For the past few months, you’ve heard me say the same thing over and over: “I haven’t been able able to focus on adding new features to the game recently, since I’ve been fixing bugs. I’ll return to adding new features once the bug reports stop.”
Well, that long-awaited time has come; I received very few significant bug reports recently, so I was finally able to spend the majority of the past two weeks adding new features and improvements to the game! I made a massive amount of progress through my “Every change I want to make to the game before the crowdfunding campaign” checklist, and I’ve got a LOT to show you today! How much, exactly? Well, I’ll put it this way: this blog post is over 4,300 words long! That ought to give you a sense of just how much progress I’ve made!
To begin reading about everything that was added or improved about the game recently, scroll down past this absolutely fabulous illustration by Almer, who created it for this hilarious meme video!
The Feed List
The Cooking Club’s passion is sharing their food with others, so they spend their spare time walking around school handing out food to the other students…however, not everyone at school wants to receive food. Some of them are on a diet, and others are simply not interested in being bothered by the Cooking Club. So, the Cooking Club has created a list of students who have “opted in” or “opted out” of receiving food. This is called the “Feed List.”
The Feed List is a list of all students at school who have expressed that they wish to free food from the Cooking Club. Anyone whose name is crossed out from this list is a student who has specifically requested to NOT receive any food from the Cooking Club. The Sports Club and delinquent boys/girls are examples; they do not want the Cooking Club bothering them at all.
So, what does this have to do with gameplay? I’ll explain: If you join the Cooking Club, the Cooking Club leader will trust you to update/edit the Feed List. In other words, you will gain the ability to cross out any student’s name from this list, making sure that the Cooking Club will stay far away from that student…meaning that you won’t have to worry about the Cooking Club being a witness to you murdering that student.
Want to murder Osana, but don’t want the Cooking Club to walk into the room while you’re busy burying a knife in Osana’s brain? Join the Cooking Club and cross out Osana’s name from the Feed List! This ensures that you will be able to murder Osana witness-free. (Well, you’ll still have all the OTHER witnesses to worry about, but not the Cooking Club.)
Another way to look at it: Previously, joining the Cooking Club did not carry a significant benefit. But, as of now, the act of joining the Cooking Club has gained a massive buff, which might make it a much more relevant club in the future.
There’s one last thing I’d like to mention: I dislike the name of this feature – I named it “Feed List” because I couldn’t think of anything else – so the name might change in the future. (Also, I worry that the font on the Feed List isn’t legible, so that might also be changing in the future, as well.)
Aside from those two little details, though…this is an idea that I’ve wanted to include in the game for years, and I’m very happy that it’s finally here!
Sukeban Routine Update
Some of the most common feedback about 1980s Mode is that the rivals are far too easy to eliminate, because there are too many situations where they are completely alone with no witnesses around them. In the near future, I plan to adjust student routines so that the rivals won’t ever be alone…and while I’m repositioning students around school, some of the most important students might be the delinquent boys and delinquent girls.
Because the delinquents don’t belong to any clubs and don’t have any specific interests / responsibilities that would dictate their routines, they can realistically “fit in” anywhere at school. An explanation like, “That’s where they decided to loiter today” or “They’re standing here because they know it’s inconvenient for people and they’re waiting for someone to pick a fight with them” can justify their presence almost anywhere. This makes them very useful as “living security cameras” who can be placed anywhere in order to make that area more safe for a rival.
I noticed that the 5 delinquent girls, in particular, were severely underutilized; they spent all of their time in a bathroom, where they were zero threat to the player. So, I decided to do something with them…
From now on, the 5 delinquent girls in 1980s Mode will now begin every day loitering nearby the school gate. This should prevent the player from using any type of exploit that allows the player to eliminate their rival before they’ve even walked through the school gate at the beginning of the day.
After a few minutes have passed, the 5 delinquent girls will move inside the school – and each week, they will loiter in a different location. During Week 1, the week that is intended to be the easiest week, they will hang out in the bathroom, just like they did in the past. But, on every subsequent week, they will choose to hang out elsewhere in school.
I originally planned to put them in locations that would make them an obstacle to any player that was trying to kill their current rival when the rival was alone – but it proved to be kind of difficult to do so, since there are just too many opportunities like that. So, for now, the locations I’ve currently chosen for them are kinda arbitrary, and don’t really make the rivals more “protected.” I’ll definitely revisit and reconsider where they should stand in the near future.
New Tasks
Currently, all students who don’t have a unique Task are sharing a “placeholder” task – “retrieve a book from the school library to help a student study.” The idea behind this task is that none of the students think of using books to study because they’re all too accustomed to using the Internet. However, there is one student at school that this Task shouldn’t apply to – Kuu Dere. She’s the school librarian, so of course, books would be at the forefront of her mind! To solve this problem, I’ve given Kuu Dere a unique Task in the latest build.
There was also one other student who the placeholder Task didn’t really apply to – Geiju Tsuka. His gimmick is that he only speaks in one-word or two-word sentences, so he is another one of those students who really needs a unique Task, since the dialogue of the placeholder Task doesn’t suit him. So, Geiju has been given a unique Task in the latest build, as well.
I strongly dislike “I misplaced something, go find it for me” tasks, so I will be avoiding implementing any Tasks like that in the future. Kuu and Geiju are probably the last two students who will ever have a Task like that.
By the way, there’s something I should mention about the book in Kuu’s Task. It’s related to –
…on second thought, nevermind. It’s just an ordinary book. Yep…a completely ordinary book.
Sonoko Changes
Sonoko Sakanoue is the “final boss” of 1980s Mode, so she should be a lot more difficult than all preceeding rivals. To that end, the following changes were made:
- She will now turn towards the player if the player runs nearby.
- She will now turn towards the player if the player walks close enough to attack her.
- She will not turn away from the player if the player is standing close enough to attack her, and she will shove the player away if the player just stands there for long enough.
- She will now shove the player away from herself if the player collides with her.
- She now carries pepper spray, if the player runs into her 5 times, she will spray and arrest the player.
- She will now pepper spray the player if the player approaches her while armed with any weapon.
- If she witnesses the player commit murder, she will react as a “Sleuth” – taking an incriminating photograph of you and running away to report you to the police. However, if you chase her down and try to kill her before she reports you, she will spin around and pepper-spray you.
I’m planning to make changes to the other rivals, as well – I might pile them all into one build and call it something like “The Completely Revised Rivals Update!” or maybe the changes will trickle in one by one over the course of the next few weeks. We’ll see how things turn out.
Manga Rebalancing
A lot of players have informed me that the manga feature was imbalanced; the player could achieve Level 5 Seduction within 5 days, thus completely trivializing the ability to befriend students in order to earn their trust. This was extremely valid feedback, so the feature has been adjusted. It now takes 5 days to read through a single manga book; this means that it now takes 25 days (halfway through the game) to achieve Level 5 Seduction. Hopefully, this will balance the overpowered feature.
With that said, I’ve also decided to power up another one of the game’s features: if you upgrade your Language stat, you will be able to read through manga books faster. At maximum Language, you can read an entire manga book in only two nights.
Extended Content Checklist
When a new player starts playing Yandere Simulator for the first time, they have no idea exactly how much content the game holds. The “Content Checklist” was added to the game to inform players of exactly how much content is in the game, and was placed on the main menu directly underneath “New Game” so that players couldn’t possibly miss it. However, the Content Checklist didn’t actually list all of the game’s content – it only listed the elimination methods and a small handful of challenges!
16 new items have been added to the Content Checklist so that it more accurately represents the full breadth of content and experiences that are waiting for you in Yandere Simulator.
(The icons for these new items are temporary, and will be replaced at a later date.)
Oh, and, by the way, on the topic of the Content Checklist…
Achievement Pop-Ups
From now on, whenever the player completes a “Content Checklist” challenge, a little notification will pop-up in the bottom-right corner of the screen to inform the player of their accomplishment. This may not seem like a big deal, but to me, it’s a big step towards making the game feel complete and polished; one of those things I’ve wanted to do for years in order to increase the production values of the game.
(Please note that any pop-up related to a rival elimination will only appear after the player safely returns home without being arrested on the day of the elimination.)
The design of the Achievement Pop-Up might change in the future; for now, all that mattered to me was getting the feature to work.
Student Gazes
Last month, I uploaded a video describing the reasons why I wanted to add a “students subtly turn their upper bodies and eyes to look at the protagonist” feature to the game.
After I demonstrated the progress I had made with the feature, I described a problem I had encountered that was causing some unwanted “janky” behavior.
I’m happy to announce that I eventually figured out how to solve that problem! (On every frame, compare the current rotation to the previous rotation. If the rotation hasn’t changed, don’t apply any extra rotation.) However, there could still be bugs with this feature, so I’m not ready to enable it in the game by default. Instead, you’ll have to manually enable the feature by pressing the “U” key 10 times. Please check it out and report any bugs that you find with the feature.
Changes and Improvements
- Testing a change to student protocol. Previously, students were incapable of reacting to corpses while they were in the “wearing towel and walking to shower to clean up” state. This was a deliberate design decision. However, every week, many players reported this as a “bug.” The reason why I wanted to keep it this way was to simplify matters; to prevent students from being able to enter a situation where they are in a towel, but doing things such as running to the faculty room to talk to teachers. However, it does look strange and unnatural for someone wearing a towel to calmly walk past a corpse. So, I’m going to try something: I’m going to make it possible for students in that “towel” state to react to corpses. However, if this creates a large number of new bugs, I’m just going to revert it back to how it was before. “The student doesn’t react to the corpse because they are focusing their attention on taking a shower and there is too much steam in the shower building to see clearly while they are focusing on doing something else” will be the explanation.
- If Raibaru smells gasoline nearby, she will warn Osana that something isn’t right. Previously, she only reacted to gasoline in a bucket. From now on, she will also warn Osana about the smell of gasoline coming from a nearby sabotaged water cooler, which will cause Osana to keep an eye out for the trap and disable it when she passes by it.
- After the player eliminates Osana, she appears at the title screen, and her appearance reflects the way she was eliminated (burned, drowned, electrocuted, etc). If Osana was rejected, Senpai would appear nearby her, except he was using his old hairstyle instead of his new hairstyle. His hair has been updated.
- Updated some of the models around Akademi (the pillars that appear at the corners of the exterior of the school building and the doorway that leads into the pool’s pump room).
- From now on, while crouching / crawling, the camera will not lower itself to such an extreme degree as before, and the camera movement with be smooth instead of abrupt.
- All text boxes that appear in the Calendar screen of 1980s Mode will now appear blue-and-white instead of pink-and-white, which is the color scheme of 202X Mode.
- Nearby radios will no longer play music during a game over sequence, since the radio music ruins the mood of the game over.
- Finally gave a proper texture to the pens that the characters hold, which have all just been solid red this entire time.
- The act of sweeping the mop is now accompanied by a sound effect, instead of being completely silent.
- Horuda Puresu will now smile and walk with straight posture if all of the bullies are dead.
- Changed the hair model of the mysterious woman who walks around in the shopping street.
- Updated the textures for some of the window frames and door frames around school.
- Changed the outfit that Amai wears in the cutscene where she meets Senpai.
Bug Fixes
- If the player got arrested, used the “Reset Day” feature, and then eavesdropped on the Basu sisters’ conversation, the sisters would discuss the police arriving at school, even though the player had reset back to a point in time before the police had arrived. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed numerous bugs related to the dance machine minigame. (The game not removing the arrows that were onscreen during the previous game over, instant game over when starting a song, semitransparent text lingering when it should be invisible, etc.)
- If the player put certain small items into the weapon bag (such as a circular saw) the item would float above the weapon bag. From now on, small items will simply be stuffed further down inside the bag so that they don’t stick out at all.
- Fixed bug that could result in the player becoming unable to advance the tutorial if the player dropped a garbage bag box so that Sumire’s corpse would land on top of the box and prevent the player from interacting with the box.
- During the 1980s mode tutorial, the player is asked to change out of bloody clothing. If the player changed into the spare uniform from the Sewing Club, the tutorial would refuse to move forward. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that would cause certain characters (Kiba, Dora, Himari, Sakura, Sumire, Tsubaki) to continue performing a “talking” animation even if their conversation partner was gone / distracted.
- Fixed bug that would cause the police to illogically identify the protagonist as a murderer if the player disposed of a bloody knife on the same day that a mind-broken slave killed Raibaru.
- Fixed bug that would cause a teacher to psychically become aware that the protagonist was guilty of murder if she noticed a corpse while she was already guarding another corpse.
- Fixed bug that would cause the player to immediately be sent to the counselor’s office if they reloaded a save where they had a dangerous weapon in their inventory.
- Fixed bug that would cause Raibaru to demonstrate weird behavior if the player giggled within Raibaru’s earshot during Osana’s Monday lunchtime rooftop event.
- Fixed bug that would cause the player to perform the “studying in class” animation when resting in the school infirmary after being beat up by delinquents.
- Fixed bug that would sometimes cause the liquid that was contained inside of a bucket to stay at the bottom of a bucket after the bucket had been emptied.
- Fixed bug that would cause Raibaru to repeat the “I would love to visit the Martial Arts Club!” dialogue even after she had finished mentoring the club.
- Fixed bug that would make puddles of blood look “glitchy and twitching” if they were spilled out of a bucket instead of being spawned in any other way.
- Fixed bug that would cause a cloud of white smoke to spawn when removing a corpse from a locker if the corpse had changed clothing earlier in the day.
- Fixed bug that would cause the player to levitate up into the air when walking close to some of the colliders in the street where all the shops are.
- If the police arrived at school, the Basu sisters would not have a morning conversation, as they were supposed to. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that would cause Kokona to “talk to the air” if her conversational partner (Saki) was present at school but was nowhere near her.
- During the 1980s Mode tutorial, incorrect text appeared at the top-right corner once the Weekday was displayed. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that would cause Taro’s name to appear in the 1980s Mode student info screen the first time that the player opened the screen.
- Fixed bug that caused Otohiko’s corpse to reappear at school if the player disposed of Otohiko’s corpse and then saved/loaded the game.
- Fixed bug that would cause a rival to freeze in place permanently if she was splashed with water while running to the confession tree.
- Fixed bug that was preventing Nemesis from wearing the proper uniform when disguising herself as a Student Council Member.
- Fixed bug that was preventing the rival’s reputation from dropping after the player gossiped about them on the Internet.
- Fixed bug that would sometimes cause Raibaru to block Osana’s path as she was trying to walk away from her desk.
- Fixed bug that would cause Senpai to not perform any type of reaction if he witnessed the player pickpocketing.
- Fixed bug that would cause the protagonist to be seen carrying a red pen in the “Low Rep Game Over” cutscene.
- Fixed bug that would cause the Journalist to misidentify a corpse in a trash bag as a visible corpse.
- Fixed bug that made certain characters’ phones telekinetically float above their hands in 202X mode.
- Fixed bug that was preventing the friendly gym teacher lady from having her trademark smiling mouth.
- Fixed bug that allowed the player to fit the giant 50kg weight from the gym into her tiny bookbag.
- Fixed bug that allowed players to break the tutorial sequence using the weapon bag or bookbag.
- Fixed typo that would appear in the text that displays when the player is removed from a club.
- Fixed bug in Yanvania that could prevent the boss fight with Dracula-chan from beginning.
- Fixed bug that prevented certain teachers’ podium papers from appearing.
Video Summary
YouTuber Bl00d recorded footage of the most significant content that was added to the game in the latest build! Check it out:
Amount of Remaining Work?
Some of you might remember the time when I used a “Trello” page to track the development of Osana. It was a checklist of all the work I needed to do in order to implement the first rival, and it was updated in real time whenever I completed one of my tasks.
Unfortunately, I had several negative experiences while updating the Trello:
- Sometimes, while working on my tasks, I realized that there was a task I forgot to add to the Trello, so I would update the Trello with the task I had forgotten. When people saw the list of tasks grow longer, they got upset, and even started inventing stupid conspiracy theories that I was just going to keep adding things to the list indefinitely in order to artificially lengthen the development of the game.
- Some tasks took multiple days to complete. This means that there were occasionally days when people refreshed the page and did not see anything change. When this happened, people became enraged and accused me of not doing any work, even even I had been working on the day for 12+ hours every day.
- A lot of the things I was working on were meant to be a secret or a surprise until the release of Osana – for example, the “Mysterious Obstacle”, who was eventually revealed to be Raibaru. Because I didn’t want to spoil these surprises with a Trello checklist, many of the Trello items were deliberately very vague. This only caused anger, confusion, conspiracy theories – the usual.
- Although every item on the checklist was important to me, some of those items didn’t seem very important to some people. When those people saw me working on checklist items they didn’t care about, they demanded that I stop and focus my attention elsewhere. When those people saw that the only remaining checklist items were things they didn’t care about, they demanded that I stop working on Osana and just release her.
- People frequently attempted to calculate the date that the checklist would be finished by looking at the rate of my progress. However, the rate of progress was inconsistent, due to each task taking a different amount of time to complete, which led to wildly inaccurate “When will YandereDev be finished?” estimates. This caused – you guessed it – anger and impatience.
Dealing with all of that stuff was really annoying and demotivating, and absolutely annihilated my enthusiasm for the idea of ever doing a Trello checklist again. So, even though I know a lot of people would love to see the Trello return, it’s almost guaranteed to never come back.
And, for the exact reasons named above, I wouldn’t like to give you a list of all remaining “Before the Crowdfunding Campaign” tasks, either. Instead, I’ll give you some deliberately vague information about what remains to be done. Firstly…
I’ve separated all of my tasks into four categories:
- Miscellaneous things that will improve the game in various ways – sometimes minor, sometimes major – but can get done super fast.
- Things that would potentially be an improvement to the game, but I’m not sure whether or not it’ll actually work out, so I’ll have to just have to experiment and see if I can get it to happen.
- Things that would absolutely be a huge improvement to the game, but would take multiple days to implement, and will require replacing systems that have been in place for years.
- Things that would be great to have in the game, but would require assets that I don’t have right now – 2D art, 3D models, voice acting, etc. (Whether or not those features get into the game will depend entirely on my ability to find volunteers who are interested in helping me.)
The past 2 weeks were almost entirely focused on things from Category “1” and “2”. There are currently less than 10 tasks remaining in each of those categories. (Category 4 is the wildcard, though; I don’t actually know whether or not anything from that list will actually get into the game prior to the crowdfunding campaign. We’ll just have to wait and see.)
Sometimes, I can complete multiple simple checklist items in a single day (primarily the ones from Category “1”) but there are also other checklist items that take multiple days of work to complete. And, of course, if I get a massive amount of bug reports, then that’ll cut into the time I could have spent working on checklist items. With all of those factors to consider, it’s kind of impossible to give you a meaningful and accurate estimate for when the checklist will be done. I’d like to say “The middle of October at the absolute soonest, the middle of November at the absolute latest.” But, of course, things never go as smoothly as I hope. We’ll see how things turn out.
Even though I deliberately left out many specifics in order to avoid the same problems that were created by the Trello checklist, I hope that this information paints a clearer picture of the current state of the game’s development!
As always, thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!