Saving, Loading, and Genocide

May 6th 8:40 PM Update: Whoops! There was a bug that made dead bodies pop out of lockers in the Alphabet Killer Challenge, if the player loaded a save file during the challenge. I’ve released a new build where this bug is fixed. Now the save/load feature can actually help during the Alphabet Killer Challenge.

To discover the meaning behind the ominous title of this blog post, scroll down past this absolutely gorgeous illustration by Kenishman!

He’s got a few other beautiful drawings in his gallery, so be sure to check them out!

This is an especially lengthy blog post with some pretty big news; click Continue Reading to see the whole thing!

Partial Saving/Loading Functionality

When playing the Hitman games, I rely heavily on the ability to save and load in the middle of gameplay – a core gameplay mechanic that Yandere Simulator has been missing this entire time. In December of 2018, a very rudimentary saving/loading system was put into the game as a test. It was pretty broken, but implementing it was a worthwhile experience, because it taught me what I would have to consider when ultimately designing the game’s final saving/loading system.

If I say, “The problem is figuring out a way to serialize and deserialize an array of references at runtime,” and you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, I don’t blame you. Fortunately, there are people who do understand exactly what that means – and they also how to help me find a solution, too! Thanks to the tools and assistance provided to me by the incredible Abcight, I’ve been able to make some outstanding progress towards implementing a proper saving/loading system over the past few days!

It is now possible to save and load in the middle of school gameplay, and expect the game to create a fairly accurate reproduction of the school scene at the time that you saved. First of all, you’ve got the basics:

• Time of day
• Student locations
• Yandere-chan’s sanity, bloodiness, inventory
• Yandere-chan’s weapons (concealable weapons only)
• Your current progress in the Alphabet Killer Challenge
• Who is alive, who is dead, and where their corpses are at
• Whether Yandere-chan is wearing her uniform or club attire
• Whether or not the police are currently en route to the school
• Whether or not the player has already disposed of a student’s corpse
• The locations of a few objects (such as the puzzle cube, blood-cleaning robot, and weapon case)

But that’s not all; there’s also a lot of other miscellaneous data that is being tracked…but the feature isn’t 100% finished yet, so you might see some strange things happen when saving/loading. For example, the game isn’t tracking the existence of blood pools or bloody footprints, so loading a save will cause all blood in the school to disappear. That’s a pretty significant exploit! I’m sure that some players will take advantage of it, before I fix it!

I tested Saving/Loading in dozens of scenarios and fixed every game-breaking bug I could find, but there are still some scenarios that I haven’t tested yet. For example, I haven’t tested what happens if you save and load while holding a large, non-concealable weapon like a baseball bat. Maybe it results in Yandere-chan getting permanently stuck in a state where she is holding an invisible weapon that she can’t put away or attack with. I honestly don’t know! If you encounter strange bugs while trying to use the Save/Load feature, consider only saving with Yandere-chan in the most “basic” state possible, to reduce the chances that something will go wrong.

Even though the saving/loading feature is only partially functional right now, I gained a lot of valuable experience and knowledge while hooking up the things described above. As a result of this progress, it’s very likely that the Osana demo will ship with a mostly-functional save/load feature! Exciting stuff!!

Genocide Ending

 

Are you familiar with Far Cry 4? At the beginning of the game, the villain captures you and takes you to his mansion. He asks you to sit at a table and eat some food, then leaves the room. As soon as he is gone, you are able to escape, thus beginning your adventure…but, if you actually obey his orders and remain at the table for 15 minutes, you get a secret ending!

That’s the sort of thing that I want to include in my games; features that make the player say, “Whoa, the developer actually thought of that? Wow! I didn’t think there would actually be an outcome for that decision!” For a long time, I’ve wanted to include something special in Yandere Simulator: an option to rush the story to a conclusion if the player successfully completes a very difficult task at the start of the game. The first time I ever mentioned it was around 5 years ago…and, as of today, it is now possible to trigger an “ending” by accomplishing a very specific goal!

So, what exactly is the criteria for this “ending”? I’ll give you a few clues:

1. Senpai must remain inside of the school.
2. The task must be completed over the course of a single day – the first day of gameplay.
3. It will not trigger if easter eggs are activated, or if the “Z” debug command is used.
4. It’s called the “Genocide Ending” for a reason.

Upon completing the task, the game will fade to black. Here is where I’d like to put a cutscene, but for now, it’s just a black screen with voice acting. When the characters are done speaking, you’ll get to see a brief cutscene revealing the outcome of your actions.

In case you think it sounds tedious and frustrating, keep in mind that it’s WAY easier when you utilize the new Saving/Loading feature to record/restore your progress. Good luck, but save often and keep multiple saves so that you can revert back to an earlier save if the game glitches out!

Fixes, Changes, Additions

If you are experiencing a low framerate, you have the option of entering the Settings menu and using the “Disable Distant Animations” feature to instruct characters to stop animating when they are a certain distance away from the camera. Disabling animations will cause the game to do less calculations, which should improve the performance of the game. If you are seeing characters slide across the ground without animation, and you don’t understand why, it’s because you enabled the “Disable Distant Animations” feature. If you don’t want to see characters slide around anymore, enter the Settings menu and disable that feature.

On a side note, if you experience a low framerate when looking in the direction of the school plaza, I suggest entering the Settings menu and disabling “Transparent Windows”.

• The “Disable Distant Animations” feature had a side-effect that would cause the Basu sisters to spin in circles during their morning conversations. As of the latest build, this will no longer occur.
• At some point in time in the past, I tried to put flowers on the “mythical tree hill”. The flowers hurt the framerate, so they were removed. Now, I have attempted to restore flowers to the hill, using a more optimized shader that shouldn’t harm the FPS. The size/shape/movement of the flowers will most likely change in the near future.
• Attempted to fix issue that would cause the maid minigame to display “$55.55” for all tips at the results screen if the game was being played in a region that uses commas for decimal points instead of periods.
• Fixed bug that would cause the game to incorrectly set clubs as “closed” if the player killed club leaders and then triggered the “over half of school’s population is dead” game over.
• During the “End of Day” sequence, you can press the ESC key to load the most recent save, in case you want to immediately retry instead of being sent home.
• Fixed bug that would cause two of the Occult club students to get stuck while investigating the piano in one of the storage rooms.
• Fixed bug that caused blunt weapons to make Yandere-chan bloody, even though the victim wasn’t supposed to be spilling blood.
• The Heartbroken screen now has 5 options; “Reset Day” “Reset Week” “Load Most Recent Save” “Main Menu” and “SNAP”.
• Fixed bug that would prevent subtitles from displaying during the two science boys’ conversation about Yanvania.
• Fixed bug that was preventing Sakyu from playing a voiced line when she catches you trying to steal her ring.
• Fixed bug that would allow Snap Mode to be triggered after getting the “school shuts down” game over.
• Attempted to fix issue that would cause students to get stuck on props in the Photography clubroom.
• Fixed bug that would cause Student Council members to run away after pepper-spraying Yandere-chan.
• It is now possible to trade Info-chan panty shots for money (ten panty shots for $100).
• It is no longer possible to close a door while a student is walking through that door.
• Fixed bug that would allow the player to cyber-stalk a student who had been arrested.