Progress Log - 8/14/19 (Patreon)

Tentakero patrons, it’s time to discuss what’s going on with Project Cappuccino and what’s left to do. This log is going to be a bit long but it’s kind of exciting.

Soundtrack Remaster

Earlier in the month, we released the full soundtrack for Patrons. A lot of the songs that you’ll find there were remastered for the soundtrack release and implemented into the game itself. At this point, all of the music is 100% done and there won’t be any more changes done to it.

MASSIVE Optimizations

A ton of images have had their dimensions adjusted for better compression. The Gallery alone had about 400MB of file size reduced without suffering in image quality. Granted, most of this space that was freed is going to be filled up with new art that we’re going to talk about below. Either way, it’s fitting more content with the same/less space!

Some of you may have also noticed that the Lobby has been taking too long to load in recent builds. This was mostly due to the fact that the Lobby scene contains the bulk of the game’s story, and it was loading almost all of it at once. To remedy this, the back end of the story’s flowchart has been broken up into 5 parts. Players won’t see a difference in content, but by doing this, we have managed to cut the loading time of the Cafe Lobby by about 2-3 seconds. Depending on your computer specs of course. We still have some more optimization to do with the sprites, but that has to wait until Doku is able to draw properly.

Gallery Work - Secret Tab

The gallery is once again on the work table at Tentakero HQ. I’m diving in and adding over 50 art pieces (including variants) that have been done over the course of development. It’s easy to see how Doku’s hand exploded when you see all of the art in one place. There’s bound to be some surprises here for players since some of the art has only been seen in art packages in the past.

Along with the new art, we’re also going to be adding a secret gallery tab that only unlocks after meeting specific conditions in the game. It’ll likely be tied to completing most/all of the endings, and this tab will feature special art such as the mini comics and Lucretia specific pieces. The question mark that can currently be seen in the Gallery will be hidden until the player unlocks it.

Secret Route Progress

Some of you may have noticed that there’s an additional ending listed on the tracker in the main menu. This route is going to branch off of the night where the charm is used on Mira and will primarily focus on Sophie & Cerise. It’s safe to estimate that we’ll be able to plug in all the dialogue for it this month, but we aren’t quite sure how much art for it will get done just yet.

So what’s left to do?

Our biggest roadblock at the moment is Doku’s hand. She’s been slowly trying to get back into the groove of things but her stamina isn’t what it used to be before the injury. She’s had to take constant breaks to avoid the pain from flaring up again.

The Final CGs

Doku has about 10 CG’s left to completely finish all of the story content. In a good month, Doku was able to knock out about 2-3 CG’s a week. With the hand problem, we’re not sure what pace she’ll be able to keep up.

Remaining Voice Acting

The only voice acting left is Mira’s story content and the Chapter 4 scenes for everyone. The script lines are going to be split up and sent to the VA’s as soon as we have the secret ending in place. Depending on how long this takes, we may end up launching the game without the remaining voice lines and then just patching it in when it’s available.

Sprite Improvements/Optimizations

This has been on our backlog for far too long and it’s constantly weighing on us to complete it. Since it’s more of a polish thing than a mechanic, we’ve been pushing it to the side in order to work on higher priority things. We do want to let you guys know that we haven’t forgotten about this and it will end up being added!

Cerise Cut in Camera

With Mira’s cut in camera completed, Cerise is the only one left now. Animations are insanely demanding for Doku, so she’ll likely need to pace herself with these too.

Bug Fixes

As far as I’m aware, there aren’t any critical bugs in game at the moment, but I do have a wall of minor bugs to take care of. In order to ensure a smooth workflow, I’ll likely tackle most of these when there’s nothing else to do but wait for artwork.

Again, we can’t thank you guys enough for your patience with the bumps that we’ve run into. Nothing to do but keep at it until Project Cappuccino is the best we can make it.

-Vanis & Dokucchi