[DEVLOG] #17 | New Character + Prep Work + Soundtrack

Happy pride month you, yeah you, the person reading this, big month for you, huh? 

I hope you all had a great time with 0.34, well those subscribed to the patreon, 0.34 will be coming to the public build later this month most likely. I'm getting ahead of myself.

Like I've mentioned previously, every 5th update of Dimension 69 (0.20, 0.25, 0.30, etc.) features a new major main quest. They have been steadily increasing in scale over the past couple of updates and this one is no exception, this update is so large that I've kind of fucked myself over in a few areas, though hopefully now that the team is bigger it shouldn't be too rough of a wait, to showcase how big the update is, here's a zoomed out and illegible version of the story flowchart that is just the OUTLINE of what happens. I make one of these every update and it's usually way way way smaller lmao.

But it's not just dialogue heavy, there's a chunk of new locations, new characters and other new things that I can't really spoil coming to the game. But let's go over some of the new stuff I can talk about.

NEW CHARACTER - S.aiba

Now I know I promised no new characters from 0.30 to 0.40, but technically she's not a main character so it doesn't count, nyeh! In a first for Dimension 69 I've tried designing a robot character with a TV for a head, her name is S.aiba, pronounced like 'cyber' (get it? I am a hack.)

While she is from Last Beacon, the same as T-175, instead of being a refined, almost perfect recreation of a human, S.aiba is a frankenstein's monster of parts and personalities saved from the brink of death by—well I'm obviously not going to tell you that. She was once human, but at this point is any part of her body still the same person she originally was? Who knows? I don't, I haven't written any sidequests for her yet.

Here she is, seen lounging around on someone's couch in Last Beacon, probably an important location or something.

S.aiba's face is a tv screen (duh), so her expression can change greatly depending on the situation, I've whipped up over 15 unique expressions that I drew myself, here is a few:

Okay that last one is a joke, I probably won't use that... much...

There's a few new outfits for existing characters aswell, I'm sure some of you saw the most recent patreon animated render where Emma had her hair down, but there's another one or two that I can't talk about in a devlog because they are major spoilers. 

Oh and there might be one other new character, but I can't seem to remember anything about her and the only image I have of her has this annoying black box in the middle of it, oh well.

Other New stuff -

I've had to relearn a lot of Blender the last couple of days because an important part of 0.35 requires a custom 3d model of a teddy bear. Trust me that It'll make sense after the update, well, maybe. Here's a  WIP of it:

I don't really know how to texture or anything like that well, the final model might look very different or I might give up completely and just use a normal looking teddy bear, who knows. I'll try though, because it's important that this looks recognisable.

Besides that though, I've also been working hard on some new OST for the 0.35 update, maybe even a few for updates beforehand (probably not). Which reminds me, I've been adding more and more tracks to the game that are made by me, I should probably have some sort of way for people to listen to those tracks and any future tracks!

Dimension 69 OST

The Dimension 69 OST Vol.1 Is up on Youtube as of this post! There's a playlist with all 13 tracks here at this link: 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4HJWx5ZoTabL2Bq9K0qJbC8cnOJtQtTm

This channel is where I'll be posting future update teasers and OST, so subscribe or don't I don't really mind. The first few tracks of Vol.1 are really bad in my mind, I actually went through and updated, added to or remastered most of the tracks here, basically all of them. Specifically Tarred Sand and House of Osmer are longer now and have new parts added to them. The first four tracks also got barely touched outside of me turning the volume up because they were made in a different program that I'm bad at. I might do a smaller Vol.2 or something after 0.35, though I might not use the Vol.x naming system that much, I just didn't have a better name for this set because they don't really have a clear theme.

So what about 0.35? When is it?

Oh right, the update has to come out at some point, doesn't it? Well I'd be lying if I said it was anywhere near being done, it's only been like 3 weeks people, calm down! But of course, I don't want people waiting too long, especially for the public build of 0.34, so:

There will still be monthly updates of Dimension 69, but they will be significantly reduced in scope so that I can focus on 0.35, they will be called stuff like 0.34.1, and so on and so forth.

Here's some of the stuff you can expect in the interim updates while waiting for 0.35 (Not set in stone, just what's being worked on):

- Remade animations + additional animations made by Tiaramix to tide you all over during the wait

- Adding the remastered OST to the game

- Popups whenever music changes so you know the name of the track (and also to give credit to tracks I did not make)

- Other Vortex Academy uniforms in Alex and Nate's Sex events

- A controls screen at the start of the game 

- A few short events starring characters that haven't gotten events in a while (roxy, alex, etc)

- New items in Pearl's shop

- Script proofreading for earlier events

- Possible Spanish translation (it's being worked on)

But when can you expect 0.35? How many small updates are there going to be!?!!?!?!?

idk probably like 2 or 3, I don't expect this update to take me any longer than 3 months, hopefully it'll only take two but I doubt it. I know that other games take way longer than that and are perfectly okay with the wait but waiting more than a month stresses the fuck outta me so I'll try to get it done in a timely matter. It certainly won't be like 7 months lol, it's just a large main quest. I haven't finished writing it yet but I imagine the total word count for the update will be between 50,000 to 70,000 words long, I will let you know if it gets to be way more than that by accident.

And of course during this entire time, there will still be the 3 renders/animated renders every month, as well as polls for said renders and animations. 

Updates will still come out first on patreon, with the previous month's update coming out to the public build at the time of update, as per usual. Hopefully it won't feel too sucky when 0.35 comes out and the public build is stuck on 0.34.3 or something for a month afterward while everyone in the discord talks about 0.35 lmao.

Anyway, thanks for reading all that slop, I'm going to get back to work, I've got some locations to make from scratch (kill me) and animations to animate (there's too many to just give to Tiaramix) and gay to sex (nate)