Law School Episode 2 - Progress update #16

Hello everyone,

This past week has been great! I'm happy to report that I kept up with my workload. Even though I took it easier over the weekend, I still made solid progress.

First off, all the images and animations I reworked are now fully rendered, and I'm back to rendering new content for episode 2. I’ve got 5 animations queued up, which should take about 10 days—perfect timing. After that, I’ll just need to add in a few blinking animations I created, which will let me create more static renders to add to the hundreds waiting in the queue; before heading off for my holiday.

Secondly, I managed to complete 6 out of the 9 scenes for Day 5 over the last two weeks. I originally aimed to finish all of them, but new ideas and last-minute changes took more time than expected. The good news is that the remaining 3 scenes are shorter, so I’m confident I’ll finish them this week—unless I jinx it!

After that, I’ve got just 8 days of work left before I leave. I know those 8 days won’t be enough to complete Day 6 (which is one gigantic scene), but that's alright. I’ll only need a few more days when I return to wrap it up, review all the content, tweak a few scenes from episode 1, and then I'll be able to start the post-work. Since I’ll be back on the 17th, I’m aiming to begin post-work before the end of October, or at the latest, early November. From there, it’ll take roughly 10 to 15 days before testing begins. After the first testing phase, modifications on my end, and a second testing round, we’ll finally be ready for the early release phase of episode 2.

So, we're on schedule, and I'm really excited—I’m sure you are too!

During my holiday, I’ll still work on my laptop in the evenings. I’ll be focusing on coding, specifically reworking how Facegram functions. This won’t affect you, but it’ll make my job much easier and allow for translations into other languages. Right now, it’s built with loads of PNGs, which blocks translations.

I’ll also be reworking how choices are handled in the game to fix some issues with translation compatibility. Again, nothing will change for you on the surface, so no worries. This is what I’ll be focusing on while I’m away.

To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll finish everything during the holiday, which is why I’ve planned a more extensive post-work phase (10-15 days). I've talked about it before, but normally, I go into “hell week” for post-production, where I work 18-20 hours a day for 5-6 days, sleeping only three hours. This is how I’ve done it for every post-work phase of The Entrepreneur and for episode 1 of Law School, though I had to take a break during episode 1 due to unforeseen circumstances. It’s tough, but for some reason, this method works for me. However, given the extra coding adjustments needed for episode 1, I know I won't be able to pull off 10-15 days of “hell week”.

Now, let’s dive into the numbers:

- 1,576 static story images

- 50 animations

- 32 scenes fully written

As you can see, good progress was made, even if the weekend was a bit slower. I also created three new small animations, which makes me quite happy.

I only have the big scene of Day 6 and a small one for Day 7 left to write. So, unless I decide to add more content, this episode will have 34 scenes. Episode 1 had 43 scenes, but many were short, and I always planned for episode 2 to be "slightly shorter" in terms of content. Still, this episode will be larger than any from The Entrepreneur, which remains my standard for Law School.

Finally, some exciting news: I recently worked with a singer who created a custom soundtrack for Law School. It will debut in the big scene of Day 6. I’m really proud of this song, as it’s canon—meaning it’s not just a background track, but relevant and important to the story. The singer understood exactly what I wanted, and I’m thrilled to continue working with her on more custom tracks for the game.

That’s all for today’s update! I’m off to get back to work. In the meantime, I hope you all have a great week!

MisterMaya