Latest Dev Log: 07/25/23
Hello Everyone!
I apologize I haven't posted an update sooner. I was going to post one a week ago, but I had a busy weekend, and I thought I would just finish the scene I'm on first, and it took me longer than expected to finish the scene. Anyway, I hope you are all doing well. Besides this stomach bug/flu I've had since yesterday, I'm doing good.
On the subject of the update, I've been working on adding some new features that players have been asking for a long time. With the help of Bitstream (he did most of the work actually while I worked on the update), we're adding a gallery for the hidden renders and a music player to the phone with all the music in the game.
Many people didn't even know there were hidden renders in the game, but since episode three, I've been adding renders that can be found by clicking spots in the renders. It's usually something in the scene that is out of place or something that is in one render and not in the next. You can click on the locked image in the gallery for a hint to help you find them.
It still needs some polishing, but here are a couple of screenshots:
I get lots of people asking about songs in the game. "What's the name of this song?" or "Where can I find it?" So you'll be able to open up the music app on the phone, listen to songs, filter by episode to find a song more easily, and also click a link that will take you to the source website.
Here are some screenshots:
About the progress of the update. I've been working on animations for the past 3 weeks and just finished the scene I was on. A total of 58 custom animations in 3 weeks. Yes, I got a little carried away with the scene, but it's the scene I wrote and I wanted to see it justice. The scene is fire! There's no question it's my favorite scene I created thus far and the most impressively technical one. When I was about 2/3rds done with the scene, I was like, "Man, this is taking a while to do. Is this worth it? Should I cut the scene short?" And then after sleeping on it, I said hell no! I liked the way I wrote this scene, and I want to do it the way I envisioned it. I've shortened and changed scenes in the past, and I think it's important to start sticking to my guns. The scene may not be for everyone, and you may not even see the scene if you are not on the route, but it's entertaining, if not anything else.
There will still be a big scene at the end of the update that will probably be a lot of people's favorite (including mine). But the scene is done now, and I really like it.
The last third of the update is mostly all Skylar content. I think people will be happy about that. There is a big stretch of render-only content next. So, I should make a lot of progress and try to catch up to where I should be. Then after that, another animation-heavy ending. I'm still undecided if I will extend the update further than that or not. I did talk about making a really long update last time, but I still haven't decided. I already have all the dialogue(and most of the coding) finished for the extended/next update, so I'll either have a huge head start on the next update or delay this update to make it bigger. We'll see where I'm at after I finish the originally planned update, or maybe I'll make a poll and let you guys decide. Currently, I'm at 831 images and 86 animations.
-Jestur
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