Published: April 20th 2023, 5:30:27 pm
Hi folks,
Been a while since my last update but I had a LOT of decisions to make, so I wanted to make sure everything was clear in my head before posting. If you want a summary, instead of the meandering scribbles of a mad-man, just skip to the "Summary" section at the end.
So here goes...
As mentioned previously, I had planned on spending a couple of months on the re-do to get ready for a steam release and that two months is now up. We made excellent progress but aren't ready for a steam release just yet - We had some problems with animations, and multiple iterations of art for some scenes (in some cases, it took us 6 attempts to get the art right, so there were a lot of unplanned re-dos of the re-do. :) We also had some roadblocks with music licenses and Steam set-up, but nothing catastrophic. I also (my fault) decided to change more stuff and add more art/animations than initially planned. And as also mentioned previously, I jumped ship from the re-do back onto Episode 24 (EP24) earlier than expected due to where our backlogs were (re-do backlog was art, so Cell stayed on that and the EP24 backlog was writing so I jumped onto that). So for the past few weeks, we have been working on both EP24 and re-do (as opposed to re-do only). Now that I missed the re-do /Steam deadline, I don't want to postpone EP24 indefinitely, so I am going to shift ALL of our focus back onto EP24 until it is out.
So we won't get the Steam release out just yet...And as you may recall...the plan was to use the Steam income to allow me to take some more time off my "real" job, so I could dedicate 60+ hours per week on WTHI (new episodes). Although we didn't hit our steam deadline, the progress has given me light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel regarding Steam (and the potential revenue this summer), so I am still going to take time off my real job to ensure EP24 gets finished, regardless of Steam release. And as always, Cell will put in his usual 24/7 hours into the game (he is not allowed any breaks.)
So...current plan is to switch our focus back to Episode 24 full-time (me and Cell) and aim to get that new episode out in June. (Reminder/full disclosure that I am taking also taking two weeks off everything in May for a family vacation).
I am not making any promises about June because I am sick of stuff taking longer than expected and making stupid mistakes that means we have to re-do shit (using we, instead of I because Cell causes some of the mistakes, too :) ). Although I'm not making any promises for a deadline, June is definitely do-able and I will make this one promise...that if we miss the June deadline...I will turn off payment until Ep24 is released.
Once episode 24 is out, the re-do steam release should follow soon enough.
Ep24: Current situation: When I jumped back onto episode 24 a few weeks ago, it was a mess. I only had one scene (The Captain Heart scene) that I was happy with, while everything else was a mess and needed a lot of re-writes. The opening scene was a complete disaster with more than 60 different paths/branches to try to write/keep track off and was the number 1 most difficult scene to write in the history of the game. (Not the dialog, that was easy...the options/pathing were the killer). I ended up scrubbing the whole thing and starting again at the start of this month. But I am glad to say that this opening scene is now done and I think I have most errors rooted out and all branches/paths/multi-verse loops closed off. (For anyone familiar with renpy scripts, please take a look at the EP24 .rpy file when it's released and I guarantee you will feel my pain).
So the opening scene and the Captain Heart scene plus many other smaller scenes are now done (and art done) and I am also very happy with the largest scene in the game (Katie plus friends/enemies) which is going really well (and artwork is fully done). With some small tidy-up, I expect to get all of the scenes mentioned above completed and ready for beta-testing very soon. That just leaves me with the Angel / Wanda scene and the Monica/Zarah scene which were the scenes we had initially penciled in for Ace to write, so once I finalize all of the other scenes, I will jump onto these. Monica/Zarah...we have not started at all, so that's the only major blank at the moment but I have some ideas. And Angel/Wanda...I need to make some decisions on. Ace and I had differing opinions on what that scene should look like (location/art/direction) but as it was Ace's scene, we went with his idea. And although the art for the date scene was fully completed, there was no writing. So I needed to figure out if I should write my own scene based on the existing art/location/scenario (not ideal from a writing perspective) or write MY original idea for the scene and commission the art from scratch (not ideal from an art perspective or Cell's sanity). At the moment, I have started with plan A (writing the scene around the existing art, but I hate what I've written so far, so I'm gonna scrap it and do a re-write. If I don't like the second attempt, I'll go with plan B (Sorry Cell).
In good news, I put some time into the Gallery feature (was discontinued around episode 19) and that is now back working and updated to include all episodes. So episode 24 will see the return of Gallery mode for all episodes. Won't mean a thing for some of you...but I have received a lot of questions/complaints about the gallery being discontinued, so I know this will be good news for some.
Summary:
Been a couple of weeks since my last post because I've been staring at my screen sobbing for a while. Episode 24 was a mess but in much better shape now. (Cheeky threw Ace under the bus and blamed him for everything even though Cheeky was to blame.) Re-do was taking longer than expected. (Cheeky threw Cell under the bus and blamed him for everything even though Cheeky was to blame.). Made good progress on the re-do but it is currently paused. Jumped back onto EP24 a little earlier than expected. Episode 24 is now our sole focus. Plan to release Episode 24 in June. If we don't hit June, we will turn payment off until it's out. Once Episode 24 out, we will finish re-do/steam release.
As always...please post your questions and comments below and I'll get respond to them all.
Thanks,
CG