AHE Devlog #4 (Patreon)

1) Wrestling with depression at the moment.

   My plans to give you guys a bunch of days in a row of story posts fell out from under me last night. Head's still not in a terrific place, but I'm trying to focus on other things and at bare minimum have productive days both around fixing up the trailer and getting the game adaptation together. Will be back to finish posting the last segments of Part 12 in the next few days.

2) Game Locations.

   After Zaph left, I knew it would be a while before we figured out a replacement main character artist. So, I've spent a fair bit of the last two months going over fixes, continuity edits, and additional minor/major variations with our background artist Basem_S1. Since only one of them was entirely new, I just edited their respective pages with the new content and marked down what got done on the Guide page, but a fair bit has changed that patrons didn't get notifications for.

   This should help give patrons a very clear idea overall on where we stand on the various locations we'll be able to visit in the game--and how they all fit together:

Convention Main Areas: Hall, Lobby, and Lobby 2.

   Generally, the kind of imagery that comes to mind when you think of a cosplay convention; a large open space in a hotel or convention center filled with attendees and cosplayers. Hall is visible past the distinctive escalator of Lobby, which is in turn visible past the row of pillars of Lobby 2, so these areas are adjacent to one another. Hall will (eventually) connect to the Main Event Room that holds the large stage for the cosplay contest and such, Lobby itself connects to the upper level, the restrooms, and the vendor's room, while Lobby 2 should be how you get to the smaller panel rooms.

Convention Sub Areas A: Restroom, Restroom Exterior, and Vendor's Room Doors.

   Not sure if we should do an edit of the restroom so that it's green tile accents + cream walls or not to better match the convention center's aesthetic, but it's next up on the to-do list before the July batch of illustrations because we're getting a "messy bathroom" variant anyways. I feel like the behind-the-escalator view will help players connect where the restrooms are in relation to the lobby, and the badge check for entering the Vendor's room is an idea I had when I decided that convention badges would have to be an in-game item--if you lose it (low luck/karma event that will require you to go back and find a tiny little rectangle somewhere on the floor throughout the main areas) or if you give it to someone else, you won't be able to enter some areas.

Convention Sub Areas B: Event Room, Panel Room, Vendor's Room.

   Not as immediately relevant to our first few releases of the game, but definitely necessary inclusions. A convention is more than just a big venue to see cosplayers, there should be a ton of stuff to do at a con--events, activities, competitions, panels, shopping. We're not going to be able to put in extensive minigames or money or game events for these in early releases but at bare minimum having the locations in-game to be able to discover while players are exploring the convention so that it actually feels like they're at a convention. That's important to me.

Convention Sub Areas C: Entrance, Lobby 3, and Top of Escalators.

   Entrance is another main area, I'd like the hallway that goes off in its vanishing point to lead off to the Cafe. Lobby 3 is a view of the lobby from the entrance and is mostly to help illustrate how the areas connect. Top of escalators is pretty self-explanatory, I'd like to have a lot of transition illustrations, so that was me taking the chance to start getting ahead on the escalator set, at least.

Cafe: Exterior, Interior, and Booth.

   This area's meant to seem off out of the way situated between Hall C and Hall D concourses, so there's less cosplayers and AnimeCon attendees around and you start instead seeing some attendees from the neighboring Trade Expo going on visiting the cafe for coffee.

Outside: City Streets, Convention Plaza, and Doors.

   City Streets is mostly going to wind up being a bridging illustration to show that Stephanie at the Sherriott is a fair few blocks away from the convention center, but it's also an opportunity to set up the Marino's Pizza location we'll need in later releases. We don't have an illustration of the Sherriott exterior yet, and Brian's staying at the Westerlin which is right across the crosswalk from AnimeCon but we don't have one of the crosswalk yet. I'd also like to get a medium angle of the plaza, as we have a wide establishing shot and then one that's basically just a close-up of the entrance doors themselves, and that's it. Outside locations haven't been a major priority just yet though, so I'm fairly content with the few we've set up so far.

Westerlin: Hallway, Courtyard, and Exterior.

   Not overly visited upon in-story but it would definitely feel weird playing if they were left out. The area just outside the door of Brian's hotel room has some pivotal moments, and then I was really keen on having wider establishing shots so that the cabana-style motel doesn't feel claustrophobic or like you're missing out on things you would enjoy seeing if you were actually there. I don't stay in hotels often, but when I do it's pretty much because I'm on a convention trip so for me they're part of the whole experience.

Hotel Room: Inner & outer angle view, bed.

   A huge amount of the story takes place in Brian's hotel room, so I at minimum wanted three different angles to give me a variety of options for the different scenes here.

Hotel Room Sub Areas: Bed & Chair, Mirror & Sink, Bathroom.

   Each of these are for specific scenes or conversations. The Truth or Dare game will use a mixture of the main room angles and this close-in on the bed and chair. We're still going to get one more, possibly two more close-ups of the bathroom and shower interior, even. Sink & Mirror was created last and basically came about from me realizing we could kitbash the Room inner view together with the bathroom and then use outer view reversed horizontally for in the mirror, and it's turned into one of my favorite close-up angles for the room!

Sherriott: Lobby, Hallway, and Elevators.

   Only used for a few scenes in first release, but I thought it was important to get a head start on having another hotel that possesses a unique and distinct visual aesthetic from the Westerlin so that there's no chance of a player confusing the areas. We also got an illustration done up for the Sherriott room, but I'm likely replacing it. The angle was a little lower than eye level, and the room just came across as more bland and uninteresting than I wanted it.

Brian: Brian's apartment, Brian's car, and Destroyed Hotel Room.

   Brian's apartment will start off the game's prologue, so it was absolutely necessary--the other two are basically part of the first 'bad end' route in the game, where Brian gets outrageously drunk and his normal choice options for walking places are discreetly replaced with options that have him accidentally destroying things. The car-closeup was originally supposed to be Rebecca's car, but I'd like to give her a more station-wagony sort of thing and we've been able to easily repurpose the old asset for this. 

   The upcoming illustration batch poll will decide what we focus on next--there is one week left to cast your votes, and you can cast more than one vote spread across the different options. Rebecca's car is in the lead at the moment, so someone other than Rebecca has to be driving.

3) Main Character Art.

   The first two I approached about replacing Zaph for our main character artist were YeeMcBear, who does our background crowds, and a new artist named Mr. Rawrden. At some point in mid or late July (basically whenever Rawr finishes his take) I'll be running a poll so that we can decide who we're going with.

   Yee has fast completion times, and her style will perfectly match the bg crowd people so that's a plus... but hers are also simplistic and may not be the best fit for our main characters. I had her do Rebecca and Brian so that everyone can see what her designs would be like:

   On the other end of the spectrum is Rawrden, whose painted style better matches our backgrounds. He specializes in lewd illustrations and his style has a lot of charm, but he's slightly more expensive and his completion times would be equivalent to Zaph's or slower. He's popular and always has a long commission queue, so basically I would always have to put my hat in the ring a month or more in advance of when we wanted the work. Which I've done, just in case Rawr's who we decide to go with. I asked him to start in on Stephanie for us, and just night before last he send me his first WIP for her:

   Again, will be running a poll to decide which artist we go with once Rawr finishes his Stephanie design in July. I don't like spamming updates on the game progress for little things and want to try to just do a big devlog with a lot of info once a month like this--if you're curious or want more regular updates, I usually post up everything new to discord right away. 

( Devlog #3 | AnimeCon Harem Eroge )