Monthly Update - November 2020 (Patreon)

Hello again, everyone!

It's already November, and what a month it's been. We've been working very hard in a number of different parts of The Divine Speaker, and we're excited to update you all.

Let's jump right into the art update for The Divine Speaker.

The Divine Speaker

Art

This month, we've got a new sprite complete! It's Sylvir, the mysterious woman from a distant, secluded village.

We're also working on additional CGs and sprites at the moment, which you can see on the $7 tier.

Writing and Editing

As you know, writing for the game and the prequel has been completed. However, we've now finished two additional tasks - editing of both! That means that the whole game, plus the prequel, is completed written and edited, and ready to be released.

Yay!

We're so excited so have this section of the game completed. No more writing or editing to be done!

With this done, it means we can focus solely on programming in the routes.

Here's a little preview of some of the ladies of TDS, since we've been showing off their sprites lately:

Programming

Programming for this month has consisted of mostly Cyne's route plus some general cleanups. We're happy to report that we're around 2/3 through his route, and the two after it should be significantly faster.

Let's look at a little preview of a conversation in game! 

Sorry to those that love Fawn!

We've also added in our newest sprite, Sylvir, and programmed her first scene into the game. While she is present in each route, she has even more scenes in Leos' route! You can check out a screenshot of her in game below.

Voice Acting

We're nearly finished with voice acting for the common route, yay! While some weeks we've accomplished more than others, due to actors being away, moving or sick, we're now three scripts from being complete.

Have a look at table below to see our progress:

The red is what we have left to be recorded, and should be finished next week.

Screenshots

Beta Build

A reminder to everyone about our beta build!

Right now it goes until the end of the common route (lots more content after the extended demo!) and very soon I will upload a build that features all of Cyne's route. Note that as of now, it'll be missing voice acting and CGs, and we'll upload further builds with more content as it gets created.

Feel free to sign up and take a look, and let us know what you think!

Focus for the next month

Here's our focus for the next month:

• Finish Cyne's route programming
• Upload Cyne route beta
• Start Leos route programming
• Add in additional voice lines as completed
• Start cleaning up programming for common route

Beyond the Abyss

General Update

Now that the writing AND editing is finished on The Divine Speaker, we're back to working on Beyond the Abyss!

Right now, I'm going through what's already written and editing it so we have a complete demo ready to program. So far, just with editing, we've added an additional 5000 words, and there will definitely be quite a few thousand more added.

In our Kickstarter, we will have two backer characters for this game, which have already been preclaimed, so part of my work has been working with the backers to weave their characters into the story, so I've spent some time writing in their scenes.

Because we're pre-working on this, you will see the backer characters in the demo.

Let's have a look at some of the new writing below:

As you can see, we have one female character, too! They are Sun Liying and Yang Ruhao.

Apart from this, we're currently still working on Yao Rongshi's sprite. You can check out the full sketch below:

Our lead artist Juni is a little biased towards him, and he is currently her favourite!

We'll be back to working on background images once our BG artist, Saedee, completes her work for the other game she is working on! We're looking forward to seeing more of her gorgeous art.

Currently, we're also having our main theme's lyrics created, ready for the amazing CocoLou to sing for us.

Other updates

Jobs

We're currently on the lookout for an amazing artist to work with our team as a Promo Artist! You'll complete promo art for TDS and our other projects, including seasonal and birthday art, as Fuyuure hunkers down to focus on in game art works.

If you're interested, you can check out the details and apply here!

Our blog + CuriousCat

Lately we've been writing up blog posts answering questions sent in by fans about getting into game development, programming, marketing, anything you can think of! 

You can take a look at our first entry here, and our second here. 

We're also still taking questions, so if you have any, feel free to chuck them our way. I am also doing my best to answer questions related to our games that don't have anything to do with development, so also feel free to send over those :)

That's all for this month! See you again in December!