[CRACKS KNUCKLES]

It's been a very busy month for me. I hadn't realized just how much I'd gotten done until compiling all the progress together for this post! Let's get right to it!!

Please note that this entire devlog is a crosspost! It is truly agony to crunch down images as I get deeper into development and attempt to share art progress:

In the interest of time and to also ensure you guys have legible images (rather than crunched jpgs at a fraction of their intended resolution), this entire post with all of its pics in high res are available for FREE on my Patreon! It has large file hosting so all pics available there for easy viewing and download, if you like. You can view that original post here!

I release these devlogs there a week early for all patrons too, as thanks for any and all support in trying times. 💖🧡💛💚💙💜🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

HYPE! HERE WE GOOOOO

ART

A truly baffling amount of art progress! I'm so pleased. All those studies in the last year have paid off massively!

3 character reference sheets

• I've continued progress on the reference sheet for our main man, with an outfit variant in a scene I recently wrote. I do not dare spoil by sharing early but so pleased
• Color work on Richard and Ray, while chipping away at palettes for the game as a whole!
• Also completed the character reference for Orgoth in full color!

All three of our bois from their respective character sheets. Don't they look so thrilled to be living in an apocalyptic, demon-infested world? lmao

Completed all base assets for the player's in-game Journal!

Custom UI in Ren'Py has fists, but Ren'Py should fear me.

I do not balk at drawing hands. I do not balk at animating. This took an ungodly amount of work lol but it is finished!!!

I am so damn excited. The full game will feature a few variations of the hover hand :tm: but for our demo this completes all assets for the in-game Journal! This optional reference has oodles of content for players to unlock over the course of their game, and many dynamic pieces that can change based on the choices you make, characters you meet, and places you go. 💖🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Sharing high-res character art with you all!!

I am absolutely thrilled to be barreling through art progress. Started a collection here for high-res character art, and will be sharing a new pic monthly with patrons as thanks for your support of me and this indie game's development!!!! The character reference sheet for Orgoth is its first addition and I am very excited to be sharing more progress with you all soon!!

The most blessed art research imaginable

For 3 cut-ins in a big fight scene, I got to dive into videos and pictures of many English mastiffs running and jumping. Mildly. English Mastiffs are big dogs, and not built for cardio, so this is a particularly fun and cute thing. Please enjoy some spoiler-free inspiration, from Zeus, the world-record slowest participant in a dog agility course.

https://theanimalrescuesite.com/blogs/news/giant-dog-agility

HUGE CG and cut-in progress!

CGs ("Computer Graphics," or an antiquated term for fullscreen, unique images in visual novels) constitute a huge portion of the art assets for this action-oriented, dark fantasy and horror game!

In addition to the extensive types of camera work, animations, and in-engine transforms I do for CBF, I am drawing all of its art. This is an extremely ambitious project through and through, so I'm extremely proud and excited to share just how much art progress was made this last month!

For our most visually dense fight scene in the demo, almost all of its scenes are fully scripted! That means every single line of text, every camera change, all visuals, etc. are totally complete!

A flowchart below shows my work ensuring there are no seams: large boxes are for unique chapters the player can enter the fight from, wide boxes are for choice menus, and tiny boxes are for totally unique scenes. This is not indicative of its word count or length, but helps to share the variety of ways this single encounter can play out!

5 unique CGs have been completed!

That said!!!! It is a difficult decision as a marketer, but non-negotiable for me as an indie dev with integrity to not spoil the entire game by sharing every bit of art with you all as the game is worked on.

Catalyst: Blind Faith is positively massive, and I have a staggering amount of art to work through as its only artist. We will have an absolute glut of assets throughout the course of development, and the scale of this ambitious passion project is a huge point of pride for me.

I gleefully look forward to you seeing these assets in the game itself!

• The 1st CG for the Goddess of Time is complete, with 2 variants!
• The first CG for Malimos is complete, with 3 variants!
• A CG for the centipede demon is complete, with 2 variants!
• A spicy CG for that lengthy fight scene is finished as well!

Key Art Progress!

This asset will be used in all Steam capsules, the game's branding, and of course its art will be in the game itself in pieces.

I buried myself in perspective studies, anatomy studies, clothing studies, and many more throughout the last year! This is easily the most ambitious character art piece I'll be making for the game, and its most important asset for marketing.

Emboldened by everything I've learned, and armed with Richard's character ref sheet, I tackled our key art at greater length this month!

"The Avengers but its just ur different delusions" - beloved friend in DMs

I'll be chipping away at our key art throughout development, with a lot of A/B testing!!! The final piece will likely also have:

• Church pews ripped apart in the background by vines,
• Pieces of shattered stained glass from the lightning,
• Color-balanced motifs with the central figure of gold and crimson, to match the logo,
• and some much more balanced colors throughout to help with such a busy image.

I have the luxury of time to make it great and really look forward to sharing its progress throughout the game's creation!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Many bingos. I am pleased.

COMMUNITY

• Hit 3k(!!!!!) followers on Bluesky! Thank you all so much for the support!

• Had a mighty 4 script readings in VC with our community Discord! It was massively helpful with my self-editing. Everyone's feedback (and extremely fun and silly dramatic VA) was a pure joy and kept the ball rolling full-speed throughout this month's writing progress!!!
• Had 2 absolutely wonderful critique groups. We completed reading and critiquing an epic series of events that took 35 chapters to build up to! Taking a brief break while I assemble notes for the next continuity they'll see!

PROGRAMMING

• Ye olde hover hand animations really took some work. Custom UI in Ren'Py has fists but it's done!
• Oodles of scripting:
  • Custom camera work across 4 complex and branching chapters
  • Custom transitions
  • Custom transforms
  • Rigorous testing for all text speeds and accessibility settings
• Implemented the textbox for invoking Vengeance in the demo! This art+UI asset has been done for a hot minute, but it is now also tested for all of our textbox opacity and other player preference+accessibility options!

WRITING

Was in the absolute trenches this month. Though I am working on relatively linear content, writing any epic revenge story that is genuinely compelling is still an endeavor!

Many thousands of words and numerous outlines were written, thrown in the bin, then written again this month.

That said, writing is my biggest passion, and this is all an important part of the process!!!

I don't call my studio "Just Write" for nothing heheheh.

• Line-editing completed on 11(!!!!) endings with the help of our glorious lead editor KnowledgeDomain!!!
• The torment nexus is COMPLETELY WRITTEN and ready to be scripted!!!
• 5 chapters (14,979 words) written and edited! This is comparatively linear content, but as mentioned previously has been deeply challenging for me. SO pleased by the progress!
  • Chapter 35-3: 4816 words - fully written and edited!
  • Chapter 36-3: 3398 words - fully written and edited!
  • Chapter 37-3: 2996 words - fully written and edited!
  • Chapter 38-3: 660 words - fully written and edited!
  • Chapter 39-3: 3109 words - fully written, still have 1 more edit to complete!
• An additional 9,755 words drafted, yet to be edited. I suspect I will be working on this continuity for a hot minute due to its narrative challenges, and am thrilled to be making so much art progress between writing! Breaks are very important while writing tragedy and dark material at enormous length. <3

That's a grand total of 14,979 new words fully line-edited, and a grand total of 24,734 new words fully drafted this month!

I am not even bothering counting the content across those 11 endings lmfao.

Though the flowchart progress might be difficult to see since this is purely linear content I'm working on atm, I put all the same love into every single part of this game! I'm so happy to be chugging along with its content and it is SO satisfying seeing all these many pieces coming together!!!!!

🎉SEPTEMBER IS A BIG MONTH FOR CATALYST🎉

This September is:

• The anniversary of our Community Discord Server, which has been the home for all of my projects for 7(!!!) years now!🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
• The anniversary of when I first began my interactive fiction writing! 🎉 It's the biggest inspo for Catalyst: Blind Faith.
• aaand my birthdaaaaayyyyy yippeeee 🎉

I'll be doing a celebratory VC on a day and time that the community picks! We have a poll in the Discord's #server-suggestions channel, so feel free to pop in and cast your vote!

The winning day and time for the server party is for us to start tomorrow, September 13th, at 12:00PM EST! We'll likely go for several hours while I stream game dev progress!! We'll do some silly VA, vote on choices, I'll share some behind-the-scenes on finished art and animations, and yap about what's to come! An invite is here: https://discord.gg/VPzkF2hj?event=1547277751386374144

Whether or not you can join us there, thank you 💖 so much 💖 for sharing your support of this big indie game's development!!!! I'm so excited to continue blasting through art and writing, and will see you next month!