August 15th Build

EDIT: There was a critical problem in the August 15th build – it was impossible to receive Tasks from students. A new build has been uploaded with this bug fixed.

Hello!

I’m sorry – today’s build is not a huge build with a major new feature; it’s mostly about bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements.

As you can tell from scrolling down and reading the most recent blog posts, most of my time over the past 2 weeks was spent fixing the various issues that were discovered in the game after the “Big August Update.” This didn’t leave me with very much time to work on anything huge or exciting, so today’s update is rather tame. I’m hoping that this build of the game is extremely stable, so that the next 2 weeks can be spent focusing on “Pre-Crowdfunding Checklist” tasks and not on bug fixes.

To read of list of everything that was added, changed, fixed, or improved over the past 2 weeks, please scroll down past this gorgeous artwork of Ryoba and Jokichi drawn by Aya_0w0__, where the “yandere and victim” dynamic has been flipped!

Biology Lab

The Biology Lab – one of the only rooms in school that was completely empty – is now furnished with props!

Currently, no aspect of the room features any sort of functionality, but off the top of my head, I can quickly think of three utilities for this room:

1. Freezing students to death by locking them inside of the freezer room and turning the temperature down to subzero temperatures that humans can’t survive.
2. Storing corpses inside of the refrigeration chest temporarily until a more convenient time to transport and dispose of them.
3. Growing poisonous plants in the grow stations to have free access to emetic/lethal/sedative/headache poisons.

Implementing the “freeze to death” feature could be as simple as, “If a student is following the player and is close enough to the freezer door, a button prompt will appear. If the player presses the button, an animation plays where the player shoves the victim into the freezer, locks the door behind them, and presses a button to lower the temperature to fatal levels.” However, that sounds a bit too easy. Should the player have to meet some criteria before this action becomes unlocked? Obtaining the Faculty ID card to gain the ability to open the door, raising their Physical Education stat high enough to overpower the other student, and raising their Biology level high enough to know the correct temperature to set the room to? I haven’t decided the specifics yet.

To implement the “grow poisonous plants” feature, I would have to figure out how the player would obtain the seeds necessary to grow plants with extreme properties. The two ideas that come to mind are allowing the player to order the seeds online, and allowing the player to obtain chemicals from the Science Club. If I decide to go down that second route, then “access to exotic substances that can change the properties of plants” would probably become a Science Club benefit.

I also have an idea in mind regarding that peculiar-looking moving plant…but it might be considered too silly and goofy to include in the game.

As of now, there is only one other room remaining in the game that lacks props – and it’s adjacent to the Biology Lab. It’s the “English Classroom,” which I’ve decided to turn into a “Foreign Studies” room, instead. A modeler has been making fantastic progress on it, and I’m eagerly anticipating the last few models necessary to implement the room!

PlayStation Controller Button Prompt Progress

Previously, only a a few of the game’s scenes would actually display PlayStation button prompts if the game detected that the player was using a PlayStation controller. However, absolutely every scene in the game should now be displaying PlayStation button prompts if the game detects that the player is using a PlayStation controller.

If you play the game with a PlayStation controller plugged in, and you find absolutely any scene in the game where a PlayStation button prompt is NOT displaying when it should be, please e-mail me a bug report! (It would help to put “sony” and “bug” in the title of the e-mail, to help me sort them more easily.)

Improvements

• From now on, if the player has put a character into a situation where it is impossible to befriend that character (for example, killing all of the rainbow boys to make it impossible to befriend Moeko) the character will outright tell the player that there is nothing they can do to become friends.
• The magical girl wand in 1980s Mode is now different from the magical girl wand in 202X, since the 202X wand is a piece of cosplay for a show that didn’t exist in 1989. (Also, for the same reason, it is no longer possible to trigger the Magical Girl Pretty Miyuki easter egg in 1989.)
• If a Sleuth character investigated a target who was standing on stairs, the Sleuth’s body would tilt at a bizarre angle to look up (or down) at the student they were investigating. This bug has been fixed.
• The “Ayano caresses Senpai’s photograph before learning about her next rival” cutscene now has proper animation.

Fixes

• If the player set the draw distance as low as possible to increase their framerate, they would sometimes be able to see the bottom of the game’s skybox, which appeared as a blue sky rather than green grass. This…bothered some people, apparently, so the bottom of the skybox is now green instead of sky blue. Um…enjoy that, I guess.
• If the player killed a student, concealed their corpse in a bodybag, put the corpse into the incinerator, did NOT activate the incinerator, and then got sent to the councilor by a student council member, the corpse that was inside of the incinerator would pop out of it. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player tried to strangle a student who was sitting in a chair, the protagonist would slide backwards away from the char and the victim would get stuck on the chair, resulting in the protagonist “telepathically” strangling the victim from afar. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player was spotted carrying a makeshift knife, students would become alarmed by the sight of it, but no subtitle would appear conveying the student’s verbal reaction to the weapon. This has been fixed.
• The “decide whether or not to poison the rival” part of the 1980s Mode Befriend/Betray sequence had incorrect depth-of-field settings, resulting in the screen being blurry. This bug has been fixed.
• Due to a bug, any weapon in the “short, blunt” category (like the pipe wrench and the weights) was not getting stained with blood upon being used for a frontal attack. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player activated/deactivated the cloaking device under specific circumstances, the protagonist would permanently freeze. This bug has been fixed.
• Sometimes, the game was not accurately detecting whether or not the player had just switched from one input device to another. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player enabled 3D grass, grass would appear in many places around school, but not in the courtyard in the center of school. This has been fixed.
• The “Awareness” text label Mission Mode was transforming into a “Reputation” text label after the player went to class. This bug has been fixed.
• Ryoba’s bust was clipping through her pajamas, which was especially noticable when she was close to the camera. This bug has been fixed.
• Shadows were appearing inside of the pool’s pump room, even though it had no lights and no windows. this bug has been fixed.
• If the player laughed while holding a plate of food, the laugh animation wouldn’t play properly. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed bug that allowed the player to open the “choose where the trail leads” window in the 1980s Mode tutorial.

If there are any problems in this build…

Whenever the latest build contains a major bug, I try to release a new build as soon as possible, usually within 24 hours. However, I am planning to take a day off soon (it’s either going to be August 15th or August 16th) so if there are any major bugs in this build, there is a possibility that a bug-fixing build won’t come out until August 17th or 18th.

If you don’t like the possibility of downloading a buggy build of the game and having to wait 2~3 days for a fix, then you might want to wait a few days before you consider updating Yandere Simulator.

…oh, you’re curious to know why I’m taking a day off? Well, it’s because Genshin Impact is getting a major update soon, and I really want to play it!

Whether or not I take the day off on the 15th or the 16th is dependent on the exact hour that the update is released. If it’s released late into nighttime on the 15th, I won’t have much time to play it, so in that case, I’ll just wait until the 16th to play it.

I’m not sure whether I’ll play it on the 15th or the 16th, but when I do, I’ll be streaming it on my Twitch channel! You’re welcome to come by! (When Inazuma came out, I think I played Genshin Impact for 13 hours straight – so there will probably be a large window of time for you to come say hello!)