Ch1 Pt3 - Playblast 7

Hey,

More progress. I ended up adding one more clip for the intro, so there's a grab before the fade out. Makes a bit more sense that way. Also some minor polish to a couple shots in the intro.

MEGA Folder

Nina currently gets impaled by the grass! I'll animate the blades to bend when I do the hair and other similar stuff as well. The shaky bit is Elena walking away. As with previous ones, these are only loops/clips back to back, in game the loops will play multiple times in multiple occasions.

I think I'm somewhere near the half-way point now. But I did just do a list of all the clips I'll still need for the finished scene, and there's quite a lot left! But as I get closer to the end, working gets easier, as when I can see the finish line I tend to get into crunch mode. I'm trying to get the animation phase done before the end of the month. It's currently extremely unlikely that the final release would be during May. Expect a June release.

I've also tried to come up with a sort of choice based mini game to compliment the QTEs. Basically, instead of having the arrow game pop-up for every struggle, I'll instead have most of them be a choice of how much strength to exert on the particular task. Then, depending on how well you did with the choice parts of the whole event, it determines how rough the final QTE will be. I have this mostly thought out, but I'll obviously have to make it work in unity as well, but it shouldn't be very difficult, and should actually be doable with the default scripts that came with the VN package I've been using for the game.

I'm trying to avoid any RNG with this. The way I'm planning this is that there's one perfect way to do each part of the event, which will be determinable by looking at some visual guides (meters/hp bar sort of thing). Although you won't necessarily need to do the sequences in the same order, but if your overall choices differ from the perfect template, it will "punish" the player with extra length on the final QTEs. Example, if the perfect run is (Normal effort, normal effort, Full effort, Rest), you could also handle it as (Full effort, normal effort, rest, normal effort). Rest is an exception since, there's a cap on how much you can gain stamina, so you might end up wasting time with it if it's used at the wrong time.

It's not a very complicated system really, I'm just bad at explaining this! I'll have to test it properly once everything else is done, to see if there's any difficulty involved with it, or if it's too obvious.

The hits to QTE difficulty are determined by the amount of stamina you have left once it triggers. The debuff is like this at the moment: Perfect run 4 stamina left = no increase in QTE length, 3 stamina = x1.5 increase, 2 stamina = x2, 1 stamina = x3, 0 stamina = x5, negative stamina = automatic failure. Stamina is replenished after each part, so you'll have to manage it during the multiple events during the part.

There'll be some pretty obvious hints in the dialogue if required at some points. Something like "This might be a good opportunity to rest a bit" if a particular event is less taxing, for example. I'll balance stamina as needed, if the 4 point buffer seems too difficult. Also I'll be adding an optional cheat sheet option, that gives away the perfect combinations for those who just want to get on with it!

All events will have a turn limit, at least in part 3. Some work in the way, that you need to fill a certain meter before the limit, and on others you'll have to make sure a meter doesn't get emptied before the time runs out. Basically, you're supposed to exert as little effort as possible, while surviving an event. You can just blaze through everything with maximum effort as well, but you'll end up with negative stamina and will fail the QTE automatically. Although I'm still considering if I should just make it ridiculous, instead of an automatic fail. That way you could still brute force it, even if you go into the negatives.

Some future events (not in this part) will need replenishing items to get the perfect combination, but none will be impossible without these. Although, I'm also thinking about possible equipment, so some part might require either that, or a consumable item to be passable. But this is all in the future, so I'll get back to that when it's relevant!

I think that's all for now! If you have any questions, or you're curious about something, let me know! There will obviously be in-game tutorials that explain everything that's relevant to a particular event. They will appear automatically only once per device, but can then be viewed separately from the main menu later as well.

Next update before the end of next week at least. (Slightly delayed, Before the end of Monday)

Have a nice week!

Spoilers

If you're wondering why Nina is coming out of the butt instead of where she was last: The intro ends with Elena moving to her bed for a second round with Nina, and the player gets dumped into the terrarium. The next morning bit is just to hint at what happened between the two while you were sleeping.