Hey folks,
Just the ongoing reminder of my Landing page which also contains answers to frequently asked questions:
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Regarding Episodes 25: This update is very wordy, so if you don't fancy a long read, just skip to the Summary below.
Going forward, rather than these updates stating I had a "good" week or a "bad" week, I'm going to be a little more objective with progress reports, because from a patron perspective, other than taking me at my word, you have no way to gauge how Episode 25 is progressing, so I'm going to try to address that.
As per my previous updates, I've been plotting / writing / structuring across the whole of Chapter 25 and touching on many different scenes without actually completing anything. The reason for this is that there are so many moving pieces; with each character having effects on other characters, so if I just started writing one scene at a time from the start, pretty soon I would have painted myself into a corner. Think of it like a starting a jigsaw puzzle: Rather than concentrate on a specific area, I wanted to put all the edge pieces together (My next game is definitely going to be more linear, I promise
).
I'm relatively happy with the overall progress (all the corners and edges are in place) and I'm now in a position where I'm ready to start writing and finishing each scene chronologically. So, from now on, I'm setting a weekly line count goal of 1400 lines of completed / chronological script.
Writing 1400 lines of pure dialog (like a movie script) in a week would be relatively easy, but this line count includes dialog, plus all of the coding (variables, jumps, image calls, etc.) For WTHI, all of the pathing and variable tracking (accounting for the multi-verse of choices, etc.) is what takes the time, so 1400 lines is (in my opinion) a difficult but achievable weekly target and at least it will give you a folks a fair idea of how good or bad my week was depending on how far above or below I was from this target. And it will keep the pressure on me, to keep things moving. So each week, I'll let you know how I've done versus that 1400 line goal.
Line count is how I normally judge the "size" of an episode. For context, here is the line count of all previous episodes of WTHI (These are based on the original game, not the Season 1 steam version).
As you can see, the first 3 episodes averaged 1600 lines each, so my weekly target is basically to come up with almost the same amount of content that was in each of the early chapters.
As you can also see, the size of each chapter significantly increased as the game progressed: Chapter 17 was 5.5 times the size of chapter 1 and Chapter 24 was almost 15 times the size of chapter 1. Another fun fact... Episode 24 was almost the same size as the first 10 episodes combined!
And we all know Episode 25 is going to be a monster. But if I set this weekly goal of 1400 lines (and hit the goal), by the end of April, I would have 17K lines completed, which would be the equivalent of episode 23 (Episode 23 was the second largest episode by a big margin), so that would be a nice milestone to hit. I'm not saying that will be the end of episode 25, as I expect it to be the biggest of the bunch, but hitting 17K by end of April is at least a tangible target that you can relate to (based on the line count table above).
As I complete my weekly block, my plan will be to then get it to my proof-reader, as I move onto my next block. And then later (once it's playable) get it to my QC /testing team.
Summary: For Episode 25, I'm setting a weekly target of completing 1400 lines per week and I'll let you know each week how I did.
At the end of this week, I'll have over 1800 lines to send to my proof-reader, but week 1 of this new goal was the easy week, so I'm not counting it as a success just yet. Let's see if I can keep it up.
OK, that's the boring stuff over... Here's a little peek at this week's art progress. I don't have a huge amount of new art to show you as we were doing some work on animations and also on artwork scene setup for two of the scenes. Cell has put together some artwork for the Elaine scene, while Centurion is working on the Angel / Wanda scenes.
For the Elaine scene, MC is taking her on a romantic city-break (which will be romantic and HOT) and for the Angel / Wanda scene, we have the full plan mapped out and it will be a Meet-The-Parents event, which will be a LOT of fun.
Bear in mind the Elaine / Wanda / Angel images are just storyboard / concept images and none of these will make it into the game as is. These are just for us to get a feel for different locations, lighting, looks, outfits, etc. and everything is still a work in progress.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments on anything above or below.
Thanks,
CG
