Saturday Devlog (April 10)

Happy Saturday! Hope you're all doing well :)

It's been a tedious, nuts-and-bolts week for the game's development, but I've cleared it in satisfactory fashion and I'm just glad this phase is behind me, aha. Development time was split roughly equally on writing, coding, and finishing up Errand Boy, which released a few days ago. Let's go over these one by one:

Coding - I've managed to nail down a few critical features that's been stumping me for weeks! It's probably too boring and lingo-ey to be talked about in a devlog, but the outcome is this: the game now records all personality meters that were over 65 at the time of the personality reset as a 'defining characteristic'. These will be shown on the stats screen (under the 'You are gifted in the art of magic, particularly...') section, and will affect how non-Arcadian characters remember you prior to your reintroduction. Thereafter, they will also remark on it if you've shown significant changes in your personality post-resurrection!

This is a very popularly requested feature, and I'm super happy that my little scruple with Choicescript about it has been resolved. Can't wait to write all those angsty 'they were so outgoing before, but now...' scenes, aha.

Writing - I made a fair amount of progress in this aspect, having written an additional 5k words from last month. It's also probably the most tedious 5k words I've had to write for the game so far, as it involves a whole slew of customization options, namely post-resurrection hairstyle changes as well as customization of your Nightsaber outfit, mask, and callsign. Overall, I'm quite happy with the array of options provided, though I'm sure it will see expansions in the future build.

Around 2k words of Errand Boy were also written this week, which brings up my personal writing total to roughly 7k words. Now that I've gotten the most tedious parts out of the way, I should be able to outdo that amount in the following weeks! Fingers crossed.

Other things - I found an artist for the Patron Tweet feature! They've already begun working on the first one, though most likely I'll be releasing them all at once towards the end of the month.

The Sneak Peek for this week will also go up soon after this devlog. It will be a double feature: one showing off the hairstyle-change scene, and one showcasing an expansion of the Leon dungeon scene (which previously did a poor job of recognizing his romance unless you picked the 'play the villain' route!).

Last thing, I'm glad that you all enjoyed (is enjoyed even the right word here?) Errand Boy! It felt pretty foreign for me to work on a piece with little-to-no action scenes, so I'm glad the end result was satisfying. :D

Looking at my progress this month, though, I'm not super confident that I can turn out another piece by April's end; if any Retainer+ patrons are planning on canceling or downgrading their pledge in May, please feel free to let me know what platforms I can reach you through via Patreon's chat feature! I'll send you the dashingdon link if it does end up getting pushed back to early May.

As always, I'm open to any questions. Thanks for supporting the development of A Mage Reborn!