Man from icecream van - The Whenever News #24

So, a few news updates.

First, a short note about Three and One.

I am not working on it directly right now, and I do not plan to return to it properly until after the release of Duchess. However, indirectly, there has been some progress.

I decided to improve the character models. It actually started with Jenny, but then spread to Three and One as well.

The most noticeable rework happened to Helena.

In my internal model numbering, the new model is marked as V5. But if we think of these models as generations, I would say this is Helena's third generation, while for the characters in general it is the fifth.

Helena simply stayed based on the old base model longer than anyone else. That was the period when she looked either too old, or just... not quite right. Then her appearance was updated, and Helena suddenly became much younger.

And now we are here: the third generation of Helena.

So, what changed?

Visually, she now looks a little older than in the previous generation. This is still a very debatable question, because we do not know exactly how old she is. Based on indirect signs, she is probably no older than forty. She gave birth to Chloe before going to college, and Chloe is no older than twenty.

In general, compared to the previous generation, Helena has gained a little age visually. The standard dialogue sprite is still mostly based on the second generation.

Her body has also moved away from the classic "semi-chubby" look and now leans more toward "mature curvy." I tried to portray her this way in the finished artwork before, but the model kept trying to make her chubby whenever it had the chance. Now there should be less fighting with body corrections.

This also means that the current standard sprite is no longer fully canon. But I think it will be updated in the next versions.

I should also make one note.

During the development of v0.3, I considered removing these standard sprites entirely and making custom artwork for every episode. I did not have time to do that in v0.3, and now, with the gradual introduction of random events, these sprites are becoming useful again.

So they will be updated, their expressions will be redrawn differently, but I am not going to remove this mechanic.

Zoe's new model is also almost ready. It needs about one more day of work.

For Zoe, this is a proper fifth generation model. She has almost always had a more advanced model than the others.

Her appearance should not change much compared to the canon version. This is mostly a technical update: better facial detail and a wider emotional range.

However, right now only the dataset has been assembled, so the final results are not yet known.

Bianca's facial dataset is also already prepared. After Zoe, she will receive a new model as soon as I finish assembling the rest of her dataset.

I am confident that Tori will also be ready by the time I begin working on the next update.

The Duchess from the Underdeeps

I previously wrote about Jenny's new model. It should make her less glamorous and give her body a look that better reflects her background and training.

For those who do not know, or who do not read the in-game text: during her early university years, Jenny was seriously involved in sports - specifically freestyle wrestling. The game itself only hints at this, but yes, that is part of her background.

A lot of animation work has already been done for the update. The total raw runtime is currently around 10 minutes. After rejection, cleanup, and trimming, this number will become much smaller, but it is already clear that this update will have a lot of animations.

And I have only made animations for about half of the planned scenes so far.

Now, about the Tombs.

Originally, I planned to finish the prologue with the fifth Tomb: the central door that requires five key-stones.

But after rewriting the scenario several times, I decided to take a different route and postpone the fifth Tomb until later.

The reason is the fifth key.

One key is found in the lake. The second is brought to Jenny's room, obviously by the goblins. The third is found under the rubble. The fourth will be found somewhere else.

But the idea that the fifth key would also just be lying around somewhere in the same cave system felt doubtful.

The better solution is to move it outside the current area. And the fifth Tomb itself should become a real challenge, not just one more scene.

So obtaining the final key will be turned into a chain of quests and events. The fifth Tomb will receive much more attention.

This means we will move into Act 1 after completing the fourth Tomb.

Now, about the schedule.

At the moment, I have around 50% of the artwork and 0% of the code.

I expect the remaining graphics to be finished no earlier than in about two weeks. The code will probably take around one more week after that.

Realistically, I think the release will be in the last ten days of August.

I will give a more precise date closer to release.

That is all for now.

In the next few days, there will be a poll for Girl of the Month.

I also know that a path conflict issue appeared in Three and One, blocking one of the dialogues. However, since the cleanest solution turned out to be moving the conflicting dialogue to another day, I did not make a hotfix.

In the current update, such a hotfix would not really add anything meaningful, and it would require digging through a lot of code.

So while The Duchess is on my table, I am fully focused on that.

When I return to preparing Three and One, the first thing I will do is make the hotfix. After that, I will move on to the next release.

Thank you all for your attention. Thank you for the support. Stay tuned.