Dev Diary #8 - "The First Course" Arc - 0.7.0
Hey everyone,
Life got in the way and I decided to wait a few extra days before posting.
Working through another chunk of new scenes. Some are completely new as part of the Act 2. Others will feel familiar to the original game.
But, as usual, while fans of the old version might recognise a few moments, they've been reworked pretty heavily.
I've also been trying out some new things that I finally got time to play with, but I can't talk much more about that today.
On Act 2 branching:
I get asked about this a lot, and things did change a fair amount.
Early on I'd hinted at TQ and SP as near-parallel storylines. Separate routes, hard split, almost two games, but after going through a few iterations over time, and especially now that I'm developing Act 2, that has evolved.
What I'm building is kinda similar to your standard tree with the main story everyone plays through and the route, locked after Act 1, controls multiple key scenes but it doesn't create a whole new timeline.
Affinity still controls which characters you're close to and what scenes open up for you.
While the fully parallel version could have opened up a few interesting scenes it would've also meant a lot slower releases and crazy scope.
The route-specific content, especially h-scenes, are still locked to routes and I'm still figuring out how I'll handle a few moments later in the story but having a main story trunk is not feeling as awkward as I feared when I first started developing the remake.
That said:
Shared main story doesn't mean one ending. There's quite a few planned Endings and those will require a harder branching, but only later in the story.
You can't max every character in one playthrough. Choices lock you out of certain scenes and into others.
H-content is where TQ and SP feels most different but I'll some flavour dialogue to make it more fitting.
Easier to show than tell as you'll see it in 0.7.0.
On dates:
No date today but aiming to have one in the next diary. There's prep I'm doing now to make sure whatever I put out is based off something.
Animations are planned as I want them in at release, but I haven't started on them.
Have a nice week.
Cheers,
Tori