Categories: DevBlog

August 1st Build

Hi! Got a new build for ya.

To read a list of everything that was added / changed / fixed / improved in the latest build, scroll down past this awesome artwork of Amai by Arrrinyan!

I love this “2D illustration made of multiple layers cut and pasted on top of each other” look, since it’s 2D and 3D at the same time! So cool!

New Animations and Voice Lines

Amai’s Monday Morning “Talk with Uekiya” event now has voice acting for Uekiya!

Also, the Friday Lunchtime “Taro reacts to Amai’s social media page” event now has animation and voice acting – both the default version and the sabotaged version!

In addition to Uekiya and Taro, another character also got voice lines this week: Reiichi.

That’s right; all 11 of Reiichi’s lines are now voiced!

Now that Ken and Reiichi are voiced, I think I’m going to start looking for someone to voice Daisaku and Joze. If at all possible, I would strongly prefer if Joze’s voice actor is a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese, instead of someone doing an impression. We’ll see if I can make it happen.

Title Screen Update

In the past, you might have noticed that the game’s title screen changed in various ways based on the player’s actions during gameplay. If the player committed a murder, Ayano would be splattered with tons of blood on the title screen. If School Atmosphere dropped beneath 50%, the title screen would become dark with spooky music. I’ve decided to change the way that it works:

From now on, instead of only acknowledging >50% or <50% School Atmosphere, the “darkness” of the title screen will reflect the exact amount of School Atmosphere. 100%, 69%, 42%, 13%, 0%, etc, all look different.

Also, the amount of blood on Ayano will depend on how exactly many murders you’ve committed. If you’ve only performed 1 murder, you’ll only see a tiny sprinkle of blood on Ayano. If you’ve performed 10 murders, you’ll see the maximum amount of blood splattered all over Ayano.

It’s a subtle change, and many people might not even notice it, but I still think it’s an improvement!

New “Spy” Prompts for Amai’s Week

Whenever Osana interacts with Taro, a “Spy” button prompt appears nearby, which puts Ayano into a “peeking around corner” animation and positions the camera closer to the two characters having the interaction so that the player can see the event unfold closely without actually moving the protagonist close enough to arouse attention.

During Amai’s week, the “Spy” feature was available for Amai’s morning interactions with Senpai, but was not available for any of Amai’s other events. I thought that this was a horrible shame, because a lot of Amai’s animations are 10/10 in quality, and the player had no way to view them up close. I decided to fix that:

As of now, the following Amai events have a “Spy” button prompt, allowing the player to watch the events from a camera angle much closer to the characters:

Monday

Amai’s Morning Event
Amai’s Phone Event
Amai’s Akane Event
Amai’s Uekiya Event
Amai’s “Re-Unite with Club” Event
Amai’s “Mourn Loss of Club” Event
Amai’s Lunch Event
Amai’s Sabotaged Lunch Event
Senpai’s “Crushing can and throwing it into trash bin” Event

Tuesday

Amai’s Lunch Event
Amai’s Sabotaged Lunch Event

(Not Amai’s apron event, because she walks between multiple rooms in that event.)

Wednesday

Amai’s “Cooking Class” Event
Amai’s Lunch Event
Amai’s Sabotaged Lunch Event

(Not Senpai’s cooking event, since there are no unique animations to see in that event.)

Thursday

Amai’s “Lay a picnic blanket on the ground” Event
Amai’s Lunch Event
Amai’s Sabotaged Lunch Event

(Not either one of Amai’s Fudge events, because those events don’t involve any unique animations.)

Friday

Amai’s “Decorate a cake” Event
Amai’s Lunch Event
Amai’s Sabotaged Lunch Event

That’s 19 in total! This list might get updated in the future, if any of Amai’s remaining events get unique animations.

(Actually, I just realized that voice lines / animations were never created for Amai’s “Decorate a cake” event, heh heh, whoopsie…)

By the way, the Spy feature needed to be updated significantly to accommodate some of these events. For example:

Dynamically adjusting the depth-of-field depending on how far the player has zoomed in or zoomed out
Making the camera follow two characters who walk somewhere together as part of their event (like Amai and Uekiya)
Making sure that the game doesn’t fade out the voice lines / subtitles when characters walk away from the player, and instead keeps the voice lines / subtitles are maximum, if the player is listening to characters using the Spy feature.
Making the camera teleport to a more appropriate position in the middle of an event that takes place in two distinct locations.

By the way…

It has become extremely easy to predict what kind of comments I’m going to see in the comment section, so I want to address something ahead of time.

“Nooooo! I’m so mad that you worked on the Spy feature instead of working on Kizana! Stop working on unnecessary features that nobody asked for! You’ll do ANYTHING but work on Kizana!”

Look, man…we really need to have a talk.

I do not consider anything I work on to be “unnecessary.” If I choose to work on something, that means it’s part of my vision for the game. That automatically makes it “necessary.” Definitionally.

Consider this:

Before I begin working on Kizana, I’m going to upload a bunch of YouTube videos.
Some of those videos are going to need footage of Amai’s events.
I can’t record good footage of Amai’s events without the ability to decouple the camera from the player and position the camera exactly where I need it – which is exactly what the Spy feature is.

Whether you want it or not, whether you asked for it or not, *I* need the Spy feature to exist.

I’m not going to begin working on Kizana until after I’ve uploaded some YouTube videos, and I can’t make those videos without the Spy feature.

In other words, the act of putting the Spy feature into the game was progress towards implementing Kizana.

It was not “unnecessary.”

Also, there’s something else that I really need to tell you.

A significant number of people contacted me and asked me to add the “Spy” feature to Amai’s events.

Just because you didn’t ask for a feature, that doesn’t mean that nobody asked for it.

Please consider the fact that you’re not the most important person in the world, and that the universe doesn’t revolve around you.

Alright, with that out of the way…

Improvements

If the player joins a club, fails to participate in club activities for an entire week, and then advances forward to the next week, the player will get kicked out of the club. To ensure that the player knows why they are no longer in the club, the club leader will speak a line of dialogue about it if the player speaks to them. Previously, all club leaders simply spoke the same line of dialogue. Code has been put in place to support the possibility of each club leader saying a unique line of dialogue. A line of dialogue communicating “You got kicked out of the club because you didn’t participate…” has been written for Amai, but a voice line has not been included yet.
If you ask a student to follow you around and walk near certain locations, you will learn that student’s opinions. For example, lead a student info the Occult Club, and they’ll tell you their opinion on the topic of the Occult. However, there was no location the player could take a student to in order to learn the student’s opinion on the topic of “School.” As of now, it’s possible to learn a student’s opinion on “School” by leading them nearby the Faculty room.
Previously, the “Living Security Camera” animation performed by the Drama Club was “standing and reading a book.” This had nothing to do with their identity as actors / actresses, so I’ve changed that animation to “standing, reading a script, and rehearsing lines from the script.”
The background tracks in Buraza Town have been updated: The Commercial Distract now has a background track, the Industrial District track has been updated, and the Forest/Asylum track has been completely replaced with an entirely different track.
The “Fully Hide Killing Animations” option now displays a black screen instead of displaying a disclaimer. Press the “N” key during the black screen to see a disclaimer instead. Press the “N” key a 2nd time to see a “Nice Boat” instead.
From now on, if you blind an “Invincible” student and then attack then, your attack will succeed. (“Invincible” isn’t meant to be taken literally. Within the context of Yandere Sim, it just means “The highest level of strength.”)
There is now a particle effect and sound effect when dipping a mop into a bucket.
There is now a sound effect when pouring bleach into a bucket of water.

Fixes

When I was implementing the Photography Club, I asked the community to take screenshots of the school environment and send them to me so that I could decorate the clubroom with images that looked like photographs taken at school. Later, when I was building the “Stalker House” environment, I used some of those screenshots for paintings hanging on the walls in the stalker’s house. This is how a photograph of Kizana wound up inside the stalker’s house. This was sort of a continuity error, since it doesn’t make any logical sense for a picture of Kizana to be in the stalker’s house. So, I’ve replaced it with something else.
The intro cutscene was updated so that the “censor corpses” feature would hide the corpses visible during that cutscene – but the game wasn’t remembering the player’s “censor corpses” preference when starting a new save file, so the feature wasn’t working as intended. This bug has been fixed.
When the matchmaking cutscene plays, I adjust the size/position of the “legendary cherry tree” slightly. However, I forgot to restore it to normal after the matchmaking cutscene ended, which caused it to look very weird. This bug has been fixed.
When I added Amai’s idle/walk animations as options to Custom Mode, the list of idle/walk animations got scrambled, and the “decide what a student’s idle/walk animation will be” feature stopped working properly. This bug has been fixed.
If the player bumped into two student council members sequentially without triggering any other subtitles in the process, only one of them would say a voice line, and the other one would not. This bug has been fixed.
If the player took a photograph while the “Witness Camera” was onscreen and then saved the photograph, the “Witness Camera” visuals would be included in the saved photograph. This bug has been fixed.
If Shiromi witnessed something shocking (a corpse, a murder, etc) and appeared in the bottom-left corner of the screen (the “Witness Camera”) she would be bald. This bug has been fixed.
If the player dropped a bucket while facing a door, the bucket might have clipped through the door and entered the room behind that door. This bug has been fixed.
Because of the way Sumire died in the 1980s Mission Mode timeline, she wouldn’t have left behind a ghost, so her ghost has been removed from that mode.
If the player aimed their smartphone while splattered with blood or paint, the smartphone screen would be solid grey. This bug has been fixed.
Some of the mirrors at school were properly set up with the latest list of idle/walk animations, and others were not. This bug has been fixed.
Senpai’s apron teleported off of his body during his final line of dialogue in his Wednesday Lunchtime event. This bug has been fixed.
The “this mop has been dipped in bleach and it’s ready to use” particle effect has been glitched for years. I finally fixed it.
In a previous build, the Game Store’s background music track was deleted. Oops! It has been restored.
There was a typo in one of Kaguya’s befriend/betray subtitles. This typo has been fixed.
Shiromi’s hair model was missing her hair accessory. This bug has been fixed.
Fixed typo in subtitles for Amai’s Sabotaged Wednesday Lunchtime event.

What Remains for Amai?

My current goal is to “Improve Amai’s Week.” That’s a bit vague, so I’ll be more specific. I have two objectives: Add voice lines and unique animations to all of Amai’s events, and make a series of gameplay improvements to Amai’s week.

As of this build, all of Amai’s “Interact with Senpai” events now have voice lines and unique animations. (There are a handful of Amai events that don’t have animations – like the event where Amai talks to Uekiya – and a few events that are missing voices lines – Like Amai’s “Sew an Apron” and “Decorate a Cake” events – but those events are not super high priority. The only events that I think absolutely require animations and voice lines are the “Interact with Senpai” events and the “Confession” cutscene.)

All of the voice acting required for Amai’s confession cutscene has been recorded! I’m currently waiting for the animations to be finished. The animator has stated that they should definitely be completed in time for the August 15th build.

As for the “Series of Gameplay Improvements,” I’ve completed around 12 out of 15 improvements I wanted to make to Amai’s week. (I’m saying “around” because every time I completed a task, I deleted it from my to-do list, and I don’t fully remember every item from the list.) Only about three tasks remain. (I’m saying “about” because I might suddenly remember something I forgot to add to the list, or think of a really good improvement that needs to be added to the list. Alternatively, I might decide “Mehhhhh, this isn’t important” and make the list shorter.)

One of those improvements is to add “Schemes” to Amai’s week. That’s going to be tricky. Some eliminations apply to all rivals, and some eliminations – like Befriend/Betray – are rival-specific. I’m going to need to update the Schemes menu so that it knows that some Schemes apply to all rivals, and other Schemes need to be hidden/revealed based on whose week it currently is. That’s gonna be difficult. Then, I’ll have to actually create Amai’s Schemes, one by one. At this point in time, I’m not prepared to offer a meaningful estimate for how long this task is going to take me. I forget how long it took me to create all of Osana’s Schemes…but I know that it took longer than a week.

After Amai’s confession has voice acting and animations, and after I’ve finished making those final 2~3 improvements I want to make to Amai’s week, I’ll consider the goal of “Improve Amai’s Week” to be complete, and then I’ll advance to my next goal: Return to YouTube with a series of videos showing off everything that was added to the game since 1980s Mode.

Exciting stuff!