Helllllllo! KS is back~I thought I would do a little behind the scene post, letting you know a bit about how I make the game, or why it takes so long to update, etc. This is my first time making this kind of post, so I don't really know what format I'm gonna go with yet, but I think I'll figure it out as I go.
Updates for everyone
I'm mixing this post with progress report, and this first portion will be publicly accessible. For the exclusive behind the scene content in details, it's only available to my supporters of all tiers. If you're interested, once you pledge support, the full post will unlock.
Rather than using a general percentage to show you the progress, I think I will just tell you what parts are left to finish. The percentage system is never an accurate depiction of what really goes on, since some parts are more time consuming and labor intensive than others, and it's hard to quantize them sometimes. Or maybe I just suck at math, like I always do 🫠 Anyway, here's the deal:
Renders: Out of 29 little chapters, only 1 and a half left to make.
Animations: I always make them at the very last. I don't enjoy making them, but I have already finished the prep work for making animation for every scene(eg. rigging characters, etc.).
Music & SFX: I have selected most of the things I'll need, now I just need to finish the rest of the visual before I put the sounds in.
Codes: Codes for the content of the update is mostly done, nothing fancy. Just need to add in the stuff for sfx and it's good to go.
Changes & Future Plans
There are some things, due to the immense amount of work and scheduling issues, I'm unable to fulfill in this update, but will be implemented in the next one, or future updates.
Due to my stupid brain, the scope creep of this update got a bit out of control. In short, I wrote too much content for this update, and it turns into two updates worth of content.I categorize this as a major update. For 0.5, I will do a minor update, namely, a little bit of content, and some overhaul or other small things to make the whole game experience better.
UI: I seriously don't have time to redesign and implement a new UI in 0.4, so I will dedicate more time in 0.5 into making this happen.
Wiki/codex Page: I plan to make a codex page in game so that you can check on things about the game story settings whenever you want.
In-game Guide: I've been thinking about putting a simple guide system in game, that indicates what choice gives what changes. It will be an option that you can turn off freely as well.
Gamepad Support: A few players requested to have support for controllers. I will see what I can do.
Voiceover: I've considered this. I might or might not do this. Still needs more research on how I'm gonna do this.
Release date
I know this is what everyone wants to know. To be honest, it will be somewhere around December if we're being realistic here.I'm trying to finish all visual by the end of November, and then spend a week or so to wrap everything up before beta testing, then comes the early access for my supporters, and finally, the public release.Be prepared that the public release date might end up somewhere in the beginning of January next year.
I know it takes a long time, but trust me, once you play it when it comes out, you will understand why.For supporters, I will shed some lights on it in this post below, please continue reading if you're interested.
Sincerely, KS
Paid-member exclusives inside look
This is the section where I tell you about some bits and pieces of things regarding the making of New Horizon, a behind the scene look, basically.
In today's post, I want to show you one of the most time consuming things for me: map making.
Visual is, obviously, one of the most important aspects to a visual novel. To me, I'm very particular about the style of how my game looks. I always have these images in my head about the scene I'm going to make, and to visualize them for you players, I have to create these maps according to my taste and imagination. I want to create the right vibe that would help improve immersion, and so I spend a long time making every map in the game.
I want to show you a series of before-and-after comparisons below, to illustrate my point, and to show you the efforts I put into every scene. These are only a small portion of all of the scene I have to make, and one map sometimes takes me 3 days, or more, to make or decorate.
There we go! These are some maps/scenes that I selected to show. Some I made from complete scratch, and for some I use existing maps from other creators/modders, and heavily modify them to fit the style of my game. Everything is based on my own experience when traveling in Japan, and also from other forms of media I have consumed, like anime, movies, arts, etc. Plus my imagination, the most important. This is a fictional world after all.
I hope that gives you some ideas of how much efforts it takes to make New Horizon, and this is only a small portion of it.
On the bright side, a lot of these maps will be reused in many future scenes, for example, the campus ones, or the apartment ones just to name a few. That means I won't have to create them from scratch again, hence, will save me a lot of time in future updates. Also, I will not be making such a huge update again. I will try to limit my scope from now and reduce the time between each update.
Anyway, that's it for this post, a little behind the scene look on how I make maps. Let me know if you want me to go into more details about this, or if there's any other aspect of the game production you want to see me showcase. I'll see you soon.
Sincerely, KS