Chapter 9 weekly status report (3)
I'm back with the status reports, which have been anything but weekly lately. I apologize for that and now that the vacation is out of the way I promise to be more regular with these again.
I've finally started writing the episode after a month and a half of working both in the structure and drawings. This will be the update with the highest art count, with around 100 new illustrations. I was trusting in finding someone to help with the line drawing part of the process, but it's not been easy and I wasn't successful. I guess I will need to take care of the ones left myself, and I will do so as I write. Most of the drawings are already done anyway, especially the most important ones.
The narrative structure for this chapter is proving really difficult to articulate, and I'm still trying to figure out an optimal one. This has been a burden, especially mentally, since I'm trying to account for many elements and tie them together, adding the new scenes in a sequence that makes sense and is enjoyable and well paced. To avoid stalling, I've started writing independent scenes that I have already worked. Meanwhile I will continue to tweak the overall structure and stitch everything together once I've made sense of it all.
Also, I've hired a programmer to help me with some aspects of the game and add some very requested features. Aside from a lot of code and size optimization, we're adding a scene gallery and polishing some other features. Once that is done, we'll look to create a stable Android port (finally!).
Now, about a release date: all I can do at this point is estimate, but I think I will need at least one month to tackle the writing and the other tasks. I'll know more when I see how work progresses this coming weeks, but I want to avoid by all means possible releasing Chapter 9 later than September. I got used to release every month with GGGB and taking so much time with the latest chapters in ORS has me quite frustrated and on edge, as I want to make the story progress and there's so much cool stuff I want to share with you, but ultimately I think taking the extra time is ultimately worth it. My goal is that you guys think the same when Chapter 9 finally releases, so I'll do my best to deliver!
That's all for now. I'll keep showing you development stuff and sneak peeks as work on Chapter 9 progresses. Thank you for following it's development!
Comments (9)
Cool, a dedicated programmer :) ! I always felt that your game was well designed and, in the final release, really stable for a small project. So, there is no "need" for a programmer. But programming and transitioning to newer renpy-versions only consumes your precious time and can be done better and faster by others. So, Good decision to save your time :) . May I suppose 2 new features since it will not take your time anymore? I would love to have a adjustable skip-rate. When replaying your game, I often skip the text I already know and stopp at the new lines. But while doing this, I would love to see the text for a fraction of a second. It helpes getting some key-words into your sub-conciousness to better recall the story. But on my PC, the skipping is so fast that I have almost no chance to see the skipping text at all. An option for a slower skiprate would help a lot. Another approach (with not quite the same effect) would be to make the already known text in another color (maybe gray). You would also realize what text you have already seen, but you had to click each line (but at your own chosen speed). The other thing I would find interesting is a Button on the start-menu (or prefs) to mark all text as unread. After not have played the game for some months, I feels good to once re-read all the text. We can do this by manually editing files, but not everyone is up to the task or willing. Maybe, you even could make the seen-text-markings saveable. So you could have a set of unseen text for a decent-run and one for a intelligent-run or charisma-run. But I think, this option might be a little overkill.
Take as much time as u need Eva, please dont rush yourself especially if you feel like your burning yourself out, its more important you take care of yourself than anything else and we are aware it will take some time, its hard to do and we know your final products are always worth the wait, thanks for the dev update and all your hard work :)
You're the best, Eva!
Eva, let's have a hot fairy tale for adults! And in real life, the drama can cause a smile! Ian and Lena have finally become a couple! Great! Then Lena was asked several times on the phone if she could satisfy the guy?Lena complained to Jan ! Yan decided to invite the harasser home and teach him a lesson! At the appointed time, the doorbell rang . Ian took up a position next to the bat in his hands! Lena opened the door and heard the same question ! Lena said that she could satisfy any guy and invited a man to enter the apartment! But the man refused to enter and shouted with indignation! If you can satisfy any guy, then why does Jan go to my wife Minerva?
I don't think it's fair for you to compare ORS' release schedule to GGGB. The art has definitely improved and it obviously takes more time to be done. Besides, I might be mistaken on this, but I believe ORS' updates are bigger than GGGB's were (minus the final update). Also, I have the feeling that the cast of ORS is bigger than GGGB, so it also takes a toll on the release schedule. I think it would be best for you to try to take a realistic view on your release schedule, instead of reminding yourself of GGGB. It may give you less headaches. ORS is already a much better game than GGGB in almost, if not all, aspects, imho. The best games imo also aren't quick on getting updates, such as Being A DIK and City of Broken Dreamers, and I put ORS at the same quality tier as them. Anyway, glad to see you're back! ;)
Every chapter of ORS almost feels like the final chapter of GGGB, at least to me! I'm trying to take it easy, but pushing things forward, slow but steady you might say. I just want to deliver as much value as I can
While GGGB was monthly, each update didn't always progress the story unless you played that specific story path. Considering that the plot always moves forward no matter your previous choices in ORS, I'd say that the comparison between the release schedules isn't that fair towards ORS. The only thing to consider regarding the update schedule is how long time it will take to finish the whole project. For example, if there are 20 chapters in total and you had a monthly release schedule, then everything would be wrapped up in one year. A bimonthly release schedule means two years, and so on. One update every four months would mean four years - five and a half years in total - which is quite a long time. Since each update is quite lengthy I guess you could circumvent this by splitting ORS into several games, similar to how Mass Effect 1-3 was released. But the release schedule is important in a monetary sense for us patrons, since you want to see the project completed at some point. Which, considering the "v.006 alfa" state that many Patreon projects are in after 3 years of development, can seem like a pipe dream in many cases...
ORS WILL BE finished (unless something tragic happens to me). I hope I don't take so long. If everything goes well, I may be able to hire some additional help and delegate more, being able to focus more on just writing
Will we be able to carry our saves over? Thank you so much! I’m loving the game!