July 15th Update

Hey! Got a new build for you today!

To read a list of everything that was added / changed / fixed / improved in the latest update, scroll down past this beautiful cosplay of Ayano, featuring the Ayano cosplayer from this blog post!

Amai Thursday Picnic Event Sabotage Overhaul

The process of sabotaging Amai’s Thursday picnic event has been completely changed. It’s no longer as simple as “grab sugar, sprinkle it in a specific location.” But, before I tell you all about it, I want to mention something…

I’m actually curious to know if the new process is something that players will be able to figure out on their own, or if players will get confused and won’t know what the heck to do. So, perhaps, instead of scrolling down and learning about the new sabotage process yourself, you should download the latest build, jump to Thursday of Week 2, and see if you can sabotage the picnic yourself, without hearing me explain how. I’d be interested in learning if it’s self-explanatory or not!

When you’re ready, scroll down to read the rest of the blog post and hear me explain the process in detail!

…

…you ready now?

…

…you sure?

…

…are you *sure* that you’re sure?

…

…last chance to turn baaaaack…

…

Alright, here’s the new process:

In order to make Amai and Taro completely lose their appetites, you have to disgust them with the smell of rotting meat, and also expose them to a gruesome sight: a dead animal with its internal organs spilling out of its body.

In order to do this, you must…

…catch and kill a kitten.

…haha, just kidding! I was only messing with you. Did I get ya?

Anyway, the actual process is:

1. Obtain arts and crafts materials from the Art Room
2. Obtain rotten meat from the Biology Lab
3. Obtain scissors from the Art Club
4. Obtain thread from the Sewing Club
5. Obtain sugar from the Home Ec room

…and then bring all of those supplies to the crafting table in the workshop.

There, you’ll use the arts and crafts materials to make a fake animal corpse. Ayano will stuff the rotten meat and the sugar inside of the fake corpse, which will attract insects and produce a nasty smell.

Then, just drop the fake dead animal on Amai’s picnic blanket (before 1:00 PM!) and come back at lunchtime. The area will be swarming with insects, and will smell putrid. Amai and Senpai will show up, get grossed out, and completely give up on having a picnic.

I think this is way better than the one-step “spread sugar” process from before!

Amai Stealth Mission Update

The process for completing Amai’s befriend/betray stealth mission has been updated, as well. A new feature has been added: You can now take out your smartphone and take pictures, just like during normal gameplay at school. Your goal is now to take three photographs of incriminating evidence inside the bakery, in addition to obtaining the receipts. Text at the top of the screen will keep track of your progress.

This requires more effort from the player, and I think it’s substantially more interesting than “grab receipts, leave.”

New Amai Animations and Voice Lines

Amai and Senpai’s Friday morning interaction now has animations and voice lines:

Also, Amai and Senpai’s Thursday lunchtime sabotaged interaction now has animations and voice lines, too.

Changes

• Amai’s Monday morning conversation with Uekiya establishes that the gardening club arrived at school early. To reflect this, the gardening club now spawns in the school plaza on Monday of Week 2.
• From now on, in 202X Mode, whenever you eliminate a rival, you unlock that rival’s idle/walk animations at the Persona mirrors.
• It is now possible to skip the “Cooking Octodogs” animation by pressing the X button (or the F key if you’re on keyboard).
• Amai’s idle/walk animations have been added as options for the protagonist in Custom Mode and in 1980s Mode.
• Dismembered body parts are now censored whenever the player activates the “censor corpses” option.
• The title screen now uses the new blood texture instead of the old blood texture.

Improvements and Fixes

• If the player became bloody and then took out Ayano’s phone, the “covered in blood” texture that was projected onto Ayano’s body would project onto the phone screen, as well. This looked bad, because the part of the texture meant for Ayano’s hands made it look like there were two bloody handprints on the screen. The texture has been updated – only when in first-person view – so that this effect is not so obvious.
• In the opening cutscene for the Amai stealth mission, Ayano looks to the right. This was actually an animation of Ayano looking left, played while her character model was “inverted.” This resulted in a bug: her hairstyle would be flipped horizontally. I’ve added a “Ayano looks left” animation to the game so that I don’t have to use this inversion workaround.
• During Week 2, if the player dropped a weapon on the ground and let a student report it to the faculty, the student would subsequently return to their original routine from Week 1 instead of continuing their Week 2 routine. This bug has been fixed.
• Previously, the female cooking club apron had some skin-weighting issues, which means that it deformed improperly and some of its polygons clipped into itself. The apron model has been updated, and these issues are no longer present.
• If the player got sent to the counselor before Amai and Akane finished having their morning conversation, Akane would not enter her routine properly after the player exited the counselor’s office. This bug has been fixed.
• Originally, Info-chan’s window opened and closed smoothly. At some point in time, something broke, which caused Info-chan’s window to open smoothly but then slam shut in one frame. This bug has been fixed.
• In Week 2 of 1980s Mode and Custom Mode, the gardening club leader and student council member would stand where they’re supposed to stand for Amai’s events in Week 2 of 202X Mode. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player went into the Foreign Studies room and maneuvered the camera so that a display case was between the player and the camera, parts of the room would stop rendering. This bug has been fixed.
• In Custom Mode, if the player gave their Senpai a custom uniform and then triggered the Genocide Ending, their Senpai would appear bald in the Genocide cutscene. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player activated the Miyuki easter egg while using a Custom Hair hairstyle, both the Custom Hair and Miyuki’s hair would be active simultaneously. This bug has been fixed.
• After the Amai/Uekiya event ended, Uekiya would return to her “wait for Amai to show up” routine instead of returning to her normal gardening routine. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player set a faculty member (teacher, nurse, coach) on fire in 1980s Mode, their entire body would not turn black; only parts of their body. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player fed Osana food while she was standing on stairs, Raibaru would tilt forward 45 degrees instead of standing like a normal person. This bug has been fixed.
• In Custom Mode, if the player selected a male student council member and inverted his hair, the “invert hair” feature would stop working. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player shoved Sonoko from the rooftop into a dumpster, her “bodyguards” would swarm the dumpster and spin in circles around it. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player spoke to a member of the Photography Club in 1980s Mode, a modern camera would spontaneously manifest around their neck. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player told Osana to “Go Away,” she would spin in circles in front of the confession tree instead of standing there properly. This bug has been fixed.
• If you killed Amai while she was laying a blanket on the ground, the blanket would permanently accompany her corpse at all times. THis bug has been fixed.
• If the player told Osana to “Go Away” 1 minute before her Friday interaction with Musume, the interaction would never happen. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player played the Light Music Club rhythm minigame and then activated Yandere Vision, all outlines would disappear. This bug has been fixed.
• In Mission Mode, if the player used a chainsaw to stealth-kill Nemesis, she would not play a death animation. This bug has been fixed.
• The Save/Load screen was not accepting input properly if the player was using a PlayStation controller. This bug has been fixed.
• During the “Sakyu and Inkyu reveal their true nature to Ayano” cutscene, Sakyu’s face was solid red. This bug has been fixed.
• During the Amai/Uekiya event, two of Amai’s voice lines were swapped around. This oversight has been corrected.
• After dismembering a male student, parts of his body appeared white. This bug has been fixed.

Known Issue

There are no post-processing effects when looking through your smartphone in the rival bakery mission. This is intentional, since I need to troubleshoot a problem with depth-of-field, and I didn’t want to delay the build. I intend to add post-processing effects in the next build. Sorry for any inconvenience, and thank you for your patience.

What’s Left?

You might remember that, way back on January 1st, I calculated how long it would take my animator to finish all of the animations necessary to implement Amai. The date I landed on was July 8th. Well, now we’re past July 8th. So, how close was my estimate?

Pretty close – only 3 animations from that list remain. Friday Lunch, Friday Lunch Sabotaged, and the Confession cutscene. So, why didn’t we hit the target? It’s because, in addition to asking him to animate Amai’s events, I also tasked him with creating a bunch of other animations, too; the cooking animation (and 3D models), the 12th Anniversary animations (and 3D models), the “Living Security Camera” animations (and 3D models), and other stuff, as well. Considering all of the tasks that I loaded onto this guy, it’s actually extremely impressive that we came extremely close to hitting the original July 8th estimate!

I estimate that “Friday Lunch” and “Friday Lunch Sabotaged” will be finished very quickly, since both of them are brief cutscenes where Taro only says 5 short lines of dialogue to himself. After that, all that’s left to animate is Amai’s Confession cuscene, and then all of her events will be fully voiced and animated!

“Wait – what about the event where Amai tells Ayano about the rival bakery? What about the cutscene where Amai visits Ayano’s home and thanks her for stopping the bakery?”

Those are in the category of, “Eh, those would be nice to have, but they aren’t 100% essential, and I’m not going to delay the game’s development for them.” If I run out of tasks to give the animator, I’ll ask him for these animations. However, I’m still very content to say “Amai’s finished!” even if those events are not animated.

Oh, by the way – when I made that original estimate, I kinda forgot about something. The confession cutscene has two outcomes, so it should really count as three cutscenes: the buildup, the “accepted” outcome, and then the “rejected” outcome. I don’t think this means it’ll take 6 weeks in total, but expecting a several-minute-long cutscene to be fully animated in only 2 weeks might be asking a bit much. Don’t be surprised if it takes longer than 2 weeks for this cutscene to be 100% finished.

Now, there is one tiny piece of bad news I need to share. The script for Amai’s confession has been written, but some of the voice lines have not been delivered yet. The animator won’t be able to animate that cutscene until all of the lines are delivered. So, he might not be able to jump onto the Confession task immediately as soon as the other Friday animations are finished. (Don’t worry, though, I have plenty of other requests for him that are unrelated to Amai, so it’s not like he’ll just be sitting around with nothing to do…)

By the way, I’m not blaming the voice actors or anything like that. They have lives and jobs outside of Yandere Simulator, they contribute to multiple projects, and they’re generously volunteering their time and skill when they have no obligation to do so. I don’t have any right to complain if some lines are a bit late! I have a million tasks to work on, anyway, so it’s no sweat off my back.

That’s the current state of Amai. Ah, we’re so close to the finish line that I can almost taste it! Exciting times, right?

Bottom-of-Blog-Post Fan Art Spotlight

Check out this awesome Oka Ruto cosplay!

By the way, apparently, this cosplayer will be allowed to enter an upcoming cosplay contest if she gets enough Likes on this video. So, please, drop a Like if you can!