LBB Status Update, Dec 2018 (Patreon)

 To be bluntly honest, dev progress has been slower than I'd like. I've been fiddling around with different Unity assets figuring out how to piece everything together. Several for text games including Fungus, Inky, Dialogue System, a couple different visual novel engines, and a few other ones for utility and cosmetic stuff. (Obviously I'm not using ALL of those together, but I had to try out a few to see what is easiest to customize to my needs, and the best to work with. ) 

I'm a total noob to C# so there were some new things I had to learn that were a bit un-intuitive to me. Here's an example the more experienced coders can laugh at me for; I got super-confused by Unity's lack of “global variables.” I found out the solution is to declare those variables in a static class, but I ignored that answer for a while because I thought it meant something else. My old “comp science 101” class used Visual Basic of all things so I'd assumed a 'static class' was like a 'static variable' in VB without realizing 'static' apparently means something completely different in C# (Or in the context of a class, at least).  Dumb learning curve stuff like that.

That said, I think I'm finally about over that hump, I've picked out the assets I need to actually get the game put together, and I'm currently working on the UI customizations. Should have a working test build this month, with the first chapter or two of the script if nothing else, and once I've got the work-flow down things should speed right up on my end.

   
 Speaking of the script, Req and I are currently hashing out the two truths one lie “minigame” which is mostly an extra fancy dialogue tree to be honest, but we're trying to get some interesting questions and answers in there while also getting a few mechanics to it. 

  
 And the BIG ONE: the status of the artwork, given that's where all the funds are being funneled at the moment.   
 I'm getting art with a rough turnaround time of 2-3 weeks per finished asset, meaning a single character sprite with expressions, a CG with variations or a background. Speaking honestly and frankly, that's a little slower than I would like, but the artists I'm working with are doing amazing work, so I don't want to throw them under the bus and blame them for a slow turnaround, especially after I spent a few months beating my face against Unity. Though the fact of the matter is, with the amount of art I'll need to have all the content I'd like to implement into the fairy episode It'll probably take another 2-3 months before the final release. (Gunning for about double the content from Isabel's first episode) Though I'd initially hoped I could pull it off before the year ended. In light of this though, as some you might already know; I've started commissioning art assets for the THIRD episode; so that once the current one is done I have the bulk of the art for the 3rd ready and can simply keep moving forward. Then while I'm working on that I'll start ordering assets for the 4th, staggering them as such. That strategy should help us make much more timely releases moving forward.   

 The artists working on each episode have very different styles, which is why I have them working on two separate episodes at the same time rather than piling them all on episode 2 to get it done faster. And being able to have separate episodes with differing art-styles and do things like this is the reason I opted to do an anthology series instead of a single huge game to begin with. 

For 'the fairy episode' as I tend to keep calling it, we've decided to really play up the 'fairy' bit and go with a fairytale inspired 'storybook' art-style while incorporating book elements into the UI and sound design.

  
 The other episode that is being worked on is going to have a more 'shiny' clean and modern anime-insprired style, like so:   

 
 
 Also, no promises; but since it's been heavily requested, I'm also looking into what it would actually cost to implement some animated scenes and if that's feasible in the near future.   

Anyway, just a status update. As usual I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have, just get in touch here, or on discord/twitter/wherever. I'll go back to messing around with UI implementation in Unity in the meantime. I'm really anxious to finally get some test builds and actual game screenshots available soon.