Development Update #48

Hello there, how are you all doing?
I'm fine, I decided to build to myself quite a lot of work to do in a few weeks, will I be able to do everything? I hope so!

This month I'm working on three things in the game: Revision, Addition of a Cutscene (sketch), and creating and adding 8 new routes for Karnal. 

So let me talk a little about each of them.

Revision:

Revising an older day to add the following: 

• New Animations.
• Remove unnecessary animations or fix multiple animations added in sequence by mistake.
• Remove unnecessary speakers when no one is actually speaking or adding necessary speakers when someone is speaking and fixing a wrong speaker when the character speaking is not displayed correctly.
• Fix dialogues, from small fixes such as a comma or adding and removing a few words, or even changing a few words for better phrasing to essentially changing the entire dialogue for a better conversation flow. Sometimes that also includes removing a dialogue or adding more dialogues.
• Add backgrounds to where they should be added if needed.
• Menial changes, that are not described, but are necessary such as starting the theme music for a new area if that area was visited but the song never started. 
• And random issues that could appear, such as routes not being anchored correctly creating crashes if not fixed. 
• Remove or add a sprite if necessary. 

So, is it hard to do it? How do I do it?  Well, you can see by the screenshots that my personal software helps me a lot (forgive the red point in the tiger's face, that's probably Windows snip&sletch tool trolling me), I can see a preview of what the scene would look like in-game, with backgrounds, sprites and so on, I can check what animation is playing, is music is being called when a location change and so on. 

I have to click on a route name (first image, top left section), then click on the dialogues (middle list right at the side of the first list), then I need to edit each dialogue if I feel the sentence needs to be changed if the character needs to be shown or removed and so on. That includes reading each dialogue, sometimes multiple times, using Grammarly to check the spelling while also checking how people would speak that said sentence. If anything in the dialogue changes, from the speaker, the background, the music, the sprite expression (head) or the sprite animation, if the text is slightly changed or heavily changed if it's deleted or new dialogue is added, I always take note to add on the changelog how much it was changed in numbers. This is also a good way for me to keep track of how much I worked, even if doing so every single dialogue is a pain in the socks and also very, very, very time demanding. 

The edit dialog window always pop-up with the values within each dialogue. 

The Dialogue window also has some small areas with every Speaker, Background, and music listed in the game, so I can quickly select or change what is needed. Those items are loaded from a special list that I have to edit every single time and make sure the names are correctly placed so that when these values are sent and saved into the JSON, they are saved correctly. The game is case-sensitive, so I need to be careful. And not just that, but once a name is added, if I ever want to change it, I need to manually change the inside each JSON file the names because that's not automatic. That's why I don't tend to change names, not even from filler characters such as the barcheetah.

The character section has a toggle button on the top of it, if the sprite doesn't need to be there, I just toggle it off. This way instead of selecting None for each section I just ignore it completely. Every sprite has a name, a body, and a head. The head holds the expressions while the body holds the clothing they use. This system was created, in case I want or need new kinds of body language in the future (and have the money to pay for them, sprites are way more costly to make and so more expensive than backgrounds or cutscenes!) that can be easily implemented in the game's code. Having the sprite split into two images however also means I have a lot more trouble to show them in the galery. 

The character also has a Side and an Animation. The Side is the place where the sprite is located, middle or center, left and right. This doesn't change where the Leave animation will send the sprite yet but I do pretend eventually to create position-specific animations for sprites, however: I will only comb again through the days to change those small things once I start adding sound effects to the game. I won't be combing through those tons of routes and dialogues every single time I add a new feature for god's sake. 

And to end this section, Animation is essentially those small movements the sprite does every few dialogues, there is three kinds of jumps, a shake, enter, leave, Zoom in, and out animations so far. Sometimes I change them during the combing to show better emotion during a dialogue. 

I won't lie, sometimes I feel Karnal and Wagner are missing a few specific emotions for themselves, and one day I'll take notes and try to buy a few more of them because not all of them convey the emotion I need in a scene. But so far that's what I need to do and how I do it for combing through the days in the game files. 

Now, so far, I'm at the start of Second Act Part 2 for Karnal, there is a LOT of things I need to do yet, tons of routes to check, and I have a deadline to finish this by the end of this week. The next week I need to do some writing if I want you guys to have something new to read about Karnal. 

Addition of a Cutscene:

While combing through the Day3.JSON there's a specific place where a cutscene should be played. You guys must have seen the sketch for that Cutscene, it's on the bar for Karnal and Aiden, and the sketch is a little off compared to the scene, I already asked the artist about it and he will fix it, it's just small details though, the core of the scene is the same. I want to add that scene to the game, just like the scene on Day3 for Wagner, and of course, by doing so I also need to add that scene to the Galery too! Frankly, the Galery bit will be added on the next alpha after this, the reason being that it needs some time for me to code and add the visuals needed and I doubt I'll have enough time. Combing through the days is taking me two weeks already, and it's not easy. Not only that but maybe I'll re-write the cutscene when I find where it is, just to fit better with the drawing too. But yeah, the addition of the cutscene may mean also a lot of rework on that sequence too.

The creation of a new segment for Karnal:

Scrivener is definitely the core of this task. I use it to make everything connected, everything accessible without having to make a lot of separate files in a folder. Everything is interactable and now I even write those scenes with the script exporting in epub and PDF for tier 4 patrons (I know some of you have no way to play the game but are here helping me every month, so I want you to be able to check the script if you like a read), but it's also the best tool to write anything, really. Before I even start adding stuff into the game, I spend hours of the week in this, writing, checking my grammar, seeing if the scene is good enough, deleting it, and starting over. My life is hard no matter if I'm revising, coding or writing. 

I believe I'll be able to write the next segment for Karnal if I work harder and faster on it, usually it takes me two weeks to write everything, but I am writing while combing through texts so I can do everything, but maybe I won't be able to do everything in time. I will try it though, all I need is to stop trying to write the perfect scene. You guys don't believe how many times I re-write the same sequence over and over again because I think it's not good. This time I need to come with my A-Game if I want everything to be done. HOWEVER, If I notice the combing is taking too long and taking too much time and concentration I will focus only on it. Yeah, new stories are nice but I also need to fix the issues on previous days guys and believe me: There are sequences where Karnal's sprite leaves the scene 18 times in a row. That's absurdly distressing to watch and it's a mistake on my part. I can't let the game be like that for long, right? However, I am advancing on KArnal route, I am writing an hour or so every day, but I'm not that happy with it. Not yet. I think I'll be able to dedicate more time to writing next week, so let's just hope I can write enough before that so I can finish it before the deadline ends, right? If not, well, the combing is having a very big impact on the game.

But before I tell you the current fixes with the combing, let me tell you what I do when I finish writing the text. First, I check the spelling with Grammarly, usually, Grammarly helps me with the On and Ins that I tend to mistake a lot. HOWEVER, sometimes Grammarly also suggests some stuff that would destroy the text or make it impossible to understand, so it's a double-edged sword. Then, I read everything again but this time a little faster because I need to put those data inside the game by using the software I showed you guys before, and believe me: Adding new text is AS long as combing through it and reading it. The difference is that since I do this two or three days before the alpha release, sometimes I make some mistakes. And since I don't have time to comb through it before releasing the game, I only check the important things, such as checking if the routes are connected with its anchors to make sure everything will work without the game exploding! 

So, what about the combing then? How it's going?

So far, here are the changes:

• Speaker Issues found and fixed: 1
• Small changes through dialogues done: 127 (Dialogues changed, not counting how many words were changed on a dialogue).
• Big changes on dialogues (such as deleting a dialogue or changing the entire text):  2
• Sprite Changes: 25 (Such as changing the expression of the sprite).
• Animation Changes: 66 (Sprites with new animations or animations changed).
• Sprite Missing: 47 (Number of dialogues where a sprite was needed but wasn't added originally).
• Sprite Removed: 1.
• Background Changes: 2

So far, these are the total changes. And so with it, I'll be finishing this post and going to my bed because I need to sleep.

ct. Like I said, the plan here is to finish everything, but my priority is the Combing through the days first. I don't think I can make the Day for Karnal to work if the combing takes too long, even with me doing a little every day of the writing, there's a lot to write! So please, be patient and forgive me in case it's impossible to deliver a new segment for Karnal. Believe me when I say: I'm working eight hours or more every day in this game, and when I pause, it's to help the roommate to make furniture, go make groceries, clean the house, prepare food, make a cup of coffee because I'm constantly sleepy, and so on. I'm even not having time to rest on weekends because I want this game to be good so bad, I want to work as much as possible, and since I'm a perfectionist, I  want everything perfect. 

So yeah, there's a lot on my plate but I won't overwork myself to a point where the quality of the game will drop, that's why I have a rule: No good text, no new written content in-game. And that's valid here too. Even with me being annoying as hell trying to make a perfect text, there are still a LOT of issues once I start revising old text, because I'm not perfect, I make mistakes when placing the text inside the game, and again, sometimes I wonder how for 17 dialogues I didn't notice Karnal has the Leave Animation on?! That's why combining through the dialogues is important, after all, I doubt you guys have read every single dialogue this game has to offer, after all, you do need to have less than 50% of the total points to read the basic routes on the latter days, so there's a lot of issues I find you won't find unless you want to be a bitch in-game. 

So far that's it, guys. I'm sleepy here, and I need some rest. Please you all, be safe. And thanks for supporting me here on Patreon. You all are so amazing. Thank you so much.

I'll see you guys soon.