Skye artwork plus other news

I was going to post an update before February but I had a lot to deal with last few weeks, including not having electricity for a couple days, but everything is back in order now. I manged to complete one stage in January and mostly finished planning the one remaining though there are a couple old stages I think need some heavy improvement that I've been doing this week.

At this point, 90% of the game is fully mapped out it's mostly a matter of just going through and drawing the assets+building everything. I should note again the game still has much development left to go however because I haven't made many new enemies or animations in a long time trying to get this part out of the way. When I started the game(as Nocturne) I had initially wanted to keep it short, shorter than MR at least and maybe only take around 4-5 hours or so to finish. I can pretty much confirm though the game will take most people much longer than that to play through, probably in the neighborhood of 10-15 hours without trying to find everything. Even though I cut down on the stage count over time, many of the existing ones are now twice as large and require backtracking to 100% and to make progress sometimes. There are a lot of key items now as well so I'm thinking I'm going to make a separate menu instead of just showing them on the bottom of the pause screen. 

 

Anyway, the character here is Skye Chione, a harpy who lives in a castle hanging above the mountains near the city. The castle only appeared recently when the city of Shingetsu became overrun with demons, and Skye was a just a regular citizen beforehand, though she is a foreigner not fond of human society and it's laws, having grown up in the wilderness. She doesn't care about the current turmoil but finds amusement watching Kotone's struggle to deal with the situation, sometimes putting more obstacles in her path.

 

私は二月の前に更新を投稿する欲しいでしたでもここ数週間にたくさんことに対処しなければならないでした、二日には電気がないことも含めて。　でも今は正常に戻っています。一月に一ステージをすんで残り一が大半に企画を済んでした。けどまだ数のステージを練習に戻ってしないと感じはもあります。この時点で、ゲームの地図が90%企画されており、あとはアセットを描き、すべてを構築するだけです。しかし、私は長い時間には新し敵とかアニメをしなかった、だからこのゲームにはまだ多くの開発が残されている。開発のときは（Nocturneとして）当初は短くまとめたかった、せめてMRろりも。完成するには4とか5時間くらいたぶん。でも今はたいていの人はそれよりもずっと長い時間がかかるだろう私は確認できる。すべてを探そうとしなくたら、おそらく10-15時間くらいはかかるだろう。時間をかけてステージ数を減らしたとはいえ、既存のステージの多くは2倍の大きさになり、100％にするためにはバックトラックをしなければならず、前進できないこともある。今は多くの鍵アイテッムもある、だからポ―ズの画面の下の表示するよりも別のメニューを作って考えっている。

とにかく、このキャラはスカイ・チオネー、新月都の近くの山の上で城に住んでいるハーピーです。その城は都市が化物と妖魔で氾濫したのとき最近現れただけ。その前にスカイは普通な市民だけでした、しかし荒野育ちでしで人間社会とその法律が好きではない外国人だ。現在の混迷を気になりないでも琴音の闘いを見ているで楽しみを見出す、時には道にもっと障害物を増やす。

 

Onward

 

So 2024 is just around the corner, there's still a lot of things I want to finish before I show more gameplay. I feel like December was mostly a successful month of progress, 2 more stages of the 4 I had left are 90% complete minus enemies and some missing background elements. Although some of the earlier ones now I feel like I may need to go back again and improve slightly as I don't think the quality is quite on the same level as the more recent areas as a result of many refinements to the game over time. I added another type of magic that has a more unique ability compared to the other spells, there's one more left I have to make. That's all I really have to say for now, I feel before February I should have all the stages and areas in the game finished as long as there's no setbacks. So next year expect to start seeing some more substantial news once spring comes around.

Also I want to thank everyone who helped me reach 1K in pledges on Patreon, I can work more comfortably now than I have in the past not having to think about bills as much. With this though I'll have to work even harder to ensure VD gets finished and the final product delivers.

Last month of the year...

Another month already over, I know many want to know what's happening, and whether another demo is coming. Well good news is I feel like I made a lot of progress this month, more than I usually get done at least. I've added and polished multiple areas in the game, made some existing parts a little longer. I still have around 4 stages not finished, though 2 are in the early phase of development.  The world map overall has changed pretty dramatically since the last version but people probably won't notice much since the demo only covers a small portion. I say world map, what I mean is the hubs that connect between areas were initially just save points, sometimes you find the ghost merchant there. I made there areas more interconnected with more to find. The actual map screen that you see on the pause menu also looks different and more detailed.

Bad news is all of this work means I haven't been able focus on any other aspects of the game like the enemies, dialogue, abilities, music for a while and will likely be that way for a least a couple more months. So the game is still not very presentable past the early stages unfortunately and even making any gifs/videos doesn't feel right at this time now with how bare it is. So even though I said January might be a possibility for a new demo update, most likely that won't be happening...
Which honestly is hard for me to have to admit, as I feel like I've been working on this game forever, not to mention MR which can't focus on at all right now, and many are eager to see more. However Vivid Dead means everything to me, and I won't rest until it is completed and polished to highest quality I can make it.

Summit Hut

 

To add on to yesterday, I have another stage that is now mostly finished but needs more enemies and polish to the visuals. The snowy stage I posted yesterday is still around half way done and is probably the second or third largest one I will make. Hopefully I can have the rest of the parts to it finished within the week. I'm still however at 4 stages left not started at all, all of them are not part of the main path that leads to the end but mostly are still required to complete the game. Besides that I made some more items and weapon types I won't reveal yet, and the ability to increase the number of item/weapon slots is now there, though the ingame requirements to do so aren't finished yet. 

 

I'm considering making another demo, since I know many are constantly wondering about it. But there's honestly only one or two more areas that I think should be added to it, so I don't know what the time frame will be yet. Before January is possible but not super likely and I also have to think about where I'll be staying again soon.

Forest Foes

 I've been moving around a lot lately and am no longer living where I have been the last 5 years, or even permanently settled where I am now, so it's been a little harder for me to focus on development than usual. But I've gotten back to a more steady pace for now at least.

Risa's animations are just about finished though still needs a lot of play testing, another major character Skye whose role I haven't touched on much still needs work but is about 2/3s done animation wise.

A lot of people are probably expecting to see more H content here but understand that VD has a limited amount of that and I don't want to show everything too early. The female characters Sayomi, Hano, along with Risa and a couple others can get grabbed by enemies as well, so I have to keep the amount just for Kotone at reasonable level.

Stages wise I haven't made much progress TBH since the late update, still around 4 left that need to be started. The one water stage I made a gif of before felt slightly bland and I ended up mostly redesigning. Also a few still need music which I'm trying to get to now. One thing I want to improve is the save areas in between the stages, I feel like some more secrets or sidequests added to them might help make the world feel a bit more alive, but that's still up in the air for now.

Short Vivid Dead Update

 

I've had a bit of rough time the last few weeks getting everything done  that I wanted. While I've been trying to avoid it as much as possible, I  had to go back and rebuild some areas a in order to fit with changes made to the game's flow, and ultimately decided to remove some stages that I was planning so that I could put more effort into other areas of the game that I think still need it. Some parts of the cut areas I merged into  the existing ones however. At this point there's 5 stages left I know I  definitely need to make, and the ones already there now mostly just need more polish and tweaks. There's also some enemies, items, NPC I still  need to make and add to them.  Like I said before, VD won't likely be a very long game but I don't want  to give away the total number of stages just yet. The castle area, as  you can maybe guess is the last one, which very early on, before I changed the art style, was going to be a hub and the player would be  traveling to different worlds Portrait of Ruin style, but I later thought it would be better to have the player work their way to the  castle so you could see it in background in later areas.

 

 

Tight Spot

There hasn't been a proper devlog in a while so I think this time I'll give a little more information on what's been developed so far.

I already shown some changes to Kotone's moveset. You can now aim paint manually by using the strong attack key and you can now crouch and attack with other weapons besides the kodachi. The dash attack I decided to remove entirely however, as I found it wasn't that useful and had too many end frames making the combat feel stiffer than it should, so instead holding forward and attacking for now just does a regular high slash regardless of the weapon Kotone has equipped. The dash attack animation is still used with some weapons however.

I also made changes to the way the stages are structured and how the player progresses so that the game won't feel quite as linear. The idea I had at first was to have each area be mostly linear with the stages being unlocked after the previous one is cleared, but with the option of finding a secret goal that would open a different route(This is the reason 1-3 has a blocked off path currently).

That will most likely still be the case in the final version, though now clearing the stage normally won't always open up a new stage, the player will have to search the stages more carefully for certain key items(in addition to the blue flames) and finish the stage in order to progress. Because of this though, the stages will now be generally shorter and easier to reach the exit, sometimes within less than a minute, but they'll be harder to "fully complete" if that makes sense. So some stages will take multiple replays at different points in the game in order to find everything.

One last thing is I teased an NPC in the last screenshot I posted before this devlog, and though I want the game to have more NPCs VD is going to stay very light on story and dialogue, as writing is another thing I struggle at and had a lot of difficulty while making Moon Rhapsody. I can say that it does have a story, though until I get around to making an opening cutscene you'll just have to use your imagination.

Regarding NSFW scenes which is what most people seem to mainly care about, VD will have more sexual content and animations, but it's not a guarantee that there will be very many or that there will be things like a gallery mode or MR's captured scenes. With that said I don't like promoting the game as an H game because some people may, and still often do come into it expecting lewd content to be the main focus, but that does not mean I'm opposed to adding more.