June 7th Bug-Fixing Build

Before I continue with the blog post, I’d like to remind you that I’m going to be posting concept art on my Patreon for 30 days in a row!

There weren’t any major game-breaking bugs in the previous build, but there was one really obvious glaring typo that I knew I was going to get dozens of reports about, so I’ve decided to just upload a new build that fixes that problem and also makes a handful of other additions/improvements/fixes.

This is the part where I usually say something like “Scroll down past this gorgeous illustration by so-and-so…” but today, you’re getting something a little different.

Today, I was delighted to receive some fan art from miserable honey, who was aware of an obscure piece of trivia about one of Yandere Simulator’s characters – a tragic event that occurred during Megami’s childhood.

What’s going on in the left half of the image? Well, to be honest, it’s quite morbid, so I’ve censored it. To see the uncensored version – and to hear the “lore” behind the picture – click “Continue Reading.”

Minimalist HUD Feature

Occasionally, I hear someone say that the game’s HUD feels “cluttered.” I think, “Seriously?! There are only three HUD elements, and they are tucked away in the corners of the screen…” However, for the people who really care, I’ve decided to add a new feature:

Like in many other games, it is now possible to activate a “Minimalist HUD” mode. When this mode is active, your clock / sanity / reputation will not appear onscreen unless they have recently changed (time of day changed, sanity went up/down, reputation went up/down). However, you can still manually force them to display anytime by pausing the game.

To toggle the Minimalist HUD mode on or off, enter the Display section of the Settings menu; the same section where you can change the game’s resolution and toggle fullscreen on/off.

Trail Destination Selection Feature

If you press the “T” key (or, on controller, press in the left control stick) you can spawn a pink “trail” that leads you to class. It is now possible to decide exactly where that trail leads to.

By holding down the “T” key (or left control stick) you can open a window that lets you choose where the trail is going to lead you. This feature was added to the game to help new players find their way around school!

…but…how is a new player going to know to hold down the “T” key? It’s almost like a feature you would would discover on accident. I’ll have to figure out the best way to communicate this information to new players…

Town Lighting Command

It was brought to my attention that if the player disables shadows from the Settings menu, shadows are not disabled in the Town scene. I entered the Town scene to investigate why the shadows were not being disabled, and I figured it out immediately…

I’ve been looking at the town with shadows enabled for so long that when shadows are disabled, it looks weird and wrong! Blah! I think it looks terrible without shadows!

Rendering shadows while the game is running requires a lot of processing power, which can negatively impact the framerate. The correct solution is to “bake” a “lightmap.” That way, the game will already have all of the knowledge necessary to apply shadows to the models, and won’t have to calculate anything related to light or shadows at runtime. However…I couldn’t figure out how to get it to work, so I’ll have to postpone that change to the game for now. Instead, I’ll give you this:

When you’re in the town, you can now press the “L” key on your keyboard to toggle shadows on and off. That should help players on lower-end machines!

Improvements

• If the player got kicked out of a club and then tried to speak to the club leader while he was in the vicinity of his club, he would only say a line of dialogue about not allowing the player to rejoin the club, and the player would not be able to interact with him normally. From now on, club leaders will only speak the line about not allowing you to rejoin once, and afterwards, will then become available for normal interactions.
• From the Task screen, you can now press a button to instantly jump to a student’s profile, allowing you to quickly Tag them so that it’s more convenient to find a student whose Task you’re trying to turn in.

Fixes

• If a male drama club student was waiting for the drama club leader to arrive in the clubroom, they would perform a “leaning on desk” animation instead of a “sitting and waiting” animation. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player tried to electrocute a male student, the electrocution animation would play, but the code would fail to execute, and the boy would not truly be electrocuted or dead at all. This bug has been fixed.
• When using the Void Goddess to enable/disable students, Martial Arts Club students and Light Music Club students were labeled incorrectly. This bug has been fixed.
• The word “Reputation” was spelled “Repuation”. Ooooops. This typo has been fixed.

Necessary Adjustment

I know this will sound like a step backward rather than an improvement, but it was essential. It is no longer possible to reset the week on Saturday. This is because the game initializes a bunch of variables when the Calendar date rolls over to Saturday, and resetting the week upon reaching Saturday would ruin everything. I’m sorry, but you just can’t be allowed to do it anymore.

Megami Lore

Here, gaze upon miserable honey’s gorgeous artwork in all of its tragic beauty:

When Megami was a little girl, her father gave her a hamster to keep as a pet. Megami absolutely loved the hamster; it brought her more joy than anything else in her life, and caring for the hamster was the always highlight of her day.

On her 7th birthday, her father commanded her to kill the hamster. Naturally, Megami wanted to know why. He explained that, as a member of the Saikou family, absolutely no form of weakness whatsoever would be tolerated – emotional, psychological, or otherwise. He explained that she must be ready to do anything for the sake of the Saikou family – must be prepared to make any sacrifice at any time – must be prepared to have a heart of ice. To prove her loyalty to the family, and to prove that she was willing to put the family above all else, she would have to destroy the one thing she loved the most in the world for no reason other than to demonstrate her commitment to her family.

It was Saisho Saikou who had devised this plan. He had forced Megami’s father to do the same thing at 7 years old, and now Megami’s father was continuing the tradition. Megami’s brother Kencho would be put through the same trial once he reached the age of 7, too. It was Saisho’s way of guiding children to develop the way that he wanted them to – guiding them to develop the traits that he wanted the Saikou family to embody.

Megami’s brilliant young mind thought of a million ways to argue in favor of sparing the hamster – “He’s a member of the family, I can’t kill him.” “I don’t care about him very much, so this is not an appropriate way to prove my loyalty.” – but, in the end, she decided not to protest at all. She understood that this was a “ritual,” a “rite of passage,” and that the only acceptable outcome was obeying the command that she had been given; doing anything else would be seen as failure.

Megami took the knife that was handed to her, determined the most optimal way to grant the creature a swift, painless, merciful death, and struck.

It is worth mentioning that Megami hesitated longer than any other Saikou family member who had been put through this test.

It is also worth mentioning that, although Megami’s father and brother eventually forgot about their hamsters, she never forgot about hers.