Excuse me

 

It's been almost three months since I last posted an update, what the fuck is going on⁉️

Dear readers, I've been wondering that myself. What the fuck IS going on? Why is my time management so ass??

So basically, I'm a fifth year college student (failed a required class only offered once a year because I'm stupid and gay), and I'm also a double major taking my two major-specific senior thesis classes. On top of that, since I'm stupid and gay, I have to spend a lot of time working on assignments/studying to keep up with the non-thesis work. Of course, this is not a strong enough excuse to halt game development entirely, so I haven't been on hiatus or anything like that; I'm just stuck working at a very slow pace right now because of school.

 For the record, I'm still aiming for the chapter 1 release to be on January 16 for Appreciate a Dragon Day (or on January 29 for the Chinese New Year of the Snake if I need a little extra time). However, I want to make it clear that this slowing down of development might make those deadlines a little difficult, and I figured I'd post this now as a warning. I didn't think it was worthwhile to post this at all at first since I wanted to focus on actual progress (plus these kinds of announcements tend to make devs look flaky and unreliable), but I came around to the idea that this would be a good record of acknowledgement---acknowledgement of my personal life getting in the way of timely development before the deadlines close in. 

I hope you all understand, but you are free to call me a dumb lazy bitch anyway since I'm only in this situation due to being bad at school lol

More Art

 

Just wanted to share some more practice art I made since I got the style nailed down. Above is a portion of chapter 1's protagonist.

Clarification on "WHAT I HAVE DONE??????"

 Just wanted to clarify that I know the art I displayed in the last post is flawed in a few respects. I know the eyes are uneven and not round enough, I know the face is a weirdly proportioned, I know the detail in the hair strands looks somewhat odd given the detail of the rest of the head, and I know the pitch black outlines are a little jarring. I want to emphasize my previous words---you can expect the art to look like something "VERY SIMILAR" to this in the demo. I plan to polish this style for the final product. Rest assured, this piece was made for PRACTICE and PRACTICE ONLY. I'll have higher standards in place for the final sprites.

Oh, maybe I should bring this up now, but this style is specifically meant for the sprites; CGs will look similar, obviously (not going to change the whole ass style I set up and have been developing/deciding on for years now...okay there may be some variation in some of the CGs but these will be done on a CASE-BY-CASE, INFREQUENT basis), but more consideration will be given to the background environments and how light/shadows/colors should be affected in said environments. I ought to post some WIP CGs in the future to make this clearer.

Have I FINALLY DONE IT??????

 

 

Above is my most recent practice piece. I feel very satisfied with the end result; a lot of the things I was aiming for were hit, and a lot of the things I disliked were fixed. With this, I can confidently say that you can expect an art style very similar to this in chapter 1's demo release.

Art is getting...better?

 

I think I'm finally starting to narrow down the specific issues I've been having with my art, and I'm finally starting to produce practice pieces that don't make me feel horribly disgusted. I know what I want to try next, and hopefully it'll result in something that looks like it could be in the demo.

On Chapter 1's Route Structure

 

Above is a snippet of a chart I made detailing the choices and endings in BFD. As you can see, chapter 1 has 4 endings total, with the single true end (Sea Lulling) unlocking chapter 2.

I'm currently working on the draft for Kemp Owyne since it's so close to the true end, meaning it will take the shortest amount of time to write out of all the alternate endings.

I will post the full version of this image sometime in the future (probably after chapter 1 is released) to give people an idea of how the rest of the game is structured.

I realize there's some aspects of this picture that would be confusing to anyone reading this post at this time, sparking questions such as "wtf is a Alaire", so sometime before chapter 1's release I'll post a downloadable game manual that will fill you all in.

Chapter 1's True Route Draft Complete

 

Pics are of CG concepts/references. I drew them with a mouse, which is why they look like shit.

Anywho, I'm pleased to announce that the draft of chapter 1's true route has finally been completed, as the more precocious among us have probably figured out from the title. I originally wanted this done by the end of June, but I ended up putting off some of the scenes because I wasn't sure if I was happy with how I envisioned them (aka procrastination, bumfuck laziness).

I use the term "draft" because I want the script to be eternally open for editing. The ways certain things are phrased and even their portrayal will remain up for potential changing as development goes on (even when I deem chapter 1 fully completed). This is so that any shitty writing that I fail to take notice of until I'm a bit older and wiser can be fixed so I don't hate myself for publishing it.

Basically, the draft is representative of the final script of chapter 1's true route at this point in time, but I will still go over it to make edits from time to time. However, right now my next focus is to get the alternate routes' drafts done; editing will be taking a backseat for a bit.