A look back on the week that was...

Current game word count: 40,163 (+ 1450 since last devlog)

40k words! Oh dang! Now my VN is officially longer than some of the Narnia books (which I love, btw)... and more than twice as long as my university thesis. Insane! And yet, there's so much left to write... although, I'm almost at a place where my coding work is fast enough for writing to get even more focus, which will hopefully speed things along! Hopefully.

Oh, and about coding... man, the amount of unnecessary double work I've had to do because of my inexperience is quite astonishing. Meanwhile in Riva is my first major project, and therefore pretty much everything I do is characterized by learning new things. The Skirmish at Bender could not have been made in a week were it not for the fact that Riva is my little guinea pig, if you know what I mean. 

The latest example of this is voice clips. If you've played the demo, you know that each character has a set of voice emotes that he/she says occasionally. I've used a line of code that randomizes voice clip played, out of three different clips per emotion. This is a manual code that I've had to paste for each occurrence, because I didn't know any better. Now, however, I've programmed it so that the voice clips play automatically when the characters appear. SO MUCH BETTER, WHY DIDN'T I KNOW ABOUT THIS EARLIER AOIFJASIJSFOIJASFFJSF!! 

So now I'm going through my code again, just to erase all the useless manual pastings.

SIGH! Ah well. You live and you learn! :D

Now for some fun stuff!! Yesterday I received a piece of absolutely fantastic artwork, and this time it's TotES Studio P that's blessed us all with Bliss, Camille and Meritxell, chilling out together! I was practically moved to tears, seeing my characters come to life in this gorgeous style. Their game, Her Choice, contains beautiful art and a really cool story too, so please check it out! :)

I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE IT!! :) <3

Now, it's finally time for the Ice Queen to take center stage. Drumroll, please!

Oh my, it's Isola!

Where do I begin with this character? I've written about her before, and it's no secret that she has a very special place in my heart. She's just an absolute delight to write for, owing to her uninhibited use of bad words as well as her dry wit and teasing nature. She's very passionate, and dislikes people who aren't, and that passion is obvious in everything she does. Her interests, her love for her friends, you name it. She enjoys getting reactions, but isn't always sure exactly how to deal with them. Unfortunately, her playful nature often comes crashing down in the face of severe anxiety.

All of my characters have parts of me in them. Like me, she's very passionate about her various interests, and struggling with anxiety is something I've been doing as well for pretty much my whole life. In that way, she's quite cathartic to write for, as she becomes a vessel for me talking about that. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I love her so much. That, and also the fact that her design is pretty much directly inspired by how my wife looks. XD

Until next time, everyone! :) <3