Hello, dear reader!

It's me, Mino, your Minotaur Hotel director and today's DevLog writer. In our previous Progress Reports we focused on the new assets the team's been making for us, all the new sprites, expressions and backgrounds, so today we'll touch on the process of making use of said new assets.

The State of Affairs

An on-going reality we've been keenly aware of for many years is that we were far too conservative with the number of expressions we had for each character. Some of this came from a lack of experience with the medium, some of it was a conscious scheduling and project management choice to prioritize other aspects of development. Either way, we expected, "at some point down the road", to get a new batch of expressions done and retroactively add them to older scenes.

The Visual Update has, in essence, engineered the perfect circumstances for this. We're already getting the sprites redone, and getting a few extra expressions takes is a relatively minor extra. We might as well do it now, because going back later and getting it done then will overall take much more time and be worse for our production.

But this does require me, the writer and director, to take some time away from writing to go over older content and actually add these new expressions into the scenes themselves. nanoff was the one in charge of this previously, and in his absence we find that I'm the only one who can do it. Arguably it's a task that should always have been on my hands, but back then I was too tech-illiterate and, most importantly, we were rushing so much I'd be burnt out by the time the script was done. (Now I'm pacing myself better, if you can believe it!)

You've already seen this to an extent in VU1, where Asterion's injured sprites now display a variety of emotions, where before he was extremely static...

...as well with Argos' new Dramatic pose...

...and Greta getting a few new expressions!

But that's old news! Let's take a look at the new stuff!

Progress!

By far the biggest change will be the new expressions we are rolling out with Asterion's half-healed spriteset. Previously he had 8 emotions (neutral, angry, sad, smiling, surprise, tired, laughing, and contemplative) and we're bumping that up to 16 emotions. We are carrying over a few of the new emotions we added to Asterion's injured sprite...

...like the "Flicker" expression, which was one of my favorites from VU1. But mainly we are adding a surgical set of expressions that are in-line with this specific moment of Asterion's character development.

His new "Wistful" expression is one of my favorites in this new batch, as it addresses one of the things I had most wanted to improve in the game: our overreliance on Asterion's "Contemplative" emote.

"Contemplative" and "Wistful" have a lot of overlap, they both portray Asterion in moment of quiet, soft, and positive introspection. Having two options here is great because now we can swap between those as necessary or most appropriate. Some older scenes are going to feel a lot livelier now!

(For the VN developers in the crowd, nowadays I consider it a best practice to have more than one expression conveying a given character's most frequent emotion!)

We'll also see a return of the saddest Asterion known to man: "Dissociating". Expect to see this little face more often if you've sent him to the valley and are on your way to the Ruthless Route.

(Mind you, that background? It's the hotel's "Old Reception", as done by Nolan! We're going Art Noveau, boys!)

With these changes, Asterion will feel more emotionally three-dimensional. More of his interiority will be visible, we'll have more subtleties we could not convey before, his ups will feel brighter and his lows will hurt harder.

But the rescripting effort going into VU2 goes beyond Asterion's half-healed sprite. Beware, going forward there'll be spoilers about Argos!

I went ahead and redid the scripting for Argos later appearances, so now you'll be seeing the Dramatic pose popping up in later chapters...

...as well as the first instances of his "Shy" pose, which will be associated with "Nikos".

These changes are, arguably, even more important than the ones I've done to Asterion's scripting, as they affect the "puzzle-esque" element behind Argos. I've had to, at times, go back to our notes concerning the early game and, in a very balancing-conscious manner, carefully weigh the extent to which I could or should alter his emotions.

And Kota will be getting some more love too! His introduction got a polish pass, for starters, and we are also giving him a new "Surprised" emote, which will replace the one we rolled out during VU1...

...as well as adding a "Smiling" emote, which will be replacing most, if not all, of the times when we used "Laughing".

These changes came from listening to the feedback from the VU1, with many pointing out the new "Surprised" was too surprised, and from Nemo's direction for the character. His vision is that for this moment of the story Kota's expressions should be understated and subtle.

You could say that Kota will feel more Kota-like than ever — his genuine moments will feel more earned, his character flaws will shine more clearly, his virtues should be more grounded and realistic.

Luke is getting some rescripting as well, but his will have fewer noteworthy points. What will be the most drastic is that Luke's intro is being edited and partially rewritten by whale — first because the writing there really deserved some rework, and second so the sex scene will flow better with the new art we'll be using. I think that will be a highlight, but I'd like to save that for a later DevLog.

Spriting-wise, we are also doing some preparation for his route overhaul, which is scheduled to come out early next year. Right now we're workshopping a few new expressions for him.

As for Themba...

I have plans for my sweet, sad, fat man. Back when I wrote his introduction we were still figuring him out, so I feel that I really dropped the ball on that one. I want to rewrite it, putting a bigger focus on the emotional reality that Themba is, after almost 80 years, finally reuniting with a relative who, despite the little time they had together, had a formative and oversized role in his life.

But that involves some considerations for his hangouts, which have been sitting unfinished for more than a year now. Lately I've been doing another round of necessary research for him, so hopefully I should be ready to tackle this challenge soon.

Khenbish, meanwhile, is unlikely to have many changes to his scripting. I feel that we really hit a homerun with him on our first try, he's probably the one character who needs the least amount of attention now (which is not to say he won't get any love, I'm just saving it for later.)

As for Wolf, we plan on publishing his hangouts after VU2, so we'll save any changes for that moment.

A Glimpse Into the Future

Now, I'd like to take a minute to show you another side of the game's development. Over this year we've shown bits and pieces of the work going into new chapters and the VU, but there's another dimension at play now — anticipating what we'll need and want for Act 3.

You see, while we always have an incentive to get the "next update" out ASAP (whatever the "next update" may be), we have to continually grapple with the fact that it'd be best to the production as a whole to, sometimes, balance that with going ahead and getting the assets we'll need for later updates. That can be a significant gamechanger to our workflow, because if we have this or that asset now we can account for it in the writing, with no need to come back later and make sure they match. And it's better for our artists too, because they won't have to sit down and refamiliarize themselves with a spriteset they haven't touched in 9 months or more.

The work going into this sort of thing is, usually, silent. By its own nature we can't show it off just yet, it'd be a spoiler! Sometimes even knowing that work is going into a certain type of thing can itself be a spoiler. But after some thinking there is something I can share, because it's harmless, perfectly understandable, and... cute! It's a cute little feature.

Starting on Act 3, if certain conditions are met, your staff may undergo... a little change in wardrobe.

I just love visual indicators of progress, of things advancing, of characters showing growth and development! In the case of Minotaur Hotel, we're planning to have the staff characters gaining a new costume each once their hangouts reach a certain milestone (though, specifically, Pedro's new costume will most likely happen organically through the narrative.)

Each new costume will reflect the character's growth and their placement in the hotel's community. In Pedro's case he'll upgrade his usual fit — now he's dressing in a way that compliments his appearance, because he knows he's being seen as his peacock self. This outfit will also fit his "role" in the game's mechanics as a R&D-coded craftsman of magical objects. But for other characters the change in their outfit may be more drastic.

During Act 2 the characters are just wearing whatever they have on-hand when they go to the valley (Kota may even wear his restaurant uniform, if he's the lounge manager), and that's a bit of a hint that they are taking it easy down there. But after going through their character development they're gonna "lock in" and commit more seriously.

I'm really looking forward to showing off the guys in their new outfits! We've been cultivating some of those ideas for years.

The Full Picture

I hope I've shown today that the VU has not been just a graphical update. It's a broad, expansive and extremely thoughtful process where we are taking the time to introduce improvements that had been considered necessary for a long while.

These changes will add multiple layers of depth to the game and its characters. It's not only that they're getting a new coat of painting and a few extra expressions, I'm manually going over each scene and making sure each one portrays the characters' most genuine reactions. As I said earlier, this is arguably a job I should have done from the start — but now that I'm doing it, I'm going the extra mile and making sure to convey their interiority to a greater degree than before.

We do have an approximate release date in mind for Phase 2 of the VU, but... Well, being frank, I'm seeing the team working at a great pace and hitting consecutive homeruns here. We're getting there with no need to rush things, and we'll keep updating you guys as things go. It'll be fantastic when it comes out.

That's it for now! Thank you for continued support.

— Mino.