Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #160

Hiya everyone! Long time no dev log, huh? I'm not even sure if I have the right number here, and was just tempted to put a bunch of question marks--but I THINK this is right. So we'll go with it. Nobody question it!

It's been just over a week since the release of the latest alpha build of Chapter Two, and I feel about rested and energised to jump back into the swing of things and maybe hopefully get semi-regular dev logs out again. Probably not weekly, because I'm very quickly running out of things I can talk about that won't just outright spoil the few surprises left in the visual novel, but I'll try not to leave you in the dark as much like before. Sorry about that.

Now, there's so much buzzing around in my head and I could start this dev log in an infinite amount of ways, and go on a dozen tangents without pause, but I suppose I'll just start with:

It feels good to have gotten the latest build of the visual novel out. Beyond good. For once, I don't feel like I'm having to desperately play catch-up with everything. For the first time in a long while, I've been able to catch a breath and just take some time for myself, guilt-free and stress-free. Which was nice.

As previously stated in the release post, this latest build I put out for alpha tier backers was special in a number of ways, wrapping up a lot of character arcs in one go, adding 5 new fun h-scenes, and most importantly, bringing Chapter Two's main story to a close across a number of new implemented days and nights. WITH a fancy credits roll, I might add~

And as I've said before, just to avoid giving the wrong impression, the main story being completed now does not equate to Chapter Two being finished entirely; there's still a good few side-events that need to be fleshed out, among some other stuff I'll detail a little later on.

But, but, BUT--this is a giant step forward all the same. And ensures the game can now be played from start to finish with no odd, artificial barriers or end of build notices getting in the way. And all of the lengthiest, most complex segments have now been dealt with, which were admittedly a large road block for me in terms of my writing.

I can't tell you just how good it feels to finally put to writing so many little scraps of dialogue and moments I've had in my head for some of these characters for what must be years now. Some of it has morphed a little with time, and shaped to better accommodate the slightly different direction I took with some characters from their original conception--hello, alcoholic spy--but a lot of it is still following the outline I'd cobbled together long ago.

In the same way, a lot of the last h-scenes I added in this build were actually some of the earliest scenes I'd conceived for the characters, but I pushed them back to the ends of their arcs because I felt they carried far more weight that way. And I think they benefit from it, since they're far less casual, and a lot more intimate in nature now compared to if they'd been the first time they'd messed around with poor Matt.

Given this last part of the story now added in comes AFTER all the dramatic climactic stuff, and serves as more of a winding-down to an epilogue sort of thing, a lot of the moments to be found now might feel far less 'exciting', and a lot more down to earth, and slice-of-life in a way, now that Matt can finally just enjoy a few days of peace without having to worry about some encroaching thing or another. And for some reason another it involves a lot of Ren, Cynthia and Anna.

But that doesn't mean these moments are boring! I hope. There's still plenty of silly antics to be found, alongside some more heart-warming parts, too. I think I cover all the bases in these last few days, really, that serve to tally up some of the choices you may have made through the main story and dish out a few extra or alternative scenes accordingly. You've got shenanigans at Matt's expense, romance, a bit of brooding, some unwilling espionage, and a fun little surprise on an otherwise innocuous day if you meet all the right conditions.

[A chance encounter with a super ultra spy in a dark, seedy alleyway? What could go wrong!]

I suppose that leads me to another thing, though: Chapter Two has lots of moving parts. Lots of variables. Lots of little checks along the way for certain moments to happen or not. Probably too many! And while a lot of them make sense to me as the one who designed them, I just have to hope that they're intuitive enough for others to catch onto when they're deciding on going for certain scenes and that I haven't accidentally made a giant, sprawling labyrinth of a vn that becomes frustrating to read. It was never meant to be a puzzle game, after all. I have another series for that!

Once I fully implement the gallery--probably only once every h-scene is done, so I know exactly how many panels to add, etc--I'll see about maybe having some kind of hint system on how to unlock locked h-scenes if you click on them. Because it'd be awful if I put so much work into a lot of scenes that people just can't find!

But let me know what you think in that regard, or if you think the current structure is fine the way it is. Maybe I'm just overthinking things. As always~

That leads on to the technical side of things--where somehow, against all odds, no big scary crashes were reported. Of which I was utterly dreading when I was putting the game out there in a new build after so long. Because I was sure I would have overlooked something, but as far as I can see, everybody is having a relatively smooth experience.

Uh, outside of Ren using Ruby's text tag one time that is, because in all my infinite wisdom when defining who speaks with what tag, Ruby speaks with an 'r' tag and Ren speaks with a 'ren' tag and I forgot for a single line. But just pretend their souls briefly transferred for that moment and Ren got super gruff sounding. I also think there was a reported moment of a character appearing in a side event if you took it late enough, where given their current place in the story, they would have been indisposed at that time. So a little continuity whoopsie. But it's all resolved easily enough.

Because I talk about how much I love the credits sequence and how much I want to marry it because it's just that amazing, but my goodness is it held together with tape. As it utilises tags for each character image and name box, where a variable is checked to see if you've actually met that character, or discovered their name yet. (Because sometimes you'll see a character, but won't learn their name until a bit later. Like with Marine for example.) So I wanted to account for all the combinations of this, and add some mystery in the credits scroll to show you everything you may have missed and can go back and see in future playthroughs.

But my goodness is it the most stubborn thing in the world, and will throw a giant crash at you if it disagrees with even a single variable. Or the SLIGHTEST thing is out of alignment. On the day of getting the build out I spent what felt like an hour trying to see why it kept crashing, but it turned out there was a single ' missing. And said ' was supposed to be beside an ". You see how easy that is to miss, right? "' " You can barely even see if you're not scrutinising every line! ARRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

But momentary lapse in sanity back then aside, it's fine. I never gave up, and just kept checking things more and more until I got to the root of the problem, even if it took far longer than I would have liked, and is just one of the many struggles I had in putting this whole thing together. Whenever I'm confronted with a problem, I just bash my head against it enough until something gives. Either the problem, or my skull itself. Be it with programming, or writing. It usually serves me well.

I also wanted to briefly touch on one element that was a giant pain for me for ages--the sound mixing. My goodness the SOUND MIXING. For the longest time I know that the music would drown out everything else if kept at the default volume, because I often got music from a number of different sources both custom composed and royalty free stuff, that all had different levels. With this particular build I was sure to sit down with someone better versed with audio than I who was able to help balance the levels out to a much lower point, and now everything should play nicely with voice without constantly needing to fiddle with the sliders. I hope. By default I also set the music slider to be down a tiny notch, just to be safe, but you can adjust to your own comfort level. Hurray for options!

So, now that the main story of Chapter Two is done, what comes next? Why, Chapter Three, of course!

I kid, I kid. Not quite yet. As much as I'd love to dive right into that stuff and start showing the boatloads of assets I have made for that already, to which I may have already shown off a few things already here and there--like this rat for example, ain't she a cutie--my focus is now set on:

- Writing and implementing the remaining side events for a number of characters in Chapter Two

- Adding voice to the h-scenes that might not yet have them

For the first thing, this is basically just wrapping up the side visit chains of events that all the optional characters in the story have. Most of whom I've at least started with a h-scene or two already in current builds, so I'm essentially just adding on to their existing unfinished arcs to wrap them up. And most just have a single h-scene or two to be done, alongside a cute little non-h event here and there.

These will essentially be cute, fluffy little moments that are very low-stakes. In other words, the exact opposite of the intensive scenes that were stumping me. And I like to think I excel with the cuter, fluffier side of it all, so I'm hoping no such roadblocks will present themselves to me this time around. Especially now I've discovered the secret to breaking past mental blocks is to chug copious amounts of energy drinks like I did whilst finishing the writing for the last build!

Outside of some initial scenes I'm looking forward to jumping into, and have been brainstorming since last week, I have no plans for the exact order I'm going to tackle the remaining characters for each upcoming build. But if anyone has any suggestions or votes for who they'd like to see finished --provided their arc hadn't already been completed--let me know.

I'm thinking being able to hop around from character to character in a more freeform manner now will be great for if I'm not quite feeling a particular character in the moment, rather than trying to force myself. I have a lot more freedom now that the main story is complete, and can't wait to see where it takes me~

The second part on the list up there--about implementing voice acting for the remaining scenes--this is something I'll do concurrently alongside the writing. Since the scripts are naturally already written for the scenes yet to be voiced in the current build, but do take some tweaking and adding of directions per line before sending them to voice actors. Which isn't necessarily a herculean task in itself, but when you see how specific some of my directions are under some lines, to the point they end up two or three times longer than the words in the line itself, it can take some powering through. It'll also come down to VA availability as to how soon some stuff can be implemented but I'll try to be on top of it as best I can.

There's also the case of having to still find a new VA for one character--that I probably mentioned a long time ago so it's not anything new or another character needing recasting--which I hadn't made my priority whilst getting other stuff done for the previous build, but I'll pursue this now I have more free time to do so, too!

Basically lots of little small tasks now that all still add up to a fair chunk of work, but nothing as overwhelming as before I think. The hardest parts are over. I'd like to think, at least!

My plan for new alpha builds moving forward will be to stick to small, manageable little builds that add a couple of h-scenes and side events at a time, whilst adding missing voice to scenes that may need it along the way. My biggest mistake before was trying to take on far too much at once and just getting utterly overwhelmed by it all.

So with any luck, the next new build will be within the next month or two, instead of...well...uh. Let's not even look at how long the last build took. And then I'd like to keep up that cadence if I can. My goal here is to minimise the workload on myself between builds, and thus minimise the stress that comes with it. And I think this will give me more stuff to talk about in semi-regular dev logs, too. The monthly stories will continue as well because I find those fun to write as a break away from the main stuff, and I always write those on the day I post them (even the 10,000+ word ones!) so they don't take away from more than a day of work on Chapter Two at a time.

Thanks again for sticking with me and sorry I've been so slow as of late. I don't want to make any more bold promises or claims, as they always backfire on me, but what I CAN promise is that I'll be here forever and always, chipping away at my weird little story that I like to write, and that so many of you seem to love reading, too. And for that, I really can't thank you all enough. Please bear with me for just a little longer as I begin my journey to wrap up all the remaining stuff. I can't say how much longer this final stretch will take, but let's hope it isn't too long!

Until next time~ <3