Dev Diary #60 (Patreon)

A diary in the morning and on a Thursday? Something has happened, hasn't it? It certainly has, but it's nothing to worry about.

I have several things to tell you, this diary is not about spoilers or something so I'll get straight to the point:

This week I've barely made any progress with the new version, so much so that it's Tuesday for me because the week has gone by really fast, debating with myself a lot of things...

I'm not sure where to start all this shit but I'll sum it up in that I'm really worried about the new intro.

As you know, the intro of a game can be pretty key in deciding whether or not that game grabs your attention. Some people also skip the intro and go straight to the main story so in short, the first few hours of a game can determine whether you're still interested in the game or not.

This may seem silly but it's really important to me because although we all as gamers know that the first few hours of many H-games (as a rule) have a questionable quality and that as you progress you see how the quality improves (or not).

Well, my idea is make the first hours of LA something definitive and not something that has to be changed every X amount of time. You know that the intro + until you meet Mara the dialogues are questionable on a structural level, the intro is very long (it's a shower of text, text and more text) and this includes up to level 3 of all the girls. I read the first few minutes of the intro and I think: How did you think that making jokes that your father would make were good jokes/idea? Yeah, I know, sometimes there are devs who introduce the game by talking themselves and blahblah... I don't want that. It's been almost a year since I wrote all that and things have changed mainly because I can now write in a better structured way and not mix up the girls' personalities in an unconscious way. And most of all, I now have people who check everything I write.

So I am going to explain my plan for all this and it is something that is going to be introduced 100% for sure:

The intro will no longer start with me and Lisapi doing a cringe show, now it will start directly as a short dialogue of Lisapi and Aynia talking about the MC and suddenly Patricia will wake you up.

The MC will wake up hung over as it will still be the day after his birthday. The difference is that choosing the name and profession will be done dynamically as we go through the story. Lisapi will still appear in these stuff but you won't know who she is until the MC's mark awake.

After all this (5 minutes ingame) the day will end and a short tutorial about the different icons of the interface will start including the exploratory vision which will be presented as a little gift the MC has had since he was a child (mark).

After finishing the mini-tutorial you will be given free rein and will be able to interact with the MC's room, a first floor, Patricia's room and a bathroom. I'm going to try to use already designed maps from LA/L'sA for these things or take advantage of some maps I have in reserve that I just need to restructure. I could use any default Koi map but then in Gold Valley the change would be too noticeable in terms of style.

All this in order to familiarize yourself with the LA style and especially because you can spy on Patricia to give something spicy at the beginning.

As this is getting too long I'm going to cut here but that's the first few minutes of the game. It would be left to explain the moment when the mark awakes, meeting Lisapi/Aynia, moving to Gold Valley, etc.

Seems like a lot of work, doesn't it? Actually, once I start writing what usually takes the most work/time is to make the renders, especially if there are animations. I'm not going to make estimates because I don't even know how much time it will take until I get to work on it.

Having said all this, here comes the last part and it is the one that will affect you all... This update is going to be split into two parts:

v.0.8.5 = New intro + first quests, etc (rework of the first hours of the game, basically).

v0.9.0 = Hardmode rework + extra content (maybe including unlocking Enya but not unlocking her as main girl yet, it all depends on how long it takes to do all of the above).

The version 8.5 "technically" doesn't bring new content at least not in mid/endgame. This means that there won't be a public version, this will be exclusive for Patreon and a few non-patrons.

This version will be directly a "pre-version", I'll find the right name for it.

This means that there will be no beta cycle, ea, etc. The only thing that will remain the same is that the higher tiers will play before the rest.

But this will work as follows: 

• As soon as I finish all the rework and check that nothing explodes (especially the questlog) I will release the v0.8.5 for Champions and Kings.
• After 3 days at the most, I will release it for the rest of the patrons.
• After a week, I'll continue working on v0.9.0 and I'll consider the new intro, etc. as definitive content.

I'm sure not everyone will be interested in starting a game again to see the final result, but for those who do, I'm very interested in your opinion, feedback, ideas, etc. to determine what could be changed or improved in the new intro.

So this mini-version will have a 1-week cycle. I say 1 week with the thought that Robin will be able to review everything at a good pace. I have to talk to her about all this but my idea is that the cycle will be 1 week.

There will be no public release of v0.8.5 but obviously, there will be a normal release cycle with v0.9.0 which will include all the 8.5 content.

Having said all this... I'll say goodbye for today and anyone who wants to contribute their thoughts or ideas for all of this, you can do so at any time via DM here or in discord, or wherever you want.

I'll try to do a diary on Monday and hopefully have a lot of progress on this. 

See you all!