Thursday Update! Saturday is on vacation (Patreon)

Hi everyone!

I'm updating on Thursday this week because I'm leaving town to go to the mountains for a beer festival this weekend, and I'm leaving on Friday morning- cutting my work week short.

I'm rather disappointed to report that this has been a less than productive week- even taking in to account that I've only had 4 days. A few things piled up, but mostly I would point the finger of blame at an anxiety attack that's been ramping up for me over the last 3 days. It's made it incredibly hard to work and focus. 

Now I'm not trying to make excuses though, the bottom line is that I got a lot less done than what I wanted, and I hope to make up that lost work next week and during my December 'sort-of-time-off'- where I won't technically be doing a Hunt Month but I will be working on the game between family stuff when I can.

Of the little bit that I got done, I slipped in a last-minute easter egg into Celia's path that I'm not sure anyone will ever find. But that's all part of the fun.

I've also begun work on editing Derek's path and started chewing on the extensive starting scene. Unlike Mason and Celia who talk to you briefly before leaving you to your own devices, Derek's path starts with an intense and very violent tradition called 'First Blood'. I was really hoping I'd have managed to get at least this section done this week, but I only managed a couple placeholder cgs and placeholder sprites for the antagonists. 

Fitting all 5 of them on one screen was.... interesting. I don't care much for the look but thankfully this only happens for a few lines of dialogue at the beginning and never happens again.

I mostly only worked on the branch of this encounter where the player decides to make a distraction to stop them from attacking Chamomile- ultimately being taken instead and ending their game right then and there.

I also wanted to update you guys on the number of placeholders I've made so far [ and in theory, the number of completed artworks that will have to be done during the art phase of the work ]. I realized I'd only briefly mentioned some numbers during a personal art stream.

Background Images: 51

This goes far beyond any of my past projects. However, some solace can be taken in the fact that many of these background images are different time-of-day versions of the same image. So for most backgrounds in Mason or Derek's path, every background will have 4 differently coloured versions to correspond with daylight. Celia's background only need one version due to being deep in a basement with no sign of daylight.

All backgrounds already have placeholder images drawn, so the number above is complete.

Celias CGs: 49, Masons CGs: 45, Derek's CGs: [ still working on thumbs ]

This is a somewhat alarming number, since the BTD games [ especially the first one ] had far fewer cgs per character. Strade had 15 CGs for instance. Again though, this number is also inflated due to my different approach in storytelling. Some CGs are slightly modified versions of others.

I think part of the reason for there being so many more CGs and backgrounds than my older games is that I'm trying to achieve more with my storytelling, and with more tools. In BTD, I told my entire stories with full body sprites, punctuated by a full screen CG only for special occasions, like a death. This meant that many of the tortures Strade inflicted in BTD had to be simply read, with the only visual provided being his facial expression. 

I wanted to do MORE than that this time. Instead of using a formula [ Sprites for every interaction, 1 CG per death ], I'm looking through each scene and deciding how best I could portray it. Sometimes a full body sprite over the background makes the most sense [ during dialogue heavy scenes where a character is present in front of you, but not a lot of action is going on ]. But now, if the scene has interesting action, I try and include a CG to display it- whether you die or not. 

I'm also adding in a new tool of side-sprites to accompany dialogue when a character would otherwise be off-screen. This basically never happened in BTD, but with the free roaming aspects of this game, it gives me an opportunity to show someone's expression even if they aren't in your character's view. [ Which I have to admit, really saves the day with a Celia scene where she makes you wear a bag over your head ].

Anyway! Sorry for so much talk and so little actual performance. I promise my next update will not be like this! I'm sure that my time away from home will help me recharge and get back into the saddle properly.

Also, I'm sorry if the writing in this update is disjointed somehow, I broke down with the anxiety attack and finally took a non-brand name Ativan [ lorazepam ] that I've had stashed away for emergencies. So currently I am no longer suffering but I am extremely sluggish and a bit brain-dead.

Thank you guys so much for your support and patience with me. I hate to give a bad report but you guys deserve to know the truth about exactly what's going on behind the scenes.

I'm sure my next update will be better!