v0.04 Progress Update (November)

Hi everyone! I was hoping to write this up a few days ago, but it ended up always being a zero sum game for my time, which was better spent on rendering, writing, programming... But now I'm at a good place to take a moment to talk about progress!

Before getting into the details, I want to reflect about my development pace. From what I can tell, most other games release updates about once a quarter, with about 300 renders per update. For various reasons, some games have more renders, and some often have less. Some games update faster, some update slower. Very few games can make this a full-time project, but I am spending the vast majority of my free time towards development.

I wasn't under any pressure with v0.02, so I didn't really have any metrics to tell me where along the spectrum I would land. Would I be able to meet the typical release schedules of other games? From how v0.04 has progressed, I'm happy to say: Yes! Hefty, quarterly releases are definitely within my capacity.

Here's some highlights of how the chapter is panning out:

• This chapter ended up being quite a bit longer than first anticipated from the storyboarding (50% longer)
• Daydream sequences are longer than before (each daydream in v0.04 is individually longer than all three daydreams from v0.02 put together)
• Environments are more dense and detailed. Custom assets have been created to bring scenes to life.
• There's twice as much music and sound effects. I've composed some parts of the soundtrack. In an important story scene, there is a brief moment of voice acting.
• There are four new main puzzles and four new mini puzzles.
• There's nearly twice as many renders, and the overall rendering and lighting quality has improved notably. Currently completed: 277, out of a current estimate of ~430 for the chapter.
• The cast of characters has doubled.
• The UI has been given a facelift.
• Choices have been added.
• Dialogue in v0.02 has been given an overhaul in some areas to bring the quality in line with v0.04 dialogue.
• I previously discussed adding an Easy Mode and a Chapter Select and Story Recap menu. I think these will likely move to being added in v0.06 instead of v0.04. Easy Mode would require some testing to make sure it's not trivially easy. And with just two chapters so far, Chapter Select and Story Recap aren't yet necessary — especially because I'm recommending to replay the prologue before the new content.

TL;DR: I'm about 66% of the way to completing v0.04. I'm hoping to start tiered release by the end of next month.