(Future Fragments) Bi-Weekly Progress Report #70 (Patreon)

Bit of a long post this time, but I'll try to make it as brief as I can!

---------------------------

To start off, we switched the numbers to make it so that it shows the number of cutscenes completed, instead of the number of cutscenes left, so that we could also show how many cutscenes/databanks are in the game total.

And just to get this clarification out of the way, those of you with good math skills will realize that 388 - 210 = 178 left to go, which is a bit more than last week's amount of 157 left to go.

The reason for this is because on our end, some of the cutscenes in the game are grouped together for ease of finding them/similarity. 

However, we realized this gives a skewed view of how many actual individual cutscenes there are in the game. (This isn't counting "tabs" or "variants" on scenes; if we count that, we're probably at somewhere around 1,000+ total for the final game!)

For instance, every one of "Shadow Vie's" cutscenes in the Fire Level were grouped as just "one cutscene", despite her cutscenes happening on entirely different maps with entirely different content per event.

Similarly, all the cutscenes when you reach the end of a path in a level were grouped as "one cutscene" per level too.

The number you see there now is a much more accurate amount of how many cutscenes/databanks are in the game right now and working, and how many will be in the game at launch.

---------------------------

As far as programming goes, Frouge has just been generally adding general things around the game; this might not sound like much, but trust me, he's been getting a lot of stuff done.

Most of it is spoiler stuff, as usual, but I can say these things as specifics;

- We now have more NPC functionality in that I needed for cutscenes in general, as well as specialized stuff for certain cutscenes that should make some cutscenes really "pop".

- We also have in this neat feature for people whose primary language isn't English; you can press CTRL+C to copy any text on-screen and then paste it into a translation program, which should help lots until we get localizations officially done in different languages (after-launch).

- Global cutscenes are now a thing; these would be things like secret endings or other events that can happen on any map, instead of being locked to a specific map. This functionality was needed for both the secret endings and other cutscenes that I'd want to happen by tracking player actions over the course of the game (or over a series of maps, like the pre-boss puzzle rooms in the Electric Level).

- Most of the remaining music has been added in game and is usable in cutscenes now.

As always, if you've got any questions, feel free to talk to us on Discord at discord.gg/puXrfSm :)