Weekend Update

Greetings! I want to give you guys an update on where 0.7 stands, and rather than simply say "I did X this week", I thought it might be useful to give you a breakdown of the different components of the release, and what the status is on each of them. You might find it interesting and I suspect it will be useful for me, too! The line between categories isn't always clear, and there's definitely some overlap, but one has to start somewhere. Anyway, let's begin!

Planning ~ 100%

Determining what I'll be including in the release, the sequence of events, and a rough idea of how I'll go about the work - this is what I mean by planning. I'm done with this part; I'd worked most of it out some time ago, but my recent work on reviewing my original plans solidified the rest.

Features and Mechanics ~ 75%

For this part, I mean writing code to implement new mechanics in the dungeon (bombs and what have you) and completing the revamp of H-scene progression.

• Coding - I've written a *lot* of code for this release. I wrote and revised a bunch this week, actually, due to an unforeseen problem with another plugin. The coding work is mostly done at this point. I'm sure there's a few helper functions I'll need to write for the levels I haven't completed, but it won't require anywhere near the effort I've already expended.
• H-Scene Progression Revamp - Finding all the H-scenes can be a bit of a chore, and that's something I want to change. As it stands, if you fail to sleep at a particular campsite it can lock you out of *other* scenes, and before you know it you'll be wondering where all the supposed H-content is. The new system will make H-scenes much less tied to specific places. You'll be able to sleep at any campsite and get a campsite scene, or sleep in any bed and get the dream scenes, etc. There will be a bit of gating based on how far you are in the story, too - you won't be able to get scenes from 0.4 before you meet Tal'thelas, for example. There are two exceptions thus far to the 'less location specific' rule - the Lake Confrontation scene and the Inn scene. Those are both tied very strictly to certain places, and there isn't much I can do outside of rewriting them to change that. I think I might drop some hints, since people seem to have a hard time finding the Inn scene in particular. The Talent Show scene is also a bit of an outlier - it will remain tied to the first party. Anyway, I've planned all this out, but I haven't implemented it yet; I don't think it will be that difficult to do.

Dungeon and Boss Fight ~ 60%

This one is a bit tough to score. I had a lot of the dungeon complete already, but I decided to change a number of things after writing the bomb-related plugins and seeing the possibilities they opened up.

• Levels - I currently have 5 of them complete, another two half-done, and there's probably another 3 to go. The remaining stuff is pretty heavy on the mechanics, and these levels are where I hope you'll find a lot of the fun. As mentioned above, finishing these will take a bit more programming work, but it shouldn't be a lot.
• Boss Fight - The boss fight is already implemented, but I'll be changing it a bit once I complete the other levels (mostly adding mechanics from other levels to the boss fight).

H-Scenes ~ 20%

0.7 will have only 1 H-scene, but it's pretty long and has 2 mutually exclusive forks. As things currently stand, I've planned out the scene, written the narrative (i.e., a detailed account of what happens), and planned all the shots (which scenes I'm going to render and how I'll be composing them). The H-scene stuff is a big part of what I've worked on this past week. I've currently completed 2 of the renders; there will be about 27 for this scene (!). Then there's postwork and the actual writing.

Other Art (Character Design, Portraits) ~ 60%

• Character Design - I had to design 3 new characters for this release; one of them you already know about (the succubus), and two you don't :) Two of them are done, but I still have some work to do on the final one. The last one doesn't matter as much, though, since I'll probably tweak her a bit in 0.8 anyway.
• Portraits - All 3 of them will eventually get conversation portraits, but only 2 need them done for this release. I probably don't need to do very many expressions either, so I doubt this will be a huge pain.

Quests, Events, and Writing ~ 40%

I don't want to get into a lot of specific details since it deals with the story and stuff, but I've completed some of the dungeon-related quests and and story events. There are a couple of quests in town I haven't done yet, but I've planned what'll be in them.

Testing ~ 0%

The release isn't done yet, so I haven't been able to test!

As you can see, there's still a lot to do. I still think I can get it out before the end of the month. If it turns out I can't, I'll let you know 5 days or so beforehand.

It's coming together, though. I've got pretty much all the pieces I need now; what I'm working on at the moment is weaving them together into a compelling whole. I think you're going to enjoy it - thank you very much for your support!