Dev Update 29/08/2020 (Patreon)

Update time!

Since last week's update was dedicated to the background artist poll, we've got some catching up to do in this one.

Last week I released a bugfix version for Bell Master that fixed a bug that made it unplayable on some Android devices, as well as removing some long standing typos. Assuming you've played the game with no issue before, you can skip this version.

Since then I've been focused on the background artist search. You've made your choice clearly on that front. And so I will be continuing with "option A" ( https://www.deviantart.com/wyne219 ). However, as I whole heartedly agreed with Mr. Hands' comment regarding "option C" ( https://www.deviantart.com/houseofimagistudio ) I will be continuing with them as well. I will be splitting the commissions up according to what I see as each artist's relative strengths. So hopefully the result is coherent and not a jarring mismatch of styles. This decision may change as I continue to work with both artists and see more of their results and work habits.

In other news, the first date with "ballet girl" is now in the game and only waiting for a few missing art assets. I've built a small tool that made importing this relatively large dialogue (~1.5k words) into the game extremely easy. As I have about 15 dates in total planned for the game, this tool will likely be of extreme usefulness. For reference, importing a text of this size used to take me about an hour. This one took about 15 minutes. This meant I had time left over to add more music and effects to it. As well as fix some engine bugs that came up. Bottom line, tooling is always a good time investment.

Phoenix is currently working on the sexy reward CG for the date scene. While the background artists are beefing up some of the existing backgrounds that used blurred real world images as placeholders.

I will be spending next week enabling another feature that was sorely missing from Bell Master, scene replay mode. Basically, once you've unlocked a major scene (like the above mentioned date) you'll be able to play it again from the main menu, explore branching options or just see it again for... reasons :)

On the writing side I'll be focusing on the main story line of the game, as well as continuing the world building (or more accurately city building) process that informs the rest of the work.

Have a great week!