Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #56

(For details on the alpha release for anyone wondering--scroll down until you see the bolded text--your input is important!)

Hiya there, guys! I feel a little rusty writing these, but I hope I'll still be able to make an informative and entertaining post~

It's been a long time since the last dev log, so I wanted to make this one a bit of a multi-feature and show a few things that have been zooming along in development to help make Chapter 2 a far more immersive and polished experience.

The first part I wanted to share was this twitter video I teased the other day, showcasing some ambient city audio and demonstrating my plans to make audio a far larger part of the experience this time around. I know it's not essential to the experience, but it really did feel like something was missing when I launched Chapter One without proper SFX due to time and budget constraints. This time around I'm working with a dedicated SFX specialist who will be steadily building up a library of sound effects for me to use in the game to add extra flavour to locations, give fight scenes an extra punch and just generally make things feel more lively!

The only part I probably won't be adding sounds to is the h-scenes, as I feel the voices added enough already and that from my experience, adding sound effects to h-scenes makes them sound comical than anything, with meat slapping and weird spurting sounds and well, yeah. This is of course my personal preference--and if you feel that sounds may enhance the h-scenes for you, please let me know and I'll see what the general opinion of things is.

Adding SFX will be a gradual process and not everything will have sounds at once, but I'm making it a point to add sounds to things in stages as I go back through the script and see what might benefit the most from it. My aim here is to not go too overboard with too many SFX, but to build up a smart library of effects that I can reuse where needed, while getting more unique effects created for the crucial moments, to be cost effective things and not break the bank on this one small element.

Secondly, I'm also putting some more attention on the UI aspect of things! The first of which to be revamped will be the dialogue box.

(The elements you see here aren't necessarily part of the game and simply put together by the UI artist to showcase things, if you're wondering why Ren suddenly has Cynthia's line from the start)

It's still largely a work in progress as I work with the UI artist on things and we tweak it all heavily, but this should give you a general idea of how it's coming together! The idea is to try and make things feel more sleek and professional while still retaining the general feeling the old textbox had as to avoid being too obtrusive or obscuring the 'action'. And this will extend to all of the menus to give them a super professional feeling rather than looking glued together with paste like the old menus I created myself did, haha.

Let me know what you think of the approach of this new UI style and if you like the direction--or had suggestions. It's not implemented yet in the main builds of the game since things are still being heavily worked on with it!

Finally, I want to share how the writing is getting on--my own personal main focus on things ever since I got back from my little break.

I've been making great progress in fleshing out some smaller scenes that happen around the city--namely a fun one that happens early on in the inn if you choose to visit during the day. You bump into some quite unexpected strangers, of which you'll be able to experience in the upcoming alpha~

I've also wrapped up the library quest I've teased before while adding voice files to its h-scene, alongside a brand new quest to do!

And this new quest may have accidentally ended up one of the longest to go through in one straight run, featuring a variety of characters depending on the quests you've completed previously and the choices you make during it. This quest will go to show that not all the quests in the game will follow the same formulaic set of events and that sometimes you'll be quite surprised by how quests turn out!

Though, due to the quest also being this complex--it leads to two potential CG scenes that can occur, meaning the workload doubled for me, even as excited as I was to have it out in time for the alpha.

This brings me to the subject of the alpha release, of which I promised today--I can either attempt to release what I currently have down now by the end of the day by capping off the new quest before it's fully finished and just showcase what's currently there for those curious, or if people don't mind waiting an extra day or two, I can finish up both the CG scenes present in this quest and hopefully make it a more complete experience.

Please let me know what you think the best course of action may be--as I certainly don't want to let you all down!

I understand that either outcome probably isn't the most ideal given how long I've had everyone wait--but I guess my ambition got the best of me for this particular quest when I shouldn't have made it as long as I did.

Though, so we're not ending this dev log on a sour note--I want to say that I have summer art planned in the next couple of days, of a certain mischievous monster girl having fun in the sun~ I really do like getting these pieces of bonus artwork done, and I hope you guys enjoy seeing them! If there's any kinds of bonus art you'd like to see done in the future, let me know and we could always hold some kind of monthly vote for it or something--as I'm in a position where getting bonus art done each month doesn't affect the productivity of Chapter Two, and it lets me give you guys a small little extra treat as a way of saying thanks for all your support!

Until next time~