Hello! It's Mino, and I'm happy to say we're back to working on the game. There's a lot to do in January, but I want inform you of what our immediate plans for the upcoming Visual Update Phase 1 release so everyone knows what to expect.
Over the last few months we've pushed Chapter 20 updates on a very tight, very precise schedule to our supporters. This was made possible by the considerable writing backlog we had, all the editing our writing team had done in preparation for the release, Wattson's support with the code and the incredible work our Chapter 20 Art Team provided us with. We were, in essence, putting all of these things together — which was no small task, but most of the work had been done beforehand.
What we are doing in January is very different. Most of the art for the VU Phase 1 release is done, and since we have multiple artists working independently some have even gotten ahead and started on Phase 2 assets. Robert's new sprites, for example, were originally meant for Phase 2, but Lappan is ahead of schedule and we might be able to anticipate them for Phase 1. Despite that, there are a few things being finalized and some others receiving unexpected but excellent upgrades.
For instance...
If you were there for dilukha's most recent Art Stream, you saw that Asterion's unhealed spriteset is getting some extra oomph. Mainly, instead of a single stactic sprite he will now have two poses — one for the immediate aftermath of finding him in the cold room, and another for when he gets his first dose of healing wine.
Now begins the work of putting all this new art in the game and making sure they work with our new and improved resolution without breaking anything.
There'll also be some other improvements to how the game works, which includes some user interface changes, and today I want to show what these are going to look like. Mind you, these are mock-ups, they're not running in-game currently, and things are subject to change. This includes the cover art for this post!
As we have shown before, we are adding portraits to the dialogue boxes...
...but we will also rearrange how we display the buttons for the menus, as well as what information is displayed in what screens.
When you add this to the new sprites and increased resolution, this is a degree of magnitude more complex than the simple addition of Chapter 20 content. Still, it's going to be so worth it when it's all running in-game.
We have an internal schedule and we are hopeful that things will go well — we are aiming for a late January/early February release for the VU Phase 1 build. But there really is no way to tell precisely how it will go, and if the team needs more time we will give that to them. We have even made the decision that we will only announce a release date only after we have the fully functional and tested build — this is really not the time to impose an arbitrary release date and put a ticking clock over everyone's heads. We can't be sloppy now.
It's in moments like these where it's worth reminding you that since our expansion Minoh Workshop has become, in essence, a game development studio. For what has been so far a very timely Patreon anything being as much as a few days behind schedule has been an anomaly, but now we're switching to the more complex reality of managing a project with multidisciplinary teams working in parallel. Small delays of a few days or a week are not out of the ordinary.
If we get any particularly unexpected bugs or issues and have to delay the release date beyond our point of comfort, chances are I'll rearrange our schedule and try to publish the next Chapter 20 build earlier than expected. You may recall we intended on releasing it in February, but expediting it to late January would not be a problem if push came to shove.
I gotta say, though... What a situation to be in, huh? Today's DevLog is all about the complicated challenges of the Visual Update and lining everything in a timely manner, but the reality from the inside is that we have two excellent updates almost-but-not-quite-ready to go, and that's such an enviable position to be in!
In other news, Creeples has finished the first batch of work for the Chapter Select feature. He went the extra step and made a very robust tool that will be made available for other visual novels to use. More news coming soon on his socials. We are all very proud of what he has accomplished!
The next stage is going over the game's chapters and taking note of all the variables that players will be able to influence during the "Chapter Select" process. Keep in mind this won't be a simple "get tossed to Chapter X with a default save file" thing, we want to provide you with the freedom to influence the choices up to that point so you could, to a reasonable extent, recreate a lost save file.
Now, you won't be able to minutely determine which loot drops you found on the valley or what research projects you have already completed, but I want everyone to be able to influence all the main story decisions as well as everything which we plan to use during Act 3 to any particularly relevant degree. As a rule of thumb, I want all of the game's contents and branches to be accessible by save files created through this feature. There's a lot of secrets and rare interactions in the game which we intended to be discovered by people playing organically, but since we are adding a robust Chapter Select feature I'd hate if entire sections of the game were in effect cordoned off behind the time-consuming creation of bespoke save files from scratch.
Once we have the Chapter Select up and running to a satisfactory degree, we'll be restarting the uploading of new builds to Itch.io. The specifics of how that will go are yet to be determined, but at the very least we'll be publishing the contents of Build 9. But keep in mind this will, necessarily, only happen after the VU Phase 1 build goes out which, too, will be posted directly to Itch.
In other news, very soon we will be rolling out some rewards to our supporters.
I have a very special DevTalk planned for January. In response to requests I've received over the years, I've decided to show some aspects of my writing process. This month I'll be showing my character creation and plot outlining process. To do this I conceptualized two characters for a hypothetical visual novel and outlined their plot as if it was a preparatory document. I'm calling this "TROPICAL SUNSET", even though I don't plan on actually writing out this story (Minotaur Hotel is my focus, baby!). I recorded the entire process, which came out at almost 12 hours, and during the DevTalk I will play a sped-up version of this footage while I provide commentary.
I will very soon publish the TROPICAL SUNSET document to our supporters of all tiers. This will act as a replacement for this month's VIP Story. If you wish to have the best experience while watching the DevTalk, I highly suggest you check out the document ahead of time. The talk itself has not been scheduled as Kangarube is still editing the footage, but I estimate it to happen in mid to late January.
That's it for now, my lovely readers! We have big things in store. Things will be quiet for the next few weeks as we hunker down and work, but stay tuned!