Hello, folks. It’s Saturday and it is time for me to give the moooooooooorning report. Gives you the long and the short! Every grunt, roar, and… Wait… it’s night. Never mind, continue your musical numbers elsewhere. Sorry, sorry. Because of the astronomical amount of IRL work this week and completely random schedule, I have lost track of time. If it wasn’t for my weekly report, I doubt I would have realized that it was Saturday.

Writing: I’m in a marathon event right now. This coming week is the first week in months where I had a set schedule! That’s right, I don’t have to wake up at utterly random times and can have some sort of semblance of normality in my life. To celebrate this, I’ve cleared out nearly all of my commitments, got everything in order, and am doing a writing marathon. For the next seven days, I am going full bore to completely write all of Kika’s scenes. Can I write roughly 60,000 words in one week? Probably not, but I’m going to make one helluva go at it. I’ve learned a lot of tricks over the years of being a visual novel writer. Time to show a few of them. Wordcount will update next week.

Dakimakura: Still waiting on the Natalie images. However, I did a personal commissioned with CG artist to do a special Zuri one for me. Originally, I wasn’t going to share it because I am an evil mustache-twiddling madman, but I was recently talked down from that position. Are the daki backers (or any random passerby) interested? As a reminder, if you can’t see it in the link, these are fairly NSFW.

http://www.idhasstudios.com/Images/NSFW/NSFWZuriDakiA.png

http://www.idhasstudios.com/Images/NSFW/NSFWZuriDakiB.png

For today’s chat, I want to talk about some of the GUI things. When we decided to split up the storylines between the Katajion Defense Force and the rebels, the idea of having a split GUI was pondered. The factions themselves are fundamentally different. The Katajions are a lot more formal than the rebels and drastically more regimented. Anton has the power of Intelligence Director Doichu and the funding of the directorship on his side. Things like finding ways to refuel the ship and how they are going to keep food in their bellies isn’t an underlying issue. The individual natures of each faction resulted in us wanting to take some differences in the GUI.

 

The window being shown is the presenting window. This window is for both regular interrogation scene where you can present either people to the person you are talking with or in key situations where you need to propose a suspect or an item. The two windows being shown are for those key moments. One thing we are debating is whether you, the player, should be limited to just the basic information about the person/object you are trying to present or if we should make it a little more interesting with Natalie adding clues/red herrings based on scenes and evidence gathered.

I’m torn myself on this. On one hand, having Natalie give her feedback on it means that clues you might not have caught or events in dialog that were overlooked can be given to the player for free. It makes it easier for the player to determine their course of action. Green clues meaning that it supports this person/item being the right one, yellow being indifferent info, and red being evidence that disagrees with you. In the pictures shown above, the evidence shows that Kika is much more likely to be a pillow thief than Anton. It takes some of the organic nature of investigation out and makes it easier on the player.

At the same point, it does make things more difficult. Just because all evidence is flashing green doesn’t mean that you have the right person. Missing key events, asking the wrong questions, coming to the wrong conclusions in questioning scenes can build you into a false answer. Like a real investigator, you have to determine if the facts are what they appear to be. It could add a new layer of gameplay of intrigue while not forcing you to constantly reload to try and remember some random scene.

So what do you all think about it? A handicap that takes away the fun of drawing your own conclusions or a nifty system that makes life easier and will make you think?

That’s all for this week’s episode. Tune in next time to see if Chief managed to give himself carpal tunnel hitting that mark. Until next time, Chief out!