Dev Update! 2/24/25
Hey, folks! Hope you're all doing well, today! Sorry to be getting this up later than usual. I sat down on my couch a few hours ago, and totally zonked out. Just woke up a bit ago. :'D
Work's still rolling right along, and over the next few days I'll be plugging images into my script, so I can complete a new teaser/demo build. There's not a ton to talk about on this end at the moment. I'm still just focused on rendering the existing script that I have.
One thing of minor interest that I did this week, was redo the above, "WE GOT SCAMMED!" image. Last week I posted a version that I'd previously made (in part) with AI, and people rightly called me out for half-assing it. So, I re-did it with Daz and the liquify tools in Procreate, and I think it came out much better.
I do find myself struggling a bit with one thing in this chapter -- the fact that it basically occurs across three time periods, in a single chapter. We open with our hero as a younger man, getting sucked into a crypto scam. We transition into our present, where we find him working at the store alongside Nicki. Then, as part of this present we have flashbacks to the recent past, where we see how Guy and Nicki's relationship was originally formed.
The first two time periods aren't really problematic, as we clearly transition from one to the other. On the other hand, the more recent flashbacks really only use costume/hair changes to denote that they're not taking place in the present. So, I'm trying to figure out if I should do something to make it more obvious that these are our heroes memories, and not his present. I tried adding a letterbox frame around the images, applying a grainy filter, etc. but I haven't found anything I'm quite happy with yet. It may also be a total non-issue, and I'm just thinking about it too much.
But, if there's a visual novel/game that's done something to clearly denote images taking place in a flashback, which you think were well done.. Drop a comment and let me know! I'm woefully behind the times right now, so some other developer may have already figured this out for me.
Until next time, take care of yourselves -- and thank you for your support!
(Oh, also -- Patreon is doing this weird thing where it seems to be badly compressing the header image in these posts, and I have no idea why. Sorry about that, but I promise it's not on my end!)