June 1st Update / The Medium Amai Update

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the day when you’ll refresh this blog to see a new post titled “The Big Amai Update” packed with dozens of new additions and improvements for Amai’s week, I’m going to have to ask you to hang in there for a bit longer; a huge overhaul of Amai’s week is still on the way, it’s just not happening today.

With that said, today’s update does contain several exciting and meaningful changes related to Amai that I think you’ll be very interested in! I guess you could call it “The Medium Amai Update” !

To read a list of everything that was changed or fixed in the latest build, scroll down past this outstanding artwork by Seina!

All of her illustrations are so gorgeous that it was really hard to pick just one to share with you! Please check out the rest of her artwork here, because it’s all really good!

New Hair for Amai

Amai’s old hair model has been replaced with a new one!

Out with the old…

…and in with the new!

“Taro Meets Amai” Cutscene Updated

Several significant changes have been made to the cutscene where Taro and Amai meet each other for the first time:

• Taro now animates at the beginning of the cutscene, instead of just sitting there like a statue for the first 25 seconds.
• Amai’s previous voice lines have been replaced with new voice lines!
• Amai has received new mouth animation to synchronize her lip movement with her new voice.

Listening to an actress’ audition is one thing, but putting her lines into the game is always the true test of “does this person’s voice really suit this character?”

Now that I’ve tested out this actress’ recordings within the game itself, and confirmed that her voice is a great fit for the Amai, I feel comfortable officially casting her for the role of this character!

In the coming months, you’ll start to gradually see Amai’s week become fully voiced! Exciting!

Amai Task Adjustments

A few tweaks have been made to Amai’s Task:

• From now on, when you feed someone during Amai’s Task, they will each say a unique line instead of repeating the exact same dialogue.
• Amai’s Task now involves a unique plate model and food model instead of repurposing models from elsewhere in the game.
• Amai’s Task now involves macarons instead of octodogs, and her dialogue has been adjusted accordingly.
• Amai’s Task now requires you to feed 10 people instead of 9.

Updated Moon Chokers

You’ve probably noticed that the members of the 202X Occult Club are wearing chokers with little “full moon” icons on the front. Have you ever wondered why? There’s actually some lore behind it!

Oka created those chokers herself; she was attempting to create an accessory that could “collect dark energy from the moon” to aid her club in demonic rituals. She gave the chokers to her clubmembers as gifts. Although they were skeptical about whether or not the chokers could actually harvest energy from the moon, they started wearing the chokers daily to show that they appreciated Oka taking the time to create gifts for them.

One day, Kokuma removed her choker and immediately fainted. When she awoke, she felt weak and frail – until she put the choker back on. The moment it touched her neck, she suddenly felt normal again.

When she told the rest of the club about this, the color drained from Oka’s face. “I’m so sorry! I’ve made you dependent on energy from the moon! If you remove those chokers you’re wearing…you might die! From now on, you need to keep those chokers on your necks in order to stay alive!”

The rest of the club didn’t have enough information to conclude exactly why Kokuma had fainted, but they’re all a very superstitious lot, so they’ve been wearing their moon chokers perpetually since that day.

My original plan – back when I first gave the Occult Club these chokers – was to put a different phase of the moon on each choker. One student would get a full moon, one student would get a crescent moon, etc. However, for various reasons, this plan just didn’t work out. However…

As of now, the Occult Club students are wearing new chokers which finally have the capacity to display different phases of the moon, as I originally intended!

(Depending on what school uniform they are wearing, it can be tough to see the choker, so I’ll give you a tip: the 2nd school uniform makes it much easier to see the choker on the boys.)

New Bookbag Models

Previously, the students’ bookbags were store-bought models that had a realistic art style. This looked awful, so students’ bookbags have been replaced with a new, original model that matches the game’s anime aesthetic!

Code Refactoring + Yandere Vision Status

I used the Unity Profiler to check the game for any scripts that were having an unusually significant impact on the game’s framerate. I identified a bunch of “problem scripts,” determined what the problems were, and refactored a lot of code to improve the game’s performance. I haven’t done an extensive comparison yet, but I feel confident that this build of the game will run a few FPS faster than the previous build!

Most scripts only received slight modifications, but one particular aspect of the game stood out as having significant room for improvement: the system that governs the glowing outlines that appear around characters during Yandere Vision. I decided to completely rework this feature to make it way more efficient. (I was incredibly surprised to learn that the outlines were actually affecting performance even when Yandere Vision wasn’t active!)

Because I had to change so many different areas of the game’s code to refactor the outlines of Yandere Vision, it’s possible that I may have inadvertently broken some functionality as part of the process. For example, maybe you’ll encounter a bug like, “When you befriend a student, the outline of their body turns green, but the outline of their hair turns yellow.”

As usual, if you see a bug, simply report it, and I’ll fix it as quickly as I can.

Improvements

• When using Yandere Vision during a stealth mission, enemies were highlighted in red, but useful things (such as the circuit breaker in the stalker house stealth mission) were not highlighted accordingly. I’ve gone through the stealth mission levels and added cyan highlights to things that the player can use to advance through the level.
• Kokona’s hair texture has been updated many times – but, each time it was updated, it got more and more compressed. I have reverted back to an earlier version of Kokona’s hair that was less compressed. It may be updated in the future, but only if zero compression can be guaranteed.
• To make Kenko’s in-game portrayal accurate to his profile on the official website, he now eats vegetables at lunchtime instead of eating traditional Japanese food. (He still performs a chopstick animation, but I don’t have a replacement at this point in time.)
• Chigusa’s gravure photoshoot minigame now has a background music, camera flash effects, and a pink filter on the screen to give it a more sensual vibe. Now it matches the mental image I originally had for it when I first envisioned it!
• The kitten now has a 90% to make a realistic meowing/purring sound, a 9% chance to meow in a way that is a reference to a viral video of a cat with a strange meow, and a 1% chance to play a voice clip recorded by me.
• The police that appear in the end-of-day police investigation sequence now have slightly different faces and bodies, instead of being identical clones except for their hair colors.
• Previously, boxes of foil and boxes of garbage bags made the same noise when the player was picking them up. They now have individual sound effects.
• Toga’s animation in the “Toga reacts to Ryoba single-handedly beating up a gang of delinquents” cutscene has been updated slightly.
• On the Week Select screen, there is now an “Are you sure?” window before you advance forward to your playthrough.
• Adjusted the color of Kenko’s hair to get it closer to the color in his official artwork.
• Adjusted Sakyu Basu’s portrait pose to make it more accurate to her official artwork.
• There is now a poster hanging on the side of the video game store in 1989.
• Slightly tweaked the text of Mai Wakahara’s profile.

Fixes

• In the previous build, I attempted to make Spiteful students refuse to do favors for the player if the player was using the Intimidate feature. This didn’t work as intended, and instead, I just made Spiteful students always refuse to “Go Away” regardless of whether or not the player was using the Intimidate feature, and also, I forgot to update the Follow Me and Distract Them features. Oops. This bug has been fixed.
• If a student informed a teacher about a weapon on the ground and the player picked up the weapon before the teacher could see it and then killed the teacher while they were leaving the area, the student who informed the teacher about the weapon would freeze in place permanently. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player stood on the floor above or below Osana during her “walking around and giving her opinion on each club” event, the player would be able to learn Osana’s opinion, even though there wa a floor/ceiling separating the player and Osana. This bug has been fixed.
• If a teacher attempted to apprehend the player while the player was in the middle of the “dumping corpse into woodchipper” animation, the game would not properly transition into the “fighting teacher” state, and the game would softlock. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player killed a student by smothering them, put the corpse into a locker, then released the corpse from the locker, the corpse would begin bleeding, even though the victim hadn’t died in a way that would result in blood. This bug has been fixed.
• In the cutscene at the end of 1980s Mode where the Journalist confronts Ryoba, the police officers were performing a walking animation instead of an idle animation. This oversight has been corrected. (Also, all the police now have unique appearances.)
• If the player used a sewing machine for an action that was not related to a school uniform, but did so while holding a school uniform, the player would not drop the school uniform, making the animation look incorrect. This bug has been fixed.
• Through some extremely specific series of events, it was possible to get teleported from the “text message with Amai” cutscene to the “talking with Sakyu/Inkyu in the cave under the cherry tree” cutscene. This bug has been fixed.
• If a student eats poison, and then the player saves and loads, upon reloading, the student run to a completely different toilet instead of running to the one they were originally running to. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player removed a corpse from a locker, an invisible collider would make it difficult for the game to acknowledge that the player was close enough to the corpse to pick it up. This bug has been fixed.
• In Custom Mode, if the player designed a character with “Sunbathe” followed by “RandomPatrol,” they would not successfully change out of their swimsuit before proceeding to the next phase of their day.
• Schoolday #8’s atmosphere/sanity variations were not synchronized, meaning that the music gradually became desynchronized the longer that the player played the game. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player wore a Science Club labcoat and then tried to use a locker in the shower building to change clothing, the protagonist’s body would turn invisible. This bug has been fixed.
• One of the boys in the 1989 sports club had a hair model that was not correctly changing shape when it got wet. His hair model has been updated/replaced to fix this oversight.
• There were several surfaces throughout the school where – if the player emptied a bucket of water – the water and surface would flicker. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player was apprehended while using a blowtorch, the blowtorch sound effect would never end, and would loop indefinitely. Oops! This bug has been fixed.
• If the player saved the game while a key was on the ground and then loaded that save, the key would be gone. This bug is no longer possible.
• If Raibaru witnessed Amai’s corpse, she would react as if she was seeing Osana’s corpse. This bug has been fixed.
• Some of Ayano’s hairstyles would block her vision when she entered first-person mode. This bug has been fixed.
• Due to a bug, Schoolday #13 was not playing in 1980s Mode. Oops! That bug has been fixed.

Direct3D 12

In the .zip file for the latest build, you will find a .bat file named ForceD3D12.bat – if you run this, you will force Yandere Simulator to launch with Direct3D 12 instead of Direct3D 11. Why would you want to do this? Apparently, it improves the framerate on some graphics cards. Only try this if your graphics card is extremely recent – like, from the last 5 years.

“I’m not clicking a suspicious bat file!”

Yeah, I feel you. If you you want to confirm that ForceD3D12.bat isn’t doing anything malicious, simply rename it to .txt and open it with a text editor. You’ll see that there is only one line of code in it:

.YandereSimulator.exe –force-d3d12

Characters Page Update

Are you familiar with the Characters page of the official website?

Over the past couple of weeks, it’s been updated with a lot of new characters, and some of them have profiles that contain information quite relevant to the game’s backstory and lore!

In case you’re the type of player who loves to read up on the game’s backstory, I thought I’d give you a heads-up about this!

(And I’m still not done! I’m currently sitting on a total of 10 character illustrations that are just waiting to be uploaded to the official website. Between all the other things I have to do, it’s hard to find the time to write character profiles…)

Patreon

Earlier this year, I stated that I would be putting forth an effort to post much more frequently on Patreon…and I haven’t been doing a good job of staying true to that commitment. I let more than 2 months pass without a single post on Patreon! Owch! I’d like to apologize for that. I’ve written a post on Patreon explaining the reason for it.

In short, my mentality was: “There is no value in posting an exclusive sneak preview of something that will be released in just a few days. So, I shouldn’t bother posting anything unless it doesn’t meet that criteria.” The problem is, almost every new thing added to the game is “being released in just a few days,” leading to a situation where I almost never feel justified in making any posts on Patreon.

I asked the patrons to provide me with their guidance, and a lot of different people all shared the same sentiment: “posting anything is better than posting nothing.” So I think I’ll abandon the “I shouldn’t bother posting this to Patreon…” mentality, and embrace a new, “Eh, why not? I’ll just go ahead and toss this on Patreon!” mentality.

As a result, I’ll probably start posting to Patreon a lot more often in the future. Just wanted to make sure you were aware of that!

Thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!