Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #151

Hiya there, everyone! I hope you're doing well!

I just wanted to make this post at the end of the month to cap things off and keep you all up to date on what I've been up to the last month, just in case the recent slowing down on dev logs has anyone worried. I'm still here and working away on things, don't worry! I guess I just felt that I may end up sounding a touch repetitive if I reverted to weekly dev logs at the current moment in time due to the work I'm handling right now. Or the progress would seem too spread out and not be worth individual posts. I'll try to avoid future dev logs being entirely monthly, but consider this most recent one a digest of sorts! I do want to try and post more, though. Maybe I can post more in-depth overviews of characters, or explore other elements of the world in lore style posts if those interest people? Let me know what you'd like to see!

So! As I mentioned before, my main priority with 0.13 being out now was to get all of the currently non-voiced stuff voiced and produce a 0.13.5 of sorts. This was quite a process in itself, due to a lot of scenes being spread across a lot of areas, with a lot of characters. It was daunting at first to sort everything out and pick out key starting and ending points for the story-related lines and CG, and how best to split up the lines between the characters, but I ended up powering through it, and the end result was over 10 script files being sent out to various VAs, across several hundred lines. So I'm happy to say I'm fully on top of that and it's all in motion! It was quite a task between splitting out the lines from the script, organsing them per character and adding directions per line for all of the small nuances and ways I wanted certain parts to be delivered. I also used this opportunity to further edit and tweak a good number of lines before they were voiced, ensuring the dialogue flowed as naturally as it could, and in some cases I changed the lines entirely if I felt they weren't working as I thought they would. So there wasn't a complete rewrite or anything, but being able to go back over the scenes with a fresh perspective really did help in terms of shaping the writing up a bit more, while also catching some typos in the narration, too!

That said, I'm not entirely sure when all of the lines will be ready and implemented, as that depends entirely on the schedules and workload of each of the VAs now, with all of them having different situations and circumstances for when they might be able to fully deliver things. Which is totally understandable, especially with the sporadic manner in which I may pop up and tell them I have new lines for a character after weeks/months since the last scene. But I'm optimistic about things, and will do my best to keep on top of it all as best I can and make sure nothing slips into the cracks.

And with all of the relevant VA stuff being sent out, I've been spending the rest of the month getting back on the saddle with writing. I have two key story moments I've been fleshing out, and some h-scenes/pseudo h-scenes being drafted up, too. One of the h-scenes is directly tied to the main scenario, and is one of the more emotional scenes I think I've written. It's still sensual to a large degree--but there's also a bittersweet nature to it. This kind of thing is brand new territory for me and pushes me out of my comfort zone entirely of happy, silly fluffy times...but I'm all for broadening my horizon and hoping that I become a better writer out of it! Since Quest Failed is more than just a smutty game for me, and I genuinely do want to craft a memorable story out of it. I hope you all feel the same way, and enjoy QF for more than just its sexy times! Even if...those are admittedly quite appealing as well, haha.

Additionally, the knowledge that there isn't TOO much more of the main scenario to write is motivating, knowing that if I push myself just a little further, I can start to wrap this up, because goodness is it long overdue, huh? I just gotta try not to fumble things at the finish line really, knowing I still have a good number of optional h-scenes to flesh out after this. And it's too early to be estimating exactly when everything will come together at long last--but once the main scenario is finished with, I'll start giving solid counts of what's left, and we can count down together excitedly as this gargantuan project of a game comes to a conclusion!

I've started making steps towards polishing a lot of other aspects of the project in light of this eventual end, too. One of which is enlisting the help of an audio engineer to help me better balance the audio tracks against the voice acting. Since the mixing has been something I've been pushing to the back of my mind while focusing on the writing, but I'd like to polish that aspect as best I can without having to tell people to just turn the music down all the way as a stopgap solution. In addition, I've been looking at fully implementing the gallery feature soon, too. Or at least making an official start on it when I feel I have time in between bouts of writing. As a gallery has been requested quite a bit by alpha testers as of late--and my official stance has been that I'll hold off on fully implementing it until EVERY scene is done, just so I can better organise all the scenes and how they're presented. But I've been giving it some thought, and believe that if I do implement it early, I can still do it in a flexible way that will also easy shuffling around of different scenes around the gallery as I please, even when I add new ones in. Chapter One's gallery system was...functional, to say the least...but if you dared to look at the code for it, all you'd see is some paperclips and band-aids holding everything together, haha. It's embarrassing looking at it these days with my increased knowledge of Ren'Py's systems. I'm confident when I implement Chapter Two's gallery system, it'll be far smoother and more functional.

The 'progress' meters are also another aspect of Chapter Two that haven't been touched since the earliest days of the game's conception (to the point that most of the portraits in the current version are still using older art of Ren, Cynthia and Queen Deidra!) but I'd like to give it another look. Depending on how I can salvage it, I may end up scrapping the system altogether, or simplifying the hearts system. As right now it feels a touch messy with everyone having the same number of hearts on the meter, but then everyone having a varying range of scenes and moments together with Matt. I'm open to suggestions, of course on the best way to handle such a thing! My current plan would be for each character on the progress menu to have a heart added with each new scene you acquire of theirs. And once you've achieved all of their scenes, the progress meter would have something to indicate that they've been 'completed'. Maybe something as simple as 'completed' overlaid on the hearts. Or the hearts themselves changing to glow and be sparkling. I'm still debating, really. The menu was one of those features that seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm not sure if it has any worth in the current build or if it would even be utilised by players. Same goes for the inventory/status screen. They're very pretty to look at and construct...but get quite cumbersome to maintain. Perhaps I should focus on streamlining and trimming some of the fat, so that when it comes time to fully polish things up for release, I don't have too many outstanding elements to keep track of.

That'll most certainly be my aim for any future titles moving forwards after the learning experience of Chapter Two. Simple and clean~ I really can't wait to share what I have in store in that regard, but rest assured I do have plans after this game so we won't be left blind after it's release!

And so to conclude this post that ended up far longer than I imagined...as always seems to be the case, haha...the closer I get to finishing things, the more I've been starting to think about the bigger picture, and all of the other elements that tie the game together. Some elements more unwieldy than others that either need reigning in and adjusted, or stripped completely as to avoid making the game more complex than it needs to be. None of this affects the core writing, or any of the planned h-scenes of course. It's more just a lot of mechanical things that need serious thought as to whether they work or not. Next month I'll give an overview of the scenes I've written and how much more is left before the main scenario is complete. And then we can take things a step at a time from there!

Thank you for enduring my dev log ramble as always, and until next time~ Thank you being awesome as always!