Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #92

Hi hi!

How are we doing? I hope the day has been treating you well and you're on course for a wonderful weekend~

It's admittedly been a few days since the last dev log--and I apologise for that. Though hopefully the glimpse into the wonderful Cynthia celebration art again made up for it! I try at the very least to keep to a semi-regular schedule of at least one post a week, and do start to get anxious if I haven't updated you guys in a while--but have no fear since I'm back with a new dev log!

As you may or may not have gathered due to my silence on the matter up to the end of this month, the newest alpha build I was intending to release this month isn't quite ready yet. I wanted to make the next incremental build bigger than the last to make up for how small the last update was after so much waiting, so a lot of work has been going into things so far! I feel like the next update will be pretty substantial, as I've been working on these things over the month:

- Shop integration with buying and selling items (as demonstrated in previous dev logs!)

- Functional side tasks given by characters, acting as more free-form quests that allow you to figure out and solve particular issues presented before you. This feeds into the shop system, whereby you were tasked to buy ale for a certain thirsty dragon.

- More cute events with the main cast and plenty of camp shenanigans. These have been a lot of fun to write!

- 3 new h-scenes are semi-implemented. This has been the biggest task to complete, as I felt 2 h-scenes wasn't gonna cut it next build--so opted for 3 full ones instead, each a fun adventure in their own right.

- Editing and implementing the voiced lines for all of the previous h-scenes that may have lacked them. This was also another large commitment, as it can take a good part of a day to get all of the lines sorted and clipped for for a single h-scene, with plenty of listening back and forth between takes to decide what fits the line the best. It's a process! But I find it really does add a lot to the scenes that lacked voice previously in older builds, so it's been fun to return to those scenes. Two of the new h-scenes being added into the next build will have full voice too, already recorded and ready to go!

- Amending several recent scenes I implemented in the last build with some more details added here and there. I'll not go into too much detail here to avoid spoilers--but simply put some scenes I recently added I felt were lacking in some places, so worked with an artist to polish them up a little more with great results~

So to recap--equal parts writing and scripting, with some audio editing and image revising on the side! It's been an eventful month for sure--and I think I'm about stretching the limits of my creativity across these areas, haha. In a perfect world I'd just be able to focus on the writing and try to speed things along, but we're powering along!

And so this post doesn't feel so naked, have an Anna chibi! I know I've shown her before but I can't remember if I ever attached her to the top of a post before or not, haha. Some of the voice clips I added actually relate to her, in fact--but aren't quite tied to a h-scene yet. I wonder if people will be able to find where they pop up, since they're semi-hidden in sort of an obscure way. I promise I'll have more shiny things to share soon--we're just exhausting or budget for dev logs this month is all!

I've also added a new $3000 goal in light of us smashing the $2500 goal (again, lol)! It's a bit vague right now, since it's up for debate what we can do with this additional funding, but I outlined a few possibilities we could aim for! Be it adding in more dev logs in a month for some of the side projects I cook up on the side, or utilising the money to try and arrange for extra help in streamlining the release of Chapter Two. (This one is probably tricky though, since it's easier said than done finding people who I believe could mesh with my current workflow. This project is my baby, after all!)

Finally, I shared it on Twitter--but over the last weekend I had the chance to unwind and attend a convention in London where I was able to visit some of my artist friends and hang out with them, whereby they gifted me some adorable art of Ren and Jilly, that you can view here:

https://twitter.com/Frost_Works/status/1133742551113056256

Check it out if you haven't had a chance yet, since they do awesome work!

Thanks again, guys and here's to a super productive June~ (The month, not the nun--though I'm sure she's productive in her own way, too, huhuhuhuhu--ow don't hit me!)