Development Update #16

Hey there guys, I'm here to announce the current state of the project.

After the halt I had to give to the project because of personal issues, now I'm working at full speed. The next alpha 10.1 will be released by the end of this week and this is the changelog so far:

• Karnal's Second Day completed with the A and S dialogs. - To be done to the end of the week.
• Added six new expressions for Karnal. - Already done today.
• Added new names on the credits section. - To be done before closing the new alpha.
• Changed the day 1 and 2 files to call for the new expressions and designs instead of the old one. - Already done today.
• Fixed some small bugs found by the week while testing the game. - Done.

The A and S dialogs are done, now I will just meticulously pass every single sentence through Grammarly, that usually helps a lot since I'm not American or British myself, (I am American, but I'm not from the North America guys), and I tend to make a lot of mistakes. Grammarly would help more if I could pay for the premium version but since it's not cheap and I'm not earning enough to keep it, I'm just correcting some words and sometimes commas, etc. But it seems to be working pretty well, I'm having 0 corrections suggested for two months or more. That doesn't mean the text is perfect though, so if you find something weird don't forget to use the in-game Send correction box, and send me your corrections! Your name will be set on the credits as long as you put your patreon name in there correctly and are actually a Patron on the month you've sent the correction. 

As soon as the Dialogs passes through that correction phase (I'm having less and fewer issues with that, but I always check anyway), I'll be putting it inside the game, this takes a lot of time but It takes far less time than writing the text. I just need to be careful not to forget any information you guys can't see as text, such as expressions, animations, music calls, route anchors (what makes sure you can read the next dialog after a route ends and you go through a new one, usually after answering something or finish the route), since all of this occurs seamlessly it's not a thing you will notice, but if I forget any of this, the game can crash or simply stop and do nothing more. I'm pretty sure a lot of the first patrons had this issue, they were playing through the alphas and then, the dialog didn't advance or the game throws you to the next day. It's more difficult today for me to make this mistakes since I have an editor for the days now, but when you have a LOT of routes at once to make, there's a chance you just do something wrong. So I have to do it slowly to make sure I won't have to make another alpha just to fix an error I caused because of lack of attention. 

Well then, about new features on the game:

I don't know WHEN, but I'm already studying the possibility to add a gallery inside the game. I will need to make some changes on the day-editor to add some new params as what you can or not see in the gallery, but the plan is to have the gallery to the end of the first demo.

Talking about the Demo, here's the thing: There will probably be one Demo in the game after the current one. That's because I will release a Demo with at least 25% of the story for Wagner and Karnal playable, and the game will be polished enough for anyone who comes here to know what to expect by the time.

Things that I'm sure will change: The menus and the dialog box. I really want to make something fairer to the title of the game. Just friend logo isn't a designed one, but the colors of it were a choice that I liked a lot. I don't want to make the game HUD all pink and white, but I do intend to make some of the details on it pink, and maybe blue instead of black. I want to give this game more identity, and right now I feel it's to "Alpha" to be put on a Demo. A demo should be something that shows anyone what the final product WILL BE at least 80% accurately. 

I also want to change the layout of the buttons, and stuff like that. This takes times, and I want to ask Wagner if he can draw the title for the game too, to be something more special than what it's now. The colors of the title will remain the same unless when the final title image changes, as I said, I do like the combination of blue, pink and white, and I want to incorporate those colors to the game in a way it's not weird, but it's also part of the game identity.

So, the DEMO sadly is far away in the future to be released, that doesn't mean the alphas will stop. Even after I reach the 25% of the story for those two characters I will still continue working on their story, the 25% it's only the amount of content inside the demo, not the alphas. I can control these things fairly easy on the game code, so don't worry, but since I do want to add a gallery, redo a lot of visuals inside the game and maybe add some kind of animation to the character's portrait such as blinking, for example, it will take a huge time. Remember, I work alone on the game and Wagner only makes the artworks for it.

That being said: I want to make a beautiful game, something bigger than what I wanted at first. This game may be small in cast and characters for now, but I really plan it to be, as fun and well done as any other visual novel you can buy at Steam. Yeah, I do want to make a Steam version, after all, it would be amazing to have a game I developed there. 

But that's something to the future to hold, for now, I'll continue finishing what I can to give you guys the next alpha, while I crack my head to the wall here thinking about the new gallery system and new visuals for the game HUD.

Anyway, I hope you guys have a great week and remember: Share the Patreon Page with more people if you can, the more help I can get, the faster the updates will come! 

See you soon!