Development Update #64 (Patreon)

Boring! There is nothing massively exciting that I can share. Though I did work on several things that will be exciting, once they are ready. I'll be moving back to a more irregular non-weekly dev update schedule after the Steam release, as most weeks are "completed 3 scenes, wrote another scene, nearly melted to death from the heat outside and my render rig running close to 24x7 now."

This past week was To Be A King work coupled with some change of pace work on the next project. My thanks to my beta team who stays busy with me bouncing new ideas off of them in between releases. It was nice to switch creative gears to the next project. Sometimes the mind needs a break from the usual, and this was much needed. I wasn't burned out before, but definitely was feeling a bit more blah about my creative work. A couple of days on new project work, and I'm raring to go on both things again. Now to figure out how to work that into my creative routine every few months.

On the new project front, I've been reading an awful lot about TV show script development, pilots, and planning for multiple seasons. Visual novels, while not exactly the same, have a lot of similarities with TV shows (except for the terrible branching). Some similarities: it's all about the characters; you need some character development but not too much; releases are in episodic form. I've also been taking a look at more non-traditional Renpy games, some I didn't even know were made in Renpy. That is giving me ideas for mechanics and unique stuff for this next project. Still a lot of things up in the air with that in regards to some features.

Totally unplanned, I ended up creating my own Genesis 8.1 makeup set. The options I had were either limited or just too out there for what I wanted. I enjoy having many options to choose from, as that is when inspiration can strike. Apply a couple of presets, adjust a few things, and you accidentally hit upon a terrific concept. After a few days, I have a beta package for my own makeup system. Still some tweaks needed, but most of them are minor now. As usual, I learned a whole lot of other things I did not plan on. Not just about makeup either. It will be nice to use this for the next project.

The final thing I did was dive into code, and create a brand new code base in Renpy 8 for the next project. It's really barebones, but I optimized some things, and hopefully made my life a bit easier. When I took over development of To Be A King (doing the code myself), I knew next to nothing about Renpy. I still know very little, but I have a much better idea of how everything fits together and where I can experiment.

Well, I guess I did complete some things I can share, if you care about the more detailed aspects of visual novel development. This work is always so much for one person that it is amazing these things ever get released at all. Now, if you'll excuse me, I better get back to this scene. Less than a month now until Chapter 9 gets its release!