Development report article for the second half of July and August 2023.

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Unity

Work continued to be centred around technical solutions and challenges with Unity. We finished a voluminous job with character controllers, avatars, abandoned the inbuilt animator and wrote our own very concise solution that reduced the load of the app.

We also achieved the incredible result of compressing 4GB of content down to 500MB. This is not the final weight of the build, as voice acting, illustrations and a few characters will be added. But the final build is not expected to exceed 2GB when we add all the necessary content.

We've restored the game's main controllers, linking them to the spreadsheets where the game's texts and events are stored. These systems are now conveniently set up, giving us more flexibility when designing and scripting the game.

Experimented a bit with fonts to find a good option and integrate the styles into the engine. Slightly updated the textbox layout and moved the character's name outside of it.

A lot of routine work was done to get the content ready for use: characters, backgrounds, illustrations, effects, music, sounds, voicing. We hope to finish everything in the autumn, after which we'll delve into testing and reworking the script.

Right now we're working on the wardrobe screen. In the new demo you will have the opportunity to change the main character's clothes in special scenes. We've received this request often, and we're ready to implement this nice cosmetic mechanic.

Storybook

• Over the summer we managed to finish a late series on behalf of Jane Holland. The story turned out to be less grand, but very intense due to the emotional swings. Some of the questions find their answers, but give rise to new mysteries.
• Work has already begun on a series on behalf of Dante. At the time of publishing this article, five stories are ready. The story takes on a scary manic undertone, spiced with the agony of choice, a series of mistakes and misunderstandings. A little more, and we get to the events when Beatrice went to search for her mother.
• Two series have been heavily edited and translations have been prepared for publication.
• All the stories in the late Friedrich series have been published for Patreon subscribers, and we are beginning to publish the late series on behalf of Young Crowley.

Visuals

• Finished assembling one of the backgrounds in 3D and started a new location.
• Prepared some sketches for illustrations and finalised the lining.
• Finished drawing Jane Holland and the first pose of Young Crowley.
• We'll be opening up recruitment for additional artists to the team soon to speed things up.

Events

It's been a very busy summer, making it almost impossible for us to devote time to social media and news about the project. We've been participating in exhibitions at festivals dedicated to games, watching guests play our demo, analysing feedback and building development strategies.

It's an exciting journey ahead, and we see the project as more and more coherent, interesting and exciting because we know how to improve it. Wish us luck!

See you in a month in a new report!