Astra - Monthly Update (July 2024)

Hello Patrons,

Hope everyone is having a fantastic week so far!! Just here to share the July update with you all. :^)

First order of business, we do have a new build up which has a bunch of bug fixes, NPC portrait added, continuity adjustments, and full controller/steam deck support (it is still slightly janky as we are polishing but a controller will work right now!). You can download that build here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16yHfPuv0nCH8bfRTZQOi6xwYfAc0a33m/view?usp=sharing

With that being shared, let's continue with our regular update categories!

WRITING

There was some continuity fixes that we did as well as some branching paths where the variables didn't make sense / characters "knew" something they either didn't interact with or shouldn't. For the most part, it was minor things. Polishing the writing will be an ongoing adventure as we head towards full release!

CHARACTER ART

Character art is all wrapped up for now! We don't foresee any additional work being added but that may change based on feedback.

BACKGROUND ART

We are continuing to round out the full BG list with some of the ones that felt a bit out of place. We used a park BG for the zoo but it didn't feel right so we made more of a zoo-specific one. There are a couple more dedicated scene BG's that are being worked on for the upcoming month!

ANIMATION

We are doing a bit of a UI overhaul to clean things up as well as add the polish with controller support. There will be tighter/cleaner animations for the UI as we go through the refreshing process.

Additionally, we added the Astral Ascension Opening to play when the game loads like the previous VNs!

PROGRAMMING

The newest build finished all the NPC portraits as well as the hospital "BG" sequence for Celeste! Firgof is now working through audio things including SFX and voice over implementation.

AUDIO

Eric is working on the ending track for Astral Ascension now! We will have a rough WIP to share hopefully by the end of the week. Additional to this, we are making 2 more dedicated songs that will be used specifically for the epilogues!

VOICE

Celeste has been fully processed and we are working through Iris and Kai now. Vaela and Luna have most of their lines submitted as well so we will also be looking to put up the audition cast call for secondary and extra characters sometime this week!

Everything is coming together though we still have a couple of surprises up our sleeve that we want to get implemented (cough steam achievements cough super trait cough).

That is all the updates for now! As always, please feel free to share your thoughts below.

Thanks again for your continued support. :^)

- Dishu