward loyalty with trust. Service with Honour. Treason with Death". She feels a little more scary in this little animating clip than she did in the original still image.
Part of doing that involved replaying the game, and that's where my carefully laid plans went awry. I have (at least in my own mind) grown and evolved as a developer over the years, especially in terms of art and special effects. In the 2 years since I started Love of Magic I've certainly learned a LOT about what works visually in this medium. And some of the early stuff really hadn't aged well.
I ended up re-rendering a couple of dozen images, mostly for the early scenes, especially the erotic ones. Chloe's day 1 event in the bathroom, Strip MMA with Katie and Strip poker with Katie and Bella. While doing that I also added longer action animations for all three of them as a capstone. I also did a pass through to standardize aspect ratios, improve framing, color correct where it made sense, and add a proper background rather than just using whatever happened to be in the room.
All in all I ended up touching about 80% of the story-telling images in the game. and cleaned up a bunch of little annoying issues (Molly, for example, was originally blue-eyed, and some of her early images were still blue-eyed). I also did a typo-pass, fixed a card background that didn't unlock properly, and tested the various other achievements. Hopefully the update makes Book 1 feel visually more coherent, and raises the quality bar a little.
I'm building the various mirrors now, and it should be up in a couple of hours time.
You can also grab the game from Steam, here:
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And if you're interested in the work I'm doing on Book 2, you can check it out here. If you like the game, do give it a wishlist, it's free and really helps convince Steam that this is a real game that they should help support at launch
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