Everstone Daycare - Progress Report [May 23, 2022]

Howdy everyone! I'm here to give everyone an update since it's been quite a while since the previous post.

Unfortunately, this month has been extremely rough on all of us. I've explained previously that I will be gone and won't have access to my PC between May 24 and 27, but there have been a few more developments that have eaten away at the time we would have had to work on the game more. Starting with Spooky, a few family members of his had fallen ill and needed to take a few days off to take care of their things while they were recovering. He'll also be unavailable for the last few days of the month. As for myself, I've mentioned this previously as well but I had a severe reaction to the booster shot which left me nearly bedridden for a day and made it difficult to work for a few days after. I was taking care of renewing my passport and securing a few documents related to the trip I will be having later this month, which in itself took a while to get done due to all the traveling and waiting around I needed to do. I needed to have proof of having received a booster shot already for one of the documents I'll need to travel across my country, and suffering from the side effects for as long as I did caused me to postpone finishing getting the rest of the documents. As for Tennet, his finals are over but since he's a working student, the hours at his job have been increased and shuffled.

Regarding the story, I mentioned in the previous post that we were going to give Spooky handling the writing (with me looking over it afterwards) another go. I'm Not sure whether this was the fault of the limited time we had this month or not, but the way we went about it this month ended up being extremely time consuming and took away from the art/systems we were planning to do this month. We're still debating on whether we want to give it one more shot, during a month when we aren't as unlucky with our schedules, but I'm also inclined to scrap this idea altogether and return to doing most of the writing myself (with Spooky giving the outline and notes on the setting as before). Regardless, we were able to finish the script for the next segment of the current route which leads to the end of the day, but at the cost of the work I was planning to do on the journal. I know I mentioned I would prioritize the patrol demo over the story this month, but rewriting the initial draft took so long, I was a little consumed by it because I didn't want to leave it half-finished.

Still, the main script is all ready (at around 8500 words) and I just need to program it in and fetch any new sound effects I might need. I found a few issues with how I implemented blocking movement during the Ekans events in the previous demo which causes them to only work during that specific event and interfere with other events after that was over, so I'll need some time to work on how I'll re-do that. The art needed for the patrol demo is also finished, so all that's left is figuring out how I want to implement my idea of how this system is going to work. Most of the remaining work is programming what we have in (with a little bit of writing on the side in case we forget anything.), which I can hopefully get done quickly by the time I get back.

Here is a list of what we've accomplished so far in the time we had

• The story for the next segment is complete (featuring a feeding scene in the cafeteria and a completely new nurse character) and is ready to be programmed in.
• Most of the art for the next segment of the story is finished, with Spooky working on finishing the rest.
• All the assets needed for the patrol demo are complete and ready to be programmed in.
• Nurse Charmeleon's theme is mostly done, just needing some finishing touches before Tennet is happy with it.
• The volumes of all the music has been rebalanced so that they're consistent with each other (Hopefully the title music will no longer blow off your eardrums.)

I'll likely finish the patrol demo first, since those mechanics are planned to feature in the next story segment and I want to make sure everything is working first. I appreciate everyone's patience and we'll try to not get sick next time haha.