Astra - Monthly Update (February 2023)

Hello Patrons,

Happy weekend all! Just here with the first official monthly update of 2023. There's quite a bit to cover so let's get started!

Astral Ascension - Episode 5 Act 1 (VERSION 2):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fAZPKO1vr6z1ux8UlarfmNDqiDF3sYk9/view?usp=sharing

This is still Act 1 of Episode 1 but it contains a LOT of bug fixes, text/grammar issues, some continuity fixes, optimization...etc. The changes are reflected more in detail below!

WRITING

>> CAUTION: SUPER ULTRA OMEGA INSANE SPOILERS IN SCENE TITLES<<

The first order of business is that the new 'Act' split has made the writing goals more manageable and easier to process things in iterations instead of big blocks. It also let's us get content to you guys in a more consistent basis rather than a lot all at once but with long waits in-between.

One thing about splitting by acts is that the games word count is expanding quite a bit. We are at the point where each episode is almost 2 - 2 1/2 lengths of episodes from our previous games. The current projection is putting the word count in the 350k+ range.

There is a LOT of branching paths, call backs, characters recognizing decisions & relationships...etc. While I'm fairly certain the casual gamer will experience like 30% of the content in a single playthrough (where Crystalline was like 85% on a single play through), we are confident it will make choices feel more impactful!

As for the work being done in January and February, this act is taking a bit longer for two reasons. One, there is a lot of content in general as you  can see with the act layout. And two, this is where we have the confession scenes so we are spending a lot of extra time and care to make them as perfect as possible.

Confessions is always a bit tricky since you walk the fine line between romantic, cheesy and cringy all at once. The age of the characters in AA being more mature is also a (fun!) challenge to see how it will unfold.

All in all, please look forward to March where I am confident we will have Act 2 available for you all!

CHARACTER ART

Sunimu finished up two more epilogue CGs! To avoid spoilers, they will be available for viewing in a separate Patreon post. Please look forward to that a few minutes from now if you are reading this post right on release! If not, I'll edit this section to link it directly.

Edit - Link to CGs: https://www.patreon.com/posts/79171040

BACKGROUND ART

Our BG artist has been a busy bee with these episode 5 backgrounds! I'm sure you can guess which characters arc these take place for if you read the writing scene titles. Beyond that, the artist will be working on BGs for act 3 and then onward to episode 6 BGs!

ANIMATION

On the animation side, we cleaned up a bunch of the UI elements that looked a bit rough. We also optimized the Live2D models so that they should run smoother on lower end devices.

Along with this, Firgof (or narrative designer who joined us since episode 4) has retroactively added a bunch of cool animations to scenes (screen shakes, blurs, zooms, pans...etc) all across the first 3 episodes. The full game now will have the same awesomeness that he did for episode 4!

PROGRAMMING

We've been doing a lot of 'under the hood' optimization. The two biggest ones were the Live2D models to run smoother by being less memory intensive, and the other was reducing the game file size by experimenting with different compression algorithms and quality.

With all the assets we imported, the game had ballooned to 4.5gb with everything being lossless and uncompressed. This was also causing significant performance issues so we spent a good part of February experimenting with how to optimize things. We found some great compression methods that SIGNFICANTLY reduced the game size, comparing 4.5gb to 805mb. We kept everything at 4K so resolutions lower than  4k will have no perceivable difference, while 4K will have almost indistinguishable alterations!

AUDIO

After finishing the OP, Eric requested to take a small break to catch up on some IRL stuffs. He should be back in the full swing of things for March and the first thing he'll get started on will be the music track for the main title / menu screen!

Phew, I hope the wall of text wasn't too much. :P

As always, please feel free to share your feedback below and thank you for your continued support!

Cheers,

Dishu + PF Team