Development Update #2 (August) (Patreon)

[Images in the gallery will be better to view vs viewing them within the post.]

Finally! Another dev update! Sorry about the delay with this one, I just recently started up classes again for college and so trying to ease that back into my daily weekday schedule and get other stuff done within the week has been a bit here and there.. ^^"

Let's take a look how development is roughly looking since our last update!

-Final editing pass. 40-45% --> 60-65% done.
-Engine transfer. 40% --> 60% done.
-New assets added/functioning correctly. 90-95% done. (No progress)
-New feature/systems testing. 25% --> 40% done.
-General testing pass.
-Release.

If we keep this up, we should have the editing, engine transfer and new feature/system testing stuff all done around the same time! We didn't make any progress with the new assets added since our last dev update, this is because the last 5-10% roughly is tossing Nathan, Karissa and possibly one other character in. Just waiting on the art to be ready with those.

I'd also like to make it clear briefly, in case there's any confusion and the development chart with percentages isn't quite clear enough. No offense to anyone that might've missed some details along the way! >.< We haven't announced a confirmed release date for v0.20, what we did announce early in August is a soft release date period. Which confirms that v0.20 would be ready sometime between August to September, this could take us up to the very last day of September, but that'd be a worse case scenario at this point.

I just have to mention that as a reminder, that way when we're at the last day of August or first day of September, I'm not seeing a ton of messages "Where's the update at?" ^^"

That said, we should have a confirmed release date set here very soon with the next dev update or the following one. Now let's dive into some visuals!

I'm going to be a bit careful with screenshots moving forward on these dev updates, I want to visually share how stuff looks in episode 5, but there's some decent spoilers at the very start of the episode. <.< 

We'll begin with seeing Joey telling Brandon and Nathan to hurry up and this is because... Slight spoilers if you haven't finished episode 4. The guys have been given the okay by the school to officially join a club if they wish! Of course we'll quickly learn right away, that there's some limitations as to what clubs the guys can join.

Don't mind Joey's old sprite here, I held off on adding his new sprite files until Nathan was ready as well.

Another early screenshot! Not a ton to go off of, but all I can really share in case it isn't obvious. Episode 5 seems to focus on the guys eager to check out the vast amount of different clubs at the school, possibly deciding which one to join by the end of the day or in the following days?

I had expected to share even a few glimpses at the other early scenes in the episode, but I noticed last minute before this post.. That there's some visual stuff that needs fixed up first. (Awkward sprite layers and missing elements we've overlooked, but caught now vs later.)

Since I don't have more to show with Ep 5 content in-game right this moment, I'd like to make up for it with a bit of a bonus thing below!

What is this exactly? This is the progress of the cg art style! The first image on the left is Erika in the old art style with the cel shading look. The middle is the new style with soft shading and more detail. Then the image on the right is new modifications done to her face.

The image on the very right is what we've been applying to cg art in order to make cg art in the new style feel closer to the sprite art even more than before if we compare it to the one in the middle.

Here's how Erika's sprite looks without glasses or her hat on to get a better idea how close her sprite art looks to the cg art! The main thing we did from the middle image to the new version (Very bottom right image above) is that the face shape was modified a tiny bit, mouth, nose detail, along with the eyes shape, lashes outlines and eye details, etc. were all adjusted to better match the sprite visuals!

We really wanted to make sure when players are going through the game, they don't have this huge disconnect when it shifts from a scene displaying sprite characters to showcasing a cg scene. <.< No matter what we do, our sprite and cg artists are two different people, so we're never going to have a exact 1:1 look, plus cg art will have more detail going on that changes based on lighting or shadows, so on. 

We hope this most recent change with cg art is seen as a improvement though! We have a few side by side comparisons to give a idea how this should look with Heather and Miki as well!

What do you think? We'd love to hear thoughts with these modifications to the faces! We know Erika is the only example to base it off of in a finished state to show it fairly, but we hope it'll feel closer to how the characters are often seen! ^^

I wish I had more to share right now visually, but our next updates before release time happens, should cover a ton more than these first two dev updates seen in August. Just trying to continue along with getting all the content tossed in and tested!

Since next week is a bit odd for dates, we'll have our big monthly development post to kick off September, followed by our dev update a day or two after that to highlight more of the visual stuff and behind the scenes in full. We'll probably toss out some art related post stuff early this upcoming week before September, so keep your eyes open for that! :P