Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2023-11-03 (Patreon)

It's the first Friday of November, and you know what that means! That's right, it's the first Ramble of November.

This week I've been hard at work on the extra story update for EMDND. Surprise! I've decided to keep working on it after all. I think I'm calling it "Whiskey Bar." It's turning out pretty good, and the story is entertaining too (in my admittedly biased opinion). I wrote a bunch of words, but also spent most of the week on more technical and graphics related stuff, so I still need to write a lot of the dialogue, but I have a rough outline of how things are gonna go, and the "who"s and "what"s.

That being said, it's not gonna be very "Va11-HallA" beyond a superficial "main character is a bartender" and "obviously inspired by the premise as a whole" aspect. I think it'll actually be more "EMDND", but set in a bar instead of an office, and the characters come to you instead of you going to them.

I drew a title screen. It didn't take very long, but I think I like it. I might polish it up a bit more, but I think it's good enough to go live with, if needed.

Above: "Whiskey Bar" extra story title screen

I drew some assets for the in-game. Mostly recoloring Skye's outfit, but also some new expressions, which required a fair amount of work. Also the BG looks a lot better than before, I think.

Above: Updated BG a bit from last time, and Skye has new sprites and plays a big part in the story

There were a bit of UI/UX stuff I had to deal with. Specifically, thinking of people who haven't unlocked the Extra Story but don't want to play through the main story to do so (there are lots of potential reasons for this, so whatever). So I added a manual unlock thingie to the settings screen. If you've already gotten the true ending, the extra story unlocks automatically and you won't see this option.

Above: well, it's ugly but it works

Above: A big ol warning that it's a storyline that depends on having completed the main story. If you've already finished the story and have the achievement or save file, you won't need to do this

Also made a new title screen for the Extra Story, so people know what they're playing when they're selecting between "New Game" and "Extra Story."

Above (gif): Selecting "Extra Story" on the title screen does a nice fade transition into the "Whiskey Bar" title screen. Pretend like the gif loops perfectly, like it does in-game

In merch news, the Tiger-chan plushie has finally arrived. Here's a picture.

Above: Tiger-chan Plush! Rawr! Jill Nendo not included

Her eyes glow in the dark, which is why they're white. But they're green at night :O

I need to start thinking of a marketing plan for this, which I already know is just going to be a series of comics, as before. But at least now I have a sorta kinda fanbase for the game she's in too! I'm hoping lots of people buy it so I can pay rent for another month while I work on making video games.

In other merch news, I made a couple new stickers.

Above: New stickers that I actually really like lol

I also just remembered that I need to update the shop discount code. Here's a discount code for 15% off: 112023PATREON15 You can use it here: https://shop.hcnone.com

I think that's it for this week. I'm gonna go ship some shop orders now.

Thanks for your support, as always! See you next week.