Zanith
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Poll Results and 0.3 Development Update 1
🕑 Added 2019-06-30 16:05:48 +0000 UTCHey folks! Time for an update post!
First of all, the results of the big poll are in, and the general sentiment is pretty clear. I’m now going to try and do weekly dev updates if at all possible. Weekly CGs will remain for now, but I’m going to try and stick to a certain schedule. Something like, dev update every Friday, CGs on Sunday, and polls on Tuesday.
As for me, had to spend most of last week attending to some personal business, but nevertheless, there is some progress, so let’s get to it!
Development progress
First, planning and design. I’m mostly finished the new progression map. The story flows much better now, weird cross-event dependencies are gone, and you can actually choose what route to follow now. That said, I want to reiterate that the game is sandbox-ish in nature, so I deliberately avoid adding choices that lock out certain routes. You will be able to unlock all non-secret events in a single playthrough if you want to. Here’s the major event map in its current state and low enough zoom so I don't spoil anything:
By a rough estimation, there are about 10 more events missing from it, but there’s already something to work with.
Code-wise, I’m done with most of the major changes. Unfortunately, those major changes only account for about 10% of what needs to be done. That’s a funny thing, you need to completely change a major game mechanic? 100 or so lines of code, and you’re done. Want to, say, make scheduling system just a bit more dynamic and adaptive? That would be a couple days of work and ten game-breaking bugs, sir. Anyway, something’s done, much more to be done, more on that in future posts.
Writing. Oh boy, this is a tough one. Technically, I made some progress. Changed couple of old events, added some flavour choices, outlined a number of new events, some dialogue. But something tells me that most of this is going to be rewritten at least once, maybe more. But what you gonna do, I’ll mark it as 10% done for now.
And this brings us to the last part, all the visual stuff. As you may already know (mostly cause I can’t shut up about it), I like to make my own custom environments and props whenever possible, because I want the game to look good. But what does it really mean? Well, for one, it means that for the last two days I’ve only been doing one new environment. Have a look:
I think it came out nice enough, although there are bits here and there that could be improved. Not gonna lie, it is kinda fun, who doesn’t love a bit of interior design, but still, spending a lot of time on that. And I still have to finish adjacent scenes, although those are smaller and less detailed, so it should be easier.
For the next release I want to have another two new environments for the dream stuff, and a couple of new rooms will become unlocked in the house. Once I’m done with all that, gonna render new scenes and animations and stuff. That said, I already started on one scene, so here’s another teaser image for you folks:
And that’s all for today’s update! Work continues, and I’ll do my best to bring you more stuff for the next dev update!
