Yooo,
Sup, folks. It's been awhile since I did one of these so I wanted to check in again. Those of you in the higher tiers or following on some of my socials, had already seen some hints (posted 2 of them above) but I wanted to get everyone on the same page.
As always, I'll give the transparent long version and then drop a TLDR summary at the bottom for those of you that ain't got time for my rambling.
Good news is: it's almost done
CGs
All of the initial CGs are finally finished and it looks like v18 will clock in with 620 new images. 567 of those images are just the beach and traveling scenes-- so all of those pics will be completely new environments for this update. 2 Fully redone environments will be featured in this update in addition to two extra environments made from those assets to help with transitions better (note: the driving scene is just relit. i didn't change anything else there). To put this into perspective, the original scenes for the beach update only spanned 296 images so the revamp is more than double what we originally saw. Plus, the updated environments are built more like an arena, allowing full 360 shots, rather than the original environment which was more like a stage, only allowing like 2 perspectives. so shit gonna be more diverse.
One slight obstacle to this will be that this is the first update of me doing everything 100% solo again. Normally, I do like 95% solo anyway but Jordyn/Kyler is now working on his own project whereas, he normally goes through my pictures and does photoshop corrections and stuff. I'll be doing that stuff myself this time and it's something that I had zero experience at. i dont really like photo editing. With game creation it makes sense but with normal photos, i feel like it takes the magic away of capturing a moment. That being said, normally, i would send things off to him to work on while I work on other things but this time around, I've had to learn a new program in addition to doing it. Good news is that I think all of that is done right now. I've been working on it as I went but that did contribute to slowing me down a bit. That being said, if you see things in the new update that are off, you can let me know and I'll take a crack at fixing it. Just don't blame him.
Writing
The good news is that v18 boots and it works. I've started my first readthrough a few days ago. It's pretty normal that it takes me several days to get through each update the first time. Right now I focus on trying to fix difficult things and look at the tone of the scenes and dialogue, combine lines or even eliminate stuff. I'm at the tail end of it and will hopefully finish my first passthrough today. Honestly, this update was way rougher than i remember so it's actually been more work than i thought it would be. i did feel that several lines of writing and the dialogue fell short of my expectations or goals in the scene so I'm taking steps to tweak that. visually, it looks great so far and i'm optimistic that i'll get things ironed out but right now it's pretty rough. that being said, that's how i always feel at this point in the process so everything is normal right now.
So What's Left?
So the process is that I normally go through the update a couple times until it feels fairly smooth and the pace of things feels right. Once i get to that point, i start on sounds and music. that normally takes a few days to code in but depends. sometimes i need to find new sounds or even make them; same with the music. I've hunted for days sometimes just trying to find a track that just feels right. So on average: it takes a few days to do that but there's variables there.
after that, it's just readthroughs. usually a lot of them. normally i dont consider the update done until i make it all the way through it without touching anything. then i skip a day to detox then come back again with fresh eyes. it's never failed me yet. but i'd say on average i do at least a dozen readthroughs.
ETA
So no exact date right now but I don't see any reason it wouldn't drop in July and honestly here in the US, it's hot af right now so perfect time to hit the beach and splash around.
Summary/TLDR
v18 images done but were delayed slightly because i'm doing all the editing on them and i had to learn a new program.
v18 boots and i'm almost done with first readthrough
still have to code in sounds/music then several more readthroughs for editing