bb i did fckn WORK THIS MONTH U LITERALLY DONT EVEN KNOWWWWWW (but now u will)

MONTHLY DEVLOG TIME!!!

And I have been EAGER FOR THIS ONE. When I say I locked THE FUCK in this month..... OUGGHHHHH.... LET ME SHOW YOU!!!

This month, we had the usual progress on Kuna'a's dev edits (slow but steady) and Etza's line edits. But ON TOP of those edits going on in the background w the editing team, I also had time to go through every single route in the EA build and do the final edits on them. Just to give context, this means I edited 200k words this month, AND BOY WAS IT WORTH IT.

This editing journey included A LOT of things, not just little tweaks to wording here and there. It included polishing the prose, really strengthening character voices, adding more personality branches/choices, and A LOT of reworking for different scenes that I was okay with, but not completely happy with, in the beta versions of the individual routes. On top of reworking scenes, a lot of the routes also got some extra tiny scenes to showcase more cast dynamics, AND because I implemented a shiny new communicator system (which I'll talk about later), there's a lot more messaging conversations going on that I think add a lot more fun and character to your interactions with different LIs.

sneak peek of a new chat convo as an example

I'm really, really, really happy with the writing of the routes now. The characters feel stronger, scenes feel more organic and natural, and the pacing feels much more intentional. And overall the routes just feel a lot more fun!! While I don't think the writing was bad, by any means, before, I do think it's a lot stronger and cohesive now!

I was also able to calculate word counts across routes within the game script, using a Lint feature by another dev. It was a lifesaver because Google Docs gave me just an estimate, but by calculating the word counts within Ren'Py, I have a more accurate word count across the routes. Using this, I adjusted different routes so that the word count is much more even and there's no one route that feels significantly longer than another!

If you think I was making cracked progress on writing, ehehehhee.......................... WAIT UNTIL I TELL YOU ABOUT THIS!!!!

First art accomplishment: I finished THREE sprites for the game!!! (so I only have TWO left now!!!!). I'll showcase one here since I've featured them before, actually. A long, long time ago for those who were here during the Kickstarter ages.

everyone, meet KILUM

Kilum was a stretch goal to have their own route. Unfortunately (for you, but fortunately for me LMAOOOO), we didn't meet that stretch goal. You might remember they look a bit different from the original concept art, and that's because I reworked their color palette after finishing the rest of the Dusk Court's characters so that side of the cast looked a little more cohesive. I'm in love with their design (thanks to bestie @/saffein-e as always), and I hope you're excited to meet them in game! They are certainly A Character!

The other two sprites I finished were actually our two queens HEEH. You will not be meeting them, sorry! Guess you'll have to wait for EA to drop \o/ Anyways, I was really nervous about finishing the sprites in time for the EA build since I had 5 sprites to make, and before this month I had only finished 2 sprites in the span of like 4 years aofsdjaiosjdfaiojsdfioajsdf. So I'm really proud of myself for the sprite progress this month (I always hate making sprites)!

sneak peek feat. eyes. my beautiful children....

We also made CG progress. A LOT of CG progress HEHEHE. Before this month, I had only finished about 26 CGs and that was over the course of like 2 years. That being said, that was while balancing coding beta routes, writing routes, editing, and whatever else I had going on. Now, because I'm locked in on art progress, we have.... *drumroll please*....... 38 CGS FINISHED!!! And that is actually ALL of the ones we need to have done for the EA build!!! So this month, on top of sprite and editing progress, I also finished 12 CGs YEEEAAAAAAAAAA.

Finally, I made some headway on other things this month: one of the biggest being a revamp of the communicator.

my children..... stop fighting....

Big thank you to (@/robobarbie and @/windchimesgames) for the messaging system asset HEHE. now in the game, you will be able to have separate chats for each character and group chats!! I'm still ironing out some kinks with the system and figuring out how to best implement it in the game, but for now, here's a sneak peek of what it's looking like!!!

We also have finally reached a point where we can move forward with voice acting in the game!!! I'll be preparing the lines to send out to the VAs over the next couple of days, but it's so exciting to reach this point since VA is usually what i associate with the Final Stages of production.

I've played a couple of games recently but honestly, so much of my time has been dedicated to Alaris that I haven't had time to do anything like fanart. It's been an ALARIS MONTH BABY!!!

CGs and sprites were the biggest things that I was worried about finishing on time, and given the amount of progress I made on them this month, I think we're in really good shape for EA release!!!

All that's really left for me to do with both editing and like 85% of the art assets out of the way are to finish up the last two character sprites, flesh out the sprite expressions and code those in, and VA! After that, it'll be cleaning for bugs and polishing, so I'm extremely ecstatic over EA progress this past month and hope you all are excited to have it in your hands Very Soon! ^^

Until next time, hopefully I'll bring more exciting news then. Stay cool, especially for those getting hit by the heat waves and general summer heat! <3