It's the "back to front" update...

Alrighties, slightly tricky post today but I'll try my best to straddle the line between accountability and decorum as best I can. 

As most of you guys know I've been spending a bit of a time on the road this month in respect to some personal matters. I regret to say, using some rather typical British understatement, that the outcome of that particular scenario ended somewhat sadly. It's not something I wish to dwell on here (and indeed not what you're here for) and I'd prefer to not say anymore and just leave you to draw your own conclusions.  I also trust you'll forgive me for not putting up any of the Halloween renders I made for today as it seems a little bit inappropriate for me to do so this time around. 

Anyhoo. Moving on...

Chapter Five

So why the "back to front" update? Well, mainly as I seem to have ended up doing what I planned to do in November this month and what I planned to do this month will be in November. Time spent on the road doesn't really lend itself to coding and rendering etc but does make for a rather decent writing room I've found. As many of you know H5 is all plotted out with the scene blocks for what will happen and the options/paths all mapped out (it'd have to be really given the complexity of the storylines) but what isn't done is the writing for the actual scenes themselves. So, none of the dialogue is done in advance. Being stuck with what passes for radio entertainment these days, gave me a good opportunity to turn the DJ off and mull over some of the more complex scenes.

So the scripts for the mission with Chris, dinner with Mr and Mrs Jones, VR with Annie and Sarah (which quite possibly has the best gag in the entire game so far), the opening scene with the power plant fire, the morning meeting with Amanda and most of the second mission with Trisha are all locked down and in the can. Basically I was driving along, toying with the script in my head, and once getting home again, getting it out of my noggin and typed out whilst I could still remember it all. Oh, I also managed to re-jig the dinner with Amanda scene, unpicking all the script references that made it seem on some paths with her like a reference to recent events in Afghanistan and came up with something that got me into the same place without it seeming as though I was exploiting current events for script needs - which would have looked cheap at best and very poor form at worse.

I'm also happy with the work done on Sarah's main VR game so far with the "Challenge of the Gods" looking as though it will turn out pretty well (although not perhaps for the more hapless Glorias and Babes out there), and Bobe having a far more interesting win option should he choose to listen to his bestest vampire friend. (the scenario in Four didn't give me an awful lot of options last time around, Five looks a lot more fun for those inclined that way). I've played around with the concept for this one and waved it under a few people's noses for views and they seem to approve. I haven't quite made up my mind whether to unlock a new combat move for Five or leave it just as the armour bonus, but that's a small thing that can be tweaked during playtesting.

Backroom stuff

Speaking of testing, there are some changes afoot. Despite my best efforts and a lot of volunteer testers this time around, bugs are still slipping through. We've been kicking this around a bit and basically it's coming down to the testers not really having enough time. I'm dropping some fairly hefty chunks of game on them far too late, whilst tugging at their sleeves saying "I have to get this out!". Not an ideal situation for them or, indeed, ultimately for you. So, we're making a few changes. 

Given that all the animations will be done towards the end this time around (when I'll have much more power to make them and be a hell of a lot faster) the testers are happy to playtest without the animations. So they'll be playing the film equivalent of the "early rushes" with no special effects. Although it means a much poorer experience for them, it'll vastly increase the time available for testing and should make the game less prone to the odd bug.

File compression

I'd got so far on this before events got in the way, but it looks like the final file size for Four tops out at around 4.7GB. I was rather hoping that it would be just a case of converting all the images to WEPm and just changing the code but, like everything, it's not quite that simple. Some images really lose sharpness and quality, especially those with complex lighting or, for some reason, scenes with Trisha (her "loveshack" scenes looked massively washed out in comparison to using Jpeg), so I'm having to pick my way through them a bit more than I expected. With close to 7,000 still images it's not been an especially quick job, although more or less done.

Correspondence etc

I get a lot of messages. A lot. Be it on Patreon or the forum or discord. Which is super nice to be honest but I have to confess I tackle this in a far too haphazard way. This didn't matter too much before but as the weight of messages increases it can mean that if I focus too much on, say the forum, then comms elsewhere can get neglected especially if I have other things to do on the day in question. So I'm going to try and be a bit more disciplined about this, setting aside a day later in the week (probs Friday) to let the machines be busy rendering things in a stack (and not needing my attention) and using that time to sweep through all the various channels. I can appreciate how frustrating and annoying it must be to be getting late replies or seemingly being ignored and this way at least, no one will have to wait longer a week.

Bonus Game, commissions etc

I need/want a week to pull myself together a bit and get back to something approaching a less maudlin version of myself and then I'll be throwing myself into both of these aspects with abandon. Naturally, it should go without saying, that anyone on the higher tiers in September/October or owed commissions regardless of their current patreon status will of course still get what is due. I'll drop messages accordingly.

Notty