Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #89

Ohohoho~ Hello! How are we all doing today? Admittedly I'm running slightly late with this one--but here I am with this week's dev log, and an adorable new chibi of a certain Queen I wanted to showcase today as a new batch of cheebs were finished lately!

I also held a vote and showcased a certain wuf chibi, too on my Twitter (that if you don't follow, I highly encourage you to do so~)--but I'll attach it below for your convenience, too!

Aroooo~! Ain't she just the most adorable scrappy little thing you've ever laid eyes on? You'd almost forget just how dangerous she can be with those big ol' chunky paws of hers!

The only chibi I haven't shown now is of a certain sadistic fish--but I'll save her for another day! I assure you she's just as cute as the other cheebs, though. Really!

Cuteness aside, I wanted to update you all on my progress. I still don't have a proper solution sorted to properly document my writing progress day-to-day, but I've finally wrapped up a giant event scene that had been the source of many of my frustrations for the last while. Containing a h-scene, along with several full exchanges (and of course a cute sprite edit I was talking about before) it definitely ended up spiraling out of the original plan I had written down. But isn't that always the case, huh? Ideas seem to mutate and take lives of their own, where ideas and lines of dialogue come to me in the heat of the moment. It's like my hands are moving on their own, kyaaaaa...!

Ahem...but yeah--I'm still not fully happy with the way the scene concludes, even after all the days I've spent slaving over it--but for the sake of the alpha build coming out this month I'm going to leave it as it is and maybe gather feedback on if anything should be changed, rather than fussing over it myself and stalling progress in other areas. It's painful for me to do, but I think the more I learn to moderate myself and learn to stop poking at scripts, the faster I can progress and give something to all of you lovely patient people.

With the monstrous event behind me, I've already started diving back into a variety of events I had half-written with a number of supporting notes to aid me in wrapping them up in a timely manner. My main fear is that 2 h-scenes aren't enough to justify a new alpha build and that people are going to wonder just what the heck I've been up to this whole time for everything to take so long--so I'm going to try and have as many new h-events to supplement this build as I can, to give some more fun reading material alongside the erotic stuff. Once I've powered through these lingering events that are in a state of half-doneness, my plans for the next build will be as follows:

- Begin the next major story event that will feature some dramatic battles, with accompanying CG created just for the fights. Battle CG isn't common in QF with most of the budget going to where it counts (the h-scenes, of course!) but I felt that some of these more serious, action packed moments could do with some visual flair that isn't just a couple of sprites bumping into one another menacingly. When overseeing the creation of these battle CGs, I wanted to try make them as layered possible for far more dynamic animation in motion. Imagine things dramatically sliding in to attack/defend, layers of dust gradually parting under a character as they slide back from some kind of impact. Each element isn't as grand by itself, but put together in one fancy sequence, they really add a lot! Some of my biggest influences for how I want to try and handle the battle sequences are how the visual novel 'Fate/Stay Night' handled them. They really knew how to create a sense of impact with visuals/SFX and clever use of transitions and zooming in. I can't claim I'll be able to 100% emulate that--but gosh darn it, I'll try!

- Continue to slowly expand the h-scenes present and try to add at least 3 new ones into the build after this current one releases. Admittedly I've been writing some of them at a slower rate than I would like, as I still have quite a few that need to be done. But I really do feel the scenes have benefited from the extra attention that has been given to them, and allowed me to slowly build up intimate scenes that feel lengthy and really illustrate the sheer exhaustion poor Matt feels in some cases from how enduring they end up. I will say that while a few scenes still follow the magical 'rule of three'--that I've tried to mix it up and not have it AS predictable or forced to always make him climax a specific number of times. Some scenes might be shorter--some longer. Essentially the scenes that are shorter are ones with less art assets to back up a full novel's worth of narration. So h-scenes with only a few poses or expressions, for example. I'm hoping that by having h-scenes be a large mix of fewer and greater variations between each scene that pacing between each one will even out a little more and you'll never feel too bogged down by consecutive scenes happening all the time.

- Try and begin the groundwork for implementing the new UI assets I have made. You may remember that I've showcased some of those fancier UI elements beforehand--but unfortunately they're not quite in the game yet and I've been having to focus on writing rather than tinkering around with the UI code to try and get everything in place. Admittedly I might need to source out external help for this, as it's getting frustrating having so many shiny new assets not in place. But I really do want to try and implement them when I feel I have a spare moment to breathe. My only concerns are about changing the text box and font--as I've kind of grown attached to the font I have right now, and all of my writing has been tuned for this font in terms of what can fit in a text box. How do you guys feel about this font? Are you happy with it--or should I change it? I feel like it's a delicate balance right now and if I make a sweeping change such as changing the text after this many years that I'm going to regret it, haha. The UI changes also extend to getting the inventory system up and running with all of the cute icons I've had made so far. The inventory system is actually in use in-game right now, but it's just all stored in variables rather than with any visual indicator. But I really do want to get the visual side of the inventory system up and running as soon as I can to really aid that adventure game/RPG feeling!

- Continue to build up the SFX library and implement missing voices in scenes where necessary. (Though I actually have a backlog of voice clips I need to add, both for scenes in the alpha and scenes that aren't in yet, but were written out of order) I've teased some neat beach ambient sounds before--and I believe also the city ambience (which really adds to Rhan's atmosphere!) but I'm still missing a lot of sounds. Especially for combat scenarios, of which I'm going to try and build up a robust library of clips I can use for a multitude of situations. My inspiration for the sound design in fights will primarily come from things such as Fate/Stay Night, JoJo and DBZ (yes, really!). These shows inspire me the most with their super punchy audio that really gives a sense of impact--and it's something I'd like to try and attempt with Quest Failed, too. The sound team do AMAZING work with the JoJo anime, and if you ever get a chance I recommend you to look up some fight scenes from the show. The crunchy sounds coupled with the amazing soundtrack really gives both a visual and audio based feast for the senses!

- Finally, this one isn't quite related to the development of Chapter Two--but rather the development of our community as a whole, and to keep/foster interest in Quest Failed. I've brought it up in the past before--but I'd really like to host some kind of competition down the line to engage with all of my wonderful fans, and perhaps draw new people in, too! Perhaps some kind of art or writing competition with some fun prizes. But it's a lot to plan and I'm unsure how many people might actually want to engage with it all. I guess if I made the monetary prize high enough I could get anyone to join regardless of their love for QF, haha. But yeah--this has just been an idea on my mind for the longest time and my fear of it not panning out well or being flat out ignored by everyone has stopped me from going forward with it. What do you guys think about such a thing? Would it be something you'd be interested in taking part in/following? Let me know!

And, whew--that about sums up a brief (yes, this one is just brief!) overview of my plans after I get this current alpha build out. Admittedly all of the months that have gone by without it releasing has added some stress to my usual schedule, so I'm doing all I can to catch up with things and try to get ahead of it all and avoid letting you guys down. I don't want to jinx myself, but I know that some severe changes to my workload will need to be made in the future to prevent things spiraling this far out of control in the future--and I think more transparency will help with that. One maddening idea I had was the potential to sometimes stream the writing progress to Patreons if it so interested them. But again, I don't know how exciting watching someone write might be, haha. So that's probably a no-go. Other ideas as suggested before will be to just leave a publicly accessible chart up that tracks which scenes I'm on/have yet to do for the next build, while still being vague about what they entail so you don't get spoiled. (i.e "Mystery Character H-Scene #2 - 80%, Mystery Character Affection Event #3 - 45%") and so on! Percentages would be admittedly arbitrary based on my own estimation of what was left to do in any given scene, but since I usually go into a scene with at least a base outline drafted out, I think I'd be pretty good at mapping out how long it was until any scene was done!

Anyway--I think I'll wrap things up this week as I've already hit at least 200% of my rambling quota for the month with this post alone! I apologise for all the words and hope that at least some of it was entertaining or informative to read through!

I'll also sum up the multitude of questions I asked beforehand in the post below:

- Regarding the UI changes I'll be making soon--do you feel I should change the current font we have, or is it fine as it is? (In terms of looks, readability, etc.)

- Do Quest Failed contents (art, writing, etc.) interest you? Would you take part/follow along? Or would it be a waste of resources?

- What do you think would be the best way to keep track of and monitor my progress on Quest Failed: Chapter Two? (Writing streams???? Charts that track each event required for any given alpha build? All of the above? None of the above? The text isn't even above this????????)

Thanks again for your continued support and I'll have something to show for all of my feverish rambling very soon! When I get a more solid idea of the alpha launch I'll make a post of the exact date, too!

Until next time~