Style IS Substance in our game!
almost 3 years ago – Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 01:53:16 PM

ITS ME!!!!!!   M.!!!!!

tl;dr of update: Some new visuals :OO

It's June! Eh, already?

This month we've been working on polishing our visuals and integrating new systems into the game, take a look.

Even though I've said I probably won't mention the BGs again, I do want to mention that this month we've officially completed all the BGs in the game. Other than alternate variations, we have a count of 35 different background locations you'll be able to explore in the game. We might add more in the far future, but this is the original list of locations I've wanted to add to the game.

As a sneak preview, here's Aya's room - a spot you'll be spending quite some time in the game.

Alright enough about backgrounds. Let's talk about characters.

(Nozomin currently WIP)

As I've mentioned in the previous update, we've cleaned up and modified the designs of each character in the game. Now that Tsun-sama has colored the design reference sheets, you may be able to more fully appreciate the new design changes.

We've tried to make sure each feature is distinct and stands out stronger in terms of overall design.

And as you might expect this change reflects everything in the game, and Yoshi is working hard to incorporate the new designs into the comics for consistency.

In the game, the sprites will still maintain the old manga-esque monochrome style. However, there are certain reasons why we have official 'colored' designs now.

One big such example is the following:

"oh ma gaw-- is that the minigames?!" you might say.

"Yes." is what I would reply. 

It's finally time to start working on the minigames! More on this in another update.

Now, let's talk about UI a little bit. I know, I know, UI is boring. But I think this might be a little bit interesting for you.

Thanks to the long overhauls we've been making in the back end, the asset changes, and as well as a recent update to Renpy (the game engine we use), we're now able to make really dynamic looking scenes for even normal sections of the game.

We're really doubling down on the manga/anime look and I think this new style of dialogue UI helps up achieve that aesthetic. Let me know what you think!

And - that's pretty much it for this update!

It was a bit short, but hopefully it had some new and interesting gems for you!

Don't forget to join our discord for even more frequent updates and discussions with us!

See you in July!

Slow and steady wins the race, but it's not a race, it's game development
about 3 years ago – Mon, May 15, 2023 at 12:54:04 PM

hi. im m.

tl;dr of update: we're getting there but its taking a long time sorry

It's May! Time flies huh? But maybe I always say that every time I have to actually look at the date and realize the reality of the situation.

Anyway, April was a bit of a slow month for progress so there isn't anything radically new to show this update, but development has been going pretty smoothly, so let's talk about it anyway.

Sprites

Regarding sprite work, in the previous update we discussed about giving all the sprites an rework as well as touching up the designs a bit. Tsun has been progressing with the new style of the characters which you can see here:

As you can see, they're still the same characters as not much has changed but their overall look and design has been improved, since there was a couple of things we wanted to change.

Of course, there are the same sheets for the other 3 girls we haven't shown yet, but all will be revealed in due time. 

You can expect better looking sprites in the full game, but this will still take us a while to finish. 

Backgrounds

Speaking of overhauls, we did at one point had to change the style of our backgrounds as you may know. This has turned out to be a good idea, and we're now 2 backgrounds away from being completely done with all of them. If you want to have a comparison between the styles, here you go:

As you can see, these went through a lot of versions and changes, and it took a while to get to a point where we were happy with them but I think it was pretty worth it. And thankfully, with a couple left they're all mostly done! (I'm mostly showing the same backgrounds you've all seen from the demo to save some new stuff for the full game, after this I probably won't talk about the backgrounds at all.)

Comics/CGs

Some scenes that previously just played out regularly will be turned into comic cutscenes. These are the ones that I don't want to spoil the most since they're more of a reward for players, so I can't show much. This one is just a sketch that Yoshi drafted.
 

Programming

There is not much to show or talk about the programming side this month, except that the input system is still being greatly improved. Compared to the old system, it's a lot more flexible and robust, and we can add more filters to it. 

Basically that's just a really long way of saying "you'll be able to say a lot more silly stuff in the game now."

I've talked about it in previous updates, but one thing I really want to change in the full game, compared to the update is that I want way more options for the player to use in the input and "get away with" a lot more silly stuff that they couldn't before. Nobody likes trying something funny and finding out it's not allowed by the game.

Unrelated to the input system however, there are still a lot of features that are still being added, such as a built in Music Player, as well as Gallery for all the cutscenes and CGs you may unlock. We will be adding more features like this but I want to keep some of them as a surprise for now.

Now, I know you're all wondering about the minigames. Well,  we will very soon start working on them, at which point we may finally start the beta testing phase. If you are in the Tsundere Studio Discord you will be notified as soon as possible when the beta testing begins, and you'll get a special role for it.

Some thoughts

I do feel that progress has been a lot slower than we initially expected and I don't mind admitting that my estimation was pretty off, I think we have a good reason for it and it's not just underestimating the amount of work we had to do.

I think most of the time that's been spent that's been making the development take so long is that we've had a really great chance to improve all aspects of the game, from art to music, gameplay and even minor features. It's all thanks to your support that we're able to make the game that is truest to our vision.

That's it for this update, I hope you're all having a good day!

Also, I have a feeling next month's update is gonna be a good one. Stay tuned!

A meaty update :o
about 3 years ago – Sun, Apr 16, 2023 at 03:00:18 AM

hello again, its me. m.

tl;dr of this update: lots of quality of life features added for both devs and players!

It's April! Hope you are all doing well. Things are beginning to pick up speed again as our production pipeline gets better and better.

This update will be a medium sized update but we'll be talking about very direct progress today.

UI stuff & Programming

As I've talked about in previous updates, the game's coding has gone through an overall restructuring and backend overhaul so everything is cleaner and works properly with the help of an actual coder. The in-game systems are getting great progress being updated and we've tried to make sure this solves all of the issues we've gotten from players who played the demo.

Along with the coding, you will see that we've also redesigned almost all of the UI elements in the game and added some small touches here and there.

Things are still subject to some change in the final game, but we're trying to make sure that there's a lot of thought and care put into details so that the game may be future-proofed and age well (hopefully.)

Clarity and is always a huge focus for me in particular, so I've been making an effort to make sure everything is easy to read as possible, even more so from the previous version. We've also got easy to press big buttons. (Maybe one day they'll be useful if we ever get a console port, but no promises.)

There's also been an effort in making the translation side of the backend easier to access, however this detail is still very non-decided. Not only is the game itself tricky to translate but our budget is heavily outside of translation at the moment. But that doesn't mean we can't think about the future.

Probably the biggest thing we've worked on is upgrading the input system so it isn't as finnicky. A lot of players experience frustration due to niche cases where the answer they inputted was correct but it wasn't the exact phrasing I expected so the game just flagged it as 'wrong'.

In this improved version, answers are not manually checked for an exact match, rather it is checked based on similar strings or parts of the correct phrase. Basically, if you get it 80% right, then the game will consider it as 'correct'. It will ignore small redundant things like hyphens and punctuation.

We've also added in a lot of quality of life systems to help reduce accidental errors, like empty inputs, misclicks and it will not allow you to use letters during an numbers-only question like Katsumi's money question from the demo.

It still won't consider typos as correct, but there's always a sound cue, as well as the thought bubble prompt highlighting in green whenever you make a valid input/answer, so you should always make sure you confirm that before you hit enter.

Another thing the backend overhaul has allowed us to do is use our brand new camera system! Now we're able to use dynamic shots and make scenes feel much more impactful.

Although that leads us to our next topic.

Since we're now using a dynamic camera system we've noticed that the old sprites have been feeling a bit outdated and the way we've implemented them in the past was a bit troublesome.

Sprites and Character Designs

After VERY lengthy discussion and debate, Tsun and I have decided we want to update the sprites of the game and brush up the designs of the characters a bit too while we're at it. This means Tsun will be adding new sprites and poses as well as minor design updates to the character sprites. We don't want to take too much time going back and reworking things again and again, but we've put a lot of thought into it and we want this work to last.

Things are still subject to change as you can see that we've changed Kaede a little bit and went with the latter version where her bangs are to the side. Even the stretch goal girls, who haven't even publicly shown yet underwent through some design changes. Although its still not time to reveal them yet, you can take comfort in knowing that you will be able to compare all the versions the designs went through in our Art Book if you've ordered it!

The new sprites are also a good excuse to rework how they are implemented in the game. But not to bore you with the details, basically the coloring, and quality will be a lot better especially considering the camera will be zooming in on them a lot.

Speaking of which, the new backgrounds are also made with this in mind too.

Backgrounds

I won't spend too much time this detail, you can see the difference for yourself. I will note one thing, and that is the new backgrounds are bigger, and wider aspect ratio. This is what I meant when I said we've accounted for the new camera system with these new backgrounds.

Writing

The whole outline has been solidified for a while, but this is what it looks like visually. Did you know that I've went through almost 15 drafts of the ending? LOL

I wasn't really willing to settle on anything less than perfect for the ending, so it was quite a struggle. But I'm in a place where I'm happy with the ending.

In terms of the writing, progress is going very smoothly, but because there's so many routes (8 in total!) there's just a lot to work with, and balance with gameplay things to consider. Currently, we've reworked the entire prologue section (which is the entire demo), you can see it as #2 item in the above chart. The first quarter for each route is complete, and we'll be doing the second quarter of each route now.

We're not really sure how long the complete game will be in terms of length, but we've been working on making sure each character gets a satisfying character arc in their respective routes so that no character feels underdeveloped. While the game isn't really designed to be super replayable, there is some minor things that we've been working on to make subsequent playthroughs interesting.

Overall there's a few surprises we're cooking up but they're not quite ready to be shown yet so just hold on tight!

And that's it for this months update. Hope you enjoyed it! If there's any thoughts, opinions or questions you'd like to share please feel free to leave them in the comments.

Don't forget to join our discord server if you haven't already!

Wait, there's more girls??!!
about 3 years ago – Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 03:59:32 AM

hi. it's m.

tl;dr of this update:  More girls!

It's already March, wow. Time passes by so quickly, at least ever since we started this project. I even forgot to write an update by about 3 days until Tsun reminded me.

The last update was the biggest progress update we've ever done, so if you haven't checked it out yet, I really recommend you catch up and read it.

Anyway, today I'd like to talk about the OC cameo designs submitted by our highest tier backers, which I hinted at in the previous update.

Aren't they so cool??? Let's introduce you to each of them from left-to-right order.

•  Paran Kim submitted by user: Blue
•  Riko submitted by user: Medium Fries
•  Youko Asamiya submitted by user: Ciel
•  Ryoko submitted by user: Omniss
•  Ave Rose submitted by user: Forceful

Each backer gave a description and references which Tsun then drew and gave some adjustments to fit the style of the game. Each character has their main color just like the main cast and was also chosen by the backers. We've made sure that each character fits in the game just like they're part of the world of IJWTBS.

Some fun facts about each character:

Paran Kim:  Bubbly, scatterbrained, commits to too many things at once! Looks on the bright side of things and is usually optimistic, likes to complement people and recognize their hard work. Procrastinates a lot on school but always gets it done barely in time. She has a parrotlet at home named Nipsey. Paran is Korean and speaks Korean. Paran moonlights as a... (?)

• Has stars in her eyes. She is part of the student council and her main color is Light Blue or a.k.a Tropical Blue. (Blue character submitted by user named Blue!)

Riko: Introverted, shy, and selectively mute. She's not really good with words (stuttering, mixing up words) and has some level of anxiety, because of that, she tends to speak through actions as she lacks knowledge of sign language. Doesn't mean she won't/can't speak, she can if really needed to. She's the type to walk up to somebody in an attempt to make a new friend, but also coward out at the last second. (A bit like Aya!)

• Has heterochromia (different colored eyes) She is in the gardening club and her main color is Light Pink or cotton candy Pink.

Youko: She's the daughter of a dojo master. She's known for being stoic and a bit intimidating, but deep down she's laid back and rather aloof. She's a bit of an awkward dummy. Youko's most distinct trait is that she's incredibly tall and can often be seen towering over her friends and other girls. 

• Has intimidating eyes (or does she always look tired?) She's part of the martial arts club and her main color is Light Brown.

Ryoko: An introvert trying her hardest to be extroverted. She's empathic (match the atmosphere of a room), responsible, and curious. Sometimes she cares a little too much about what others think but tries to hide her negative emotions with a tendency to bottling her emotions. Her motto is 'fake it till you make it'.

• Has deep, charming eyes. She's part of the drama club and her main color is Tana (Dark Yellow), or sometimes Soft Azure.

Ave: Energetic and upbeat, she's a girl that loves the feeling of being light, spry and fast. She's blunt and straight to the point but at the same time, keeps secrets to the utmost degree. She's very optimistic and honest, making her level headed yet a source of inspiration for other girls. Ave is South American and speaks Spanish.

• Has oval shaped eyes. She's part of the track & field club and her main color is Royal Blue (Dark Blue).

We've given each character multiple pose sprites and while they won't get their own route they'll be appearing here and there in the game.

And that's all of our OC backer cameos! You'll be able to meet each of them throughout the game, so look forward to it!

Let me know which character is your favorite in the commends below as well. In the next update, I may talk about the writing of the game in detail as a focus! (maybe. We'll see.)

The biggest progress update of all time
over 3 years ago – Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 10:47:51 AM

hello everybody my name is m.arkiplier and this is five night fred

the TL;DR-  Lots of new stuff. Honestly you should just read this whole update.

Last month there wasn't much to show, but I have a lot of things to talk about this month so I'm going to go as quick as I can to touch on everything. Let's go.

(Important note: Anything you see in this update is still subject to change in the final game.)

Backgrounds

Here are some samples of the new backgrounds we've been making. 

As you've probably learned from one of the earlier updates I've written, due to some unfortunate circumstances we've had to replace all the backgrounds for the game. It was quite a difficult effort to match the style, but I think we have something that works pretty well. 

You'll be able to see and visit a variety of locations on the school campus, and off campus. You may also notice that the backgrounds a little bit wider format than the usual 16:9 ratio. This is because I plan to use the in-game camera a lot more for shots that don't feel as static. Every background is always drawn in the perspective of Aya in mind.

Backgrounds in total are about 90% done.

Also sorry, the water fountain is gone.

Comics

So far we've been able to made 8 manga pages for cutscenes in the game (outside of the ones in the demo/prologue.) There's also 2 CGs. 

What is a 'CG'? If you play other visual novels, you might be familiar with the term, but basically a CG is just a full page illustration of a scene. We reached the stretch goal for CGs in the game, so we've getting them done too, which are done by non other than Yoshi himself (our comic page artist,) and Tsungelique as well, so even MORE art!

Comics/CGs are about 9% done. 

Why only 9%? Well, the simple answer is that there's just a lot of comic pages and CGs planned.

Sprites

All of the new stretch-goal unlock girls have full sprite sets. We've also added a few new sprites to the original cast as well.

Tsungelique-sama has also been working very hard on our special backer tier rewards, one of them being the backer-designed hats you can wear in-game as Aya. Here's a couple of them for showcase.

• Frog Hat by Chrissy
• Shark Hat by Proxy
• Witch hat by Kno

Speaking of special backer rewards, the highest reward tier of our campaign was the OC cameo reward. We've completed all sprite sets for all the OC cameo characters (5 total.) We won't be showing them now but look forward to meeting them in the full game!

Total of all sprites in the game are about 85% done. We'll add some situational sprites later in development, but for now they're mostly done.

Music

Here's a preview of the original tracks done so far, track names are subject to change. There's quite a different variety of moods with the tracks, but Garrett and I have been working on nailing on that nostalgic early 2000's anime feel.

Tracks are about 20%(?) done. This one is a little bit tough to estimate so it may not be accurate.

UI

I've not talked about this much before, but in case you are not aware we've been overhauling the entire user interface throughout the whole game. Here's a preview of what it looks like.

UI is 90% done. (It is not fully implemented in the game yet.)

Coding

Coding, or in this case implementation has been the most staggered part of development so far, but this is because implementation needs to wait for assets to be completed. The above video is an example of how we're implementing the new UI into the game.

One thing that we have been working on is the complete input system overhaul. I've talked about the input system partially in a previous update, but the thing I didn't mention is that in the demo, the input system was very much taped together. We had to slap something together for the demo and made sure it wasn't a complete mess, but it still had some minor issues and bugs came up during play. In the long run it wasn't very sustainable, so after we got funding from the campaign, I've hired someone to help me in overhauling the entire system so it's cleaner and bug free.

This has now recently been completed. Unfortunately, I can't really 'show' you anything for it, since to the players side it doesn't look any different, and I think showing code is not interesting.

One thing that many people have been asking me is 'what is the progress on the minigames?' Sadly, I will need to inform you that we have not made any progress on minigames except planning. This is because of the way they fit in the game, they will need to be worked on later in the pipeline for reasons I mentioned earlier, assets need to be made first but the more important things need to take priority. Sorry, but it is what it is. 

There has been also some reworking of how we're using the in-game camera, but it's a little bit too early to talk about that for now. In a future update I will expand on this.

Writing

If you're sharp, you may have noticed I mentioned the demo and 'prologue' interchangeably. This is because the entirety of the demo will be in the game as the first chapter (prologue) of the game. We have plans to rewrite the prologue section to add the new stretch-goal girls introductions, as well as tightening up some scenes now that we have a better grasp on the writing.

There has been other developments with writing, but it's a little bit difficult to talk about it without directly spoiling, so I'll try my best.

As you may or may not know, each girl has their own special route. Each route has their initial first chapters fully written.

The total amount of writing is about 23% done.

Looking back

This is the original roadmap I posted during the campaign. Looking back, was I accurate in my estimate?

I feel like we're about at the halfway point now, so not really? But this roadmap didn't account for all the expanded content we would eventually add because of the stretch goals, I mean we weren't really assuming we would meet them in the first place.

That's not to say we underestimated the work, we're still adding all the content, but we've had to do some restructuring of the game in order to fit in the new stuff.

Concerns

I like being transparent about the development of the game, especially since you guys have supported us so much so far. So I'm not afraid to share some of my concerns for the future.

The first thing is-  we're definitely not releasing in June. I doubt many people were expecting that to be the final release date anyway (it was just an estimate), but I'd rather make it official just so we don't disappoint anyone.

I don't know when we'll be finished, but when we're confident in knowing when (and only when we're confident) we'll make an official announcement for the release date.

The second concern I have is- we're cutting pretty close on the budget. From the estimates, we might run out of the budget before we have all the things we need to be in the game. 

Now, you might be wondering: "wait, didn't you get $70,000? what happened?" 

If your internal alarm bells are ringing, I completely understand you. Let me explain.

We still have plenty of money left over and we're still putting it (only) into the game. By the time we've completely run our budget dry, we'll probably have the game 85% done. That's not a rough estimate either, most of the things needed for the game are already paid for (the assets/artists pay.) $70,000 is admittedly, a lot, it's more money than I've ever had in my entire life at once. But when you're making a game with the highest possible standard (well, at least my personal standard) and you're paying around 10-12 different people so that the game doesn't take 8 years to make, money goes fast. Not to mention fees and taxes take a huge chunk (around 15%.)

The simple solution to this problem is to scope cut, which means cutting down on some features and compromising.

But I don't really believe in compromising, at least not for this game.  This work will last, and I do want to make a game I'll be proud of in the future. I want this game to stand out from the rest in terms of having those features that other games don't have and can't have. I want to make the game that I want to play, and I think that's part of the reason why we've been so successful so far. It's not important for everybody, but it's important to me, and I think that uncompromising vision makes the game special and unique.

What are some of those 'features' I'm talking about? I'll list a few for you.

• High quality animations and extra art for the minigames
• Additional art, scenes and sprites (alternate outfits)
• More songs, adding up to a full original soundtrack
• Localizations/Translations to other languages
• A Switch Port

And a few more.

So, what does this mean? Is everything over? No, far from it. Compromising features would be the last resort, there are other things we can do.

You're still able to order from BackerKit some of the original merch items we had during the campaign if you missed out. 

But save your money! Why?

In order to raise money for additional funding, we'll be adding brand new items to our merch list soon.

 For example, what do you guys think about...

If there's enough interest, we might add this to our merch items, available for you to order in the future!  So let us know what you think!!!

But I would recommend saving up your money for the brand new merch we'll be adding in the future for sale, don't worry about missing out, we'll make a big announcement!

Additionally, if you still want to support us you can always contact us on our socials, Twitter or Discord. 

As always, we're incredibly grateful for all of your support.

Summary

• BGs 90%
• Comics/Cgs 9%
• Sprites 85%
• Music 20%
• UI 90%
• Coding ???
• Writing 23%

Total Game Progress: 30%

That's pretty much it for this update. Since the last update wasn't very substantial I hope this one was pretty satisfying for you. 

Thanks for reading.