MisterMaya - Law School Episode 5 - Final Devlog

Hello everyone,

Oh. My. God.

Finally, the last devlog for this episode.

It took a little longer than I expected, but we're finally reaching the end. Last week was great by most metrics, despite a few shadows on the board. I didn't get to work on the last scene with Rose. I felt like doing postwork instead, since there were still hundreds of renders in the queue and I was stressing about whether they'd all be ready for the beta. So I put all three PCs in render mode, hit 38°C in my office for the first and hopefully last time ever, and spent days doing postwork on my laptop.

That let me:

Finish the music for the episode

Revamp the whole UI

Update galleries and Facegram

Test the branchings

Postwork all the images I had, compile animations, and photoshop renders

Prepare the queues for renders that need modifications and re-rendering

Rework and fix the path builder of episode 4

And a bunch of other minor stuff, such as the new main menu animation, the new loading screen, etc...

In other words, all the most tiring tasks are done. I'm happy about that, it's pretty much where I wanted to be on the timeline. I need 2-3 days to create the Rose scene, and about a day to update the character logs, diary, and fun facts from your beloved Olive, plus create the customs for this episode. I also need to code the two minigames, but that's quick, and the assets for them won't take more than a couple hours.

I'm estimating I'll be done with everything by Thursday night or Friday morning, and I'll use the rest of Friday to test it fully without devmod, no cheating variables to see every path in one playthrough. It's easier to test that way, but I might miss crashes you guys would hit during your own playthroughs. After that, it goes to the testers and we'll see what's what.

A lot of renders are still in the queue and will finish while I'm away, so there shouldn't be any issue waiting on content to re-render.

It's not entirely finished yet, like I don't have the whole episode ready to be shipped, and like I said, I've only run cheaty playthroughs so far, but honestly, I'm happier and more confident about the quality of this episode than I was two months ago. The anxiety was through the roof. Not seeing the game as a whole, just bits of content and code here and there, does a number on how you see your own project. But playing through it, I surprised myself, laughing at my own jokes I'd forgotten about, getting hit hard in the feels, positive and negative both. The jump in my animation skills is WILD too. The first lewd scene of this episode versus the last one are two completely different worlds. I'm excited to keep improving.

So overall, I'm feeling good about sending this update out before I leave for a week. I don't want to pressure the testers, I never have and hope I never will, so I can't promise a release date. But they've been fast before, so hopefully I'll be back next week with a promo image and dates for you all.

The Season 2 Steam page also goes live when this episode releases (For wishlist only), which means I need to finalize the trailer. There's a cutscene from episode 4, during the library scene with Taylor, right at the start, short one, but I'm still waiting on the voice for my MC. So I might just get that Taylor bit done and use it for the trailer, even though it probably won't make it into the actual episode at release. I'll try to get it done ASAP.

I'll share the final render, word, and animation counts on release day.

So yeah, thanks again for the support. We're so close. I'm excited to hear what you all think of this episode. The mood shifts near the end, and there's new plots, new hints, and honestly a truckload of revelations, so I'm curious what you'll make of it, and whether some of your theories landed. It's as exciting for me as it is for you.

Anyway, back to it. Wishing you all a great few days until release.

Take care,MisterMaya