Dev Log 1.5: Untitled

Hello!

Took a little longer to get around to this than I thought, but I decided that I wanted to reach a certain point in things before I gave another update, essentially pushing the report back a little. In my last dev log, I mentioned that there were 31 scenes left to render for Chapter 2. As of right now, 12 (and a half) of those scenes have been rendered, leaving 19 still to be posed and rendered. I'm intending for the next dev log to come after I've completed 22/31 scenes (or, 10 of the remaining 19). I don't yet have a timeframe for how long that will take, mostly because a couple of the scenes involve environments I've not rendered in yet, so I don't know exactly how long that part might take.

While I've been waiting on renders I've done a lot more planning for the future, as well as writing. I've been on a strong writing kick lately, in fact, and it's been interesting writing (at least preliminary versions of) important parts of the story in later chapters. As I've mentioned, everything's been planned out long in advance for this game. But some of they key moments were previously just ideas - these ideas have now taken a more concrete form.

For example, I always knew how the game would end. But this past month I actually wrote the ending, as in the literal final lines of the visual novel, regardless of branching, how I'm going to conclude things. I always had the scene in mind, just never the words exactly, and it might still change in the future, but for now these last eight lines of 'dialogue' perfectly end the story I want to tell, tie in and make reference to things throughout and just feel right. Getting the inspiration for and writing the ending was kind of the catalyst for how much I was writing this past month, in retrospect. So many of the key moments in the novel hinge on the ending, naturally, and knowing the ending in a more concrete way meant that I could write these other scenes with more confidence.

Now that the end is in sight for Chapter 2, I'm eager to press on. We're still only getting started, only in the introduction, only in the teasing, hinting stage. While the opening to the game is very necessary, it's not what I'm excited for. I'm excited for the first real kick in the mouth.

If you read this, I hope you're as excited for this journey as I am. I feel like I hype the future up a lot for someone with one chapter released ages ago that, while well received, wasn't exactly groundbreaking. I'm working hard to ensure that, when the time comes, I'll feel proud of what I've made and that it will have been worth the wait.

I almost forgot I actually have previews to show again now! They'll be at the top of the dev log, but I realised I hadn't even mentioned them.

edit: I did forget something else as well. Chapter 2 is now officially bigger than Chapter 1. As in, I've now made more renders for Chapter 2 than were in chapter 1, as well as more choices, more branching, all that fun stuff. And I've still got 19 scenes to go.

Thanks!