E1P2 Post-mortem and the road ahead!

Hi all, it has been a busy weekend with the public release of Cara in Creekmaw garnering a larger amount of players, and with those numbers come a variety of bug reports which I have been squashing for the better part of the weekend!

Now that most of the dust has settled and knowing that the game as of now does not contain any game-breaking or show-stopping bugs, it has definitely put my mind at ease knowing that most of the issues surrounding the phone (unless on an old save) are pretty much resolved!

What is this post about?
For this post, I will discuss several things that I will look back on in terms of how the development of E1P2 went overall (aka a post-mortem). My goal is to use what I learned as a stepping stone moving forward to E2, and to also give you guys a clear picture of the highs and lows of development (if you're so inclined to read about it, of course) as well as the key takeaways, so let's get started!

Firstly, there was a shift in development practice when I was creating E1P2 compared to E1P1, which can be summarized below.

E1P1 development cycle (step-by-step):

1. I write the entire script on a plain document, this is pretty much 80% of all the dialogue.
2. I then render each scene as I have planned.
3. The two steps are then combined in the code and additional work is then completed (such as the replay gallery, adjustments to dialogue that each render is for, etc.)

This process is done step-by-step (i.e. non-repeating).

E1P2 development cycle (iterative)

1. I plan key plot points that tell the story as I envision it. The scenes going in between each major plot point were either used to advance other characters' developments or center on Cara herself.
2. I render key plot points and keep a more "free-and-easy" stance, rendering what I believe to be necessary even if the dialogue itself was not yet written/planned.
3. I progressively code the game and add dialogues/renders as they become available.

This process starts from Step 1 and repeats itself after Step 3.

What's the main point?
E1P2's development process was largely different from the one used in E1P1, and had its own strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths of E1P2's cycle:

• It's very flexible in terms of being able to jump between different tasks; this keeps me from being burnt out from doing one thing for too long (namely staring at a blank document writing dialogue).
• I'm not grounded by dialogue that was previously written and I'm free to depict the scene in different angles or variations, and then fill in the dialogue later.
• As this is an iterative process, it allows me to think of scenes more organically instead of sticking to a specific sequence.

Weaknesses of E1P2's cycle:

• The switching of focus when juggling different tasks tends to be disruptive at best.
• Being ungrounded by dialogue would mean I (from time to time) create additional renders when only a few would have sufficed for certain scenes (this is made worse by how my current rig was not built specifically for rendering), meaning sometimes I'm stuck rendering a very large queue with a PC that can barely be used for common everyday tasks.
• While thinking of scenes organically is a good thing, it can result in the overall picture looking very disorganized and lacking in coherence when played through completely.

Moving forward...
As I enter the planning phase for E2, I will be looking to do the same in terms of planning overall story beats, but will also pay greater attention to the scenes linking the story beats together, as I believe it was lacking during E1P2's development, resulting in a hodge-podge of a few scenes happening for not much reason or from not much build-up.

Once planning concludes, I will write a rough skeleton of the entire episode and refine it further, as I will use this skeleton to plan the meat and bones (i.e. dialogue and renders) of the upcoming episode. This should result in a better overall composition without reducing the number of major scenes that were included in great numbers across the entirety of E1.

That is all for the post-mortem! While this may not be a sneak peek render or something from the upcoming episode, don't worry as once planning wraps up, it'll be back to the regular sneak peeks and dev logs!

Thank you and stay safe!