Welcome! Development Update March 2025

Hey folks,

I'm Faintlyspotted, but you can call me Faint or Faintly (some advice: don't pick a four-syllable furry name). I'm the director, writer, and programmer on UNDER | HEAVEN. I also handle all communication around the project, including posts like these. So, hi! You'll probably be seeing a lot of me here.

First, of course, I'd like to thank you all for your support of this project so far. It's taken a lot of work by a lot of people to get things to this point; the earliest drafts I was able to find date back to June 2023, and I'm incredibly excited to now be able to show it off publicly. Of course, Chapter 1 is only the beginning, and a lot of that work has been put into ensuring that future updates can run smoothly. Today, I'd like to talk about what you can expect from the project going forward.

Development Updates

Let's jump to the part you're probably wondering about first: the current goal is to release a new chapter to beta every 2-3 months. In general, there won't be a lot of hard deadlines given in advance. As you might have seen in chapter 1, there's a lot of art to get done. This is a team with a lot of people on it, none of whom are doing this full time; there's a lot of potential sources of unexpected delay, and an update is only complete when the slowest part is done. Barring unforeseen circumstances, chapters are also only going to be released 'when they're done.' So, I'll only really have the ability to give accurate predictions when the update is just about ready to release.

Of course, your trust as readers and as patrons in the development process is very important to me. So, instead of clear advance deadlines, there will be a development update released at the free tier on this patreon every month detailing the current status of the next release. I am, however, cheating and calling this one the March update because I'd like to generally release them around the beginning of the month when I get my other monthly stuff done.

Patreon Benefits

Full-resolution assets for Disc-tier patrons will be made available shortly. In general, this will take the form of a link to a downloadable folder of the different backgrounds and CGs. This link will be expired when the next link is posted, which will include all of backgrounds and CGs to date. So, you'll always be able to find all of the assets in the most recent post.

The first behind-the scenes update for Disc-tier patrons will also be releasing shortly! And, boy, if you're a fan of terrible 'developer art' you won't want to miss it, see a little preview below. This one deals with the creation of the title screen sequence, which was a real behemoth of a project so it'll probably be longer than these usually run. My plan for these is to run them about every two months. That cadence isn't necessarily fixed at this point, and I'll be pretty actively curious for patron feedback on what sorts of things they'd like future iterations to focus.

The current plan for beta testing is that every beta test will run for one week alongside a link to a feedback survey. At the end of the week, I'll go over all feedback and make any changes needed. If the changes needed are pretty minimal, that means that beta builds will just run one week ahead of patron builds. However, this time window could increase for specific builds that necessitate more extensive changes before going out to the regular patron build.

For those users backing at the wreath tier and above, I'll probably submit the first batch of icons for creation around a month after initial launch right as people start rolling over to the second month of their subscription (as a reminder, icons are only commissioned after two months at this tier). Unfortunately, the nature of icon creation makes it a bit difficult to guarantee whether they'll be done in time for a given update. I am, of course, extremely grateful for anyone that wishes to support the project at this tier; if there are ever any questions or concerns about the icon or credits process, I encourage you to reach out to me to make things right.

Chapter 2 Status

So, where are we right now?

The script for chapter 2 is pretty much finalized, which should hopefully be the case for all updates going forward. Since every other element of development sits downstream of the script, making sure that's ready in a timely fashion is very important to us.

While it's not nearly so to the extent of chapter 1, chapter 2 is pretty art-heavy. Ash and Julian will be appearing on-screen as sprites for the first time, so that's an entire set of assets that needs to be built out (in addition to designs and art for some new characters). We do at least have their basic designs, which you can see a preview of below! As a result, though, it's certainly possible this update will be on the slower side. This is also the first non-launch update, so it should be useful as a test case to better estimate timing in the future.

It will, of course, also require a number of backgrounds and CGs. Art briefs have already been written and are in the hands of artists (barring one that's stuck waiting behind one of the previously-mentioned character designs), so things are proceeding about as smoothly as they're able and I'll be tackling the actual implementation and various stock asset wrangling myself shortly. There's actually one CG that's already fully complete: it came up in some discussions with the artist pre-launch, they liked the idea enough to want to do it early, and, boy, I'm excited for you all to see it.

That's all for this update! Thanks again for all your support.

See you around,

Faint(ly)