Dev Log 21/02/2024 - Crimson High v0.32

Yellow!

So, it's been three weeks since the last dev log and I've got some news to share about the update. Hence this dev log. Kinda pointless to point out, isn't it?

Anywayyyy. I've been writing and writing and writing and I've finished the content (written) for almost 3 updates now. From v0.32 to v0.34. They're all slightly above average in length, although you might not notice that in each of them, since one or two contain some gated content. It doesn't make up for too much of the respective updates, though.

Usually I put private stuff at the end of these things, but due to relevancy, I'm gonna mention something here: On Monday we had to have our cat euthanized, which kinda, sorta, bummed me out real hard. To put it mildly. She's been sick over the last few weeks and Monday the vet told us that we would only be extending her suffering if we were to do anything else about it. It sucks.
Now, I'm not gonna keep complaining about it or anything - this is part of a pet owner's life, after all. I just figured I should mention this because it did have a bit of an impact on my writing - stress, vet visits, grievance, etc. don't make for good circumstances for creative writing of (mostly) happy stuff.

That being said, though, I can safely call the writing experiment a success.
Being able to go back and change minor details to make things more coherent overall was a bit of a game changer, as far as my writing goes - so much so, that I'll even overthrow one of my longstanding rules of not retroactively changing anything about the game. I'm not suddenly gonna go and make Suzu be able to shoot laser beams out of her eyes instead of what she's currently able to do, but I will probably go and change minor details here and there if it helps the overall narrative.

To give you a bit of an insight into why that is helpful:
Obviously I don't have every minute detail of the story planned out yet. If that was the case, I wouldn't have to do anything anymore and could just copy paste things into RenPy and make the renders for each update. No, what I do have is a general idea of where the story is supposed to go (which I'm treating mostly as a guideline and not a fixed path) as well as a buttload of notes about all sorts of things; from characters, to abilities, to places, to butts.
Now, as you can probably imagine, when writing like that, it's impossible to account for all eventualities and inspirational bursts happening down the line - sometimes things end up working out in a way that clashes with something that has already been established in earlier updates.
Books and movies and similar media have the advantage of usually being able to finish the whole thing in one go, being able to adjust earlier things without the audience ever learning about it in the first place. Since CH and other games like it get released on a per-update basis, that's not really an option, though. I'm basically releasing content of which I don't know for certain that it will hold up in the future. And that's not even accounting for the time between early updates and current ones, making it so that I have to fact check myself all the time because I forget details that I have written more than 2 years in the past.

It's easy to slip into the mindset of just wanting to create good isolated updates without keeping the bigger picture (i.e. the finished product/game) in mind. So far, I think I've done reasonably well on not fully losing sight of that goal, but not going back and changing minor details is a hindrance in that regard. That's why I'm going to do just that, going forward.
Like I said, it's not gonna be anything groundbreaking, but maybe a bit of foreshadowing added here, a bit of hiding stuff there, y'know.

Alrighty, phew. That was a lot of information.
Just one last bit that you're probably here for in the first place: a release date for the next update.
I can't yet say anything concrete, because I simply don't know yet, but since I'm about to be done with the writing (maybe 2 more days), I can give at least a good guesstimate.

As of right now, I expect v0.32 to be finished by the end of next week. Maybe even on the 1st of next month - that would make my brain very happy.
No promises, but I'll do my best to make it happen. Afterwards we'll go back to a roughly monthly schedule again, hopefully without any major hiccups for a while.

I'm gonna stop here now. You're probably over reading this post as much as I'm over writing it. Gonna give a TL;DR for the lazy ones among you, at the end - something I should probably mention at the top. Not gonna do that, though. :P

Either way, thank you so much for your support, my beloved patron! I hope you're looking forward to the next update as much as I'm looking forward to releasing it. Thoughts and prayers go down in the comments, as usual.

Cheers!

TL;DR:
Almost done writing for 3 updates
Experiment was a success
Going forward, I'll retroactively change minor details in the game for coherency if needed
Next update (v0.32) should be out around the end of next week
Roughly monthly updates again afterwards
Luv ya <3