circuitlv52

[circuitlv52]

Trembling Essence Devlog 6:💙Cabin route progression + Fail-safe balance!💙

Hi and welcome new followers, it's been another 2 weeks since part 1 so here's part 2 of how things are going in this month of May! :]

So leaving off from part 1, I found a way to organize and keep up with everything I create for this game moving forward and I've been happily pacing myself.

Before I could continue with anything else, I had to bring a certain path/route up to date with the rest of the game. In good news, I manage to finish this pretty quickly!

A lot of dialog and choices from the player(Y/N) and Noah in this route is abouuuuttttt 90% different compared to what's in the [Extended Demo]. I won't go too in depth about it but I'm happy with this change and balancing out all the inconsistent variables going on.

Route progression with play testers:

One thing I want to talk about is the route progression of the game. I was going to talk about this in depth with a Master-post however, it's still in the works and I ultimately decided that once I finally have all of Day 3 sorted out I'll hopefully have it ready.

After having a very long discussion with my play tester's and their advice, I've decided that there will be only 3 routes in the game. There was a time where I had created multiple routes/paths, I don't remember the specific number anymore since I have to go and find every single one I wrote in the script but ever since I've gotten better at learning new concepts I came to terms with a few things. Trying to progress all of them past Day 3 would be a very big challenge and drag the development process out even further, a lot of the writing in them is extremely outdated, and I personally believe keeping all of this would lead to burn out.

Does this mean a bunch of content will be scrapped?:

Not really, I do want to give life to most of what I wrote and I actually had plans behind the scenes of turning these into Day's instead of routes/paths. There were some I wrote that gave off Day 4/5+ vibes when I was trying to pick routes that were strong enough to be in the [Extended Demo].

Will any of this be added for the next [Extended Demo] update?:

It's too early for me to really give an answer. There's so much of Day 3 that needs to be fixed up before I can say much else.

Fail safe + Variable callback balance!:

It's time to talk about them! :D

In the [Extended Demo] I used a lot of these as callbacks for the player(Y/N)'s choices, closeness with Noah, etc in order to make sure these had an affect on the overall story building. I'm getting better at keeping up with these and I'm making them easier to go through. Due to spoilers I can't say much else although, I can talk about one other thing I added into the game which is a [fail safe!]

A [fail safe]? What's that and WHY!?:

Basically if the player(Y/N) doesn't meet the set requirements for certain parts of the game, a specific outcome will happen. There were some [Extended demo] bad endings inside the cabin that I was going to scrap but I stumbled upon a great alternative! This sort-of [fail safe] style will only be used for very specific situations I have no way of writing around without dragging the story out and/or adding 'filler'. This also helps me in the long run so I don't have to keep up with too many unique variables, It feels nice having this structured and simple enough to check back on. >:] I'm still brainstorming it out to make sure it doesn't have too many situations routing to it but there's 2 variables where this [fail safe] WILL happen regardless and another 2 that can only happen if the player(Y/N) makes certain choices that can possibly trigger the [fail safe]. I then grouped them into separate areas because originally, the player(Y/N) could make several choices but I decided to make this a little more linear as a quality of life change so it's easier to navigate out of if the player(Y/N) restarts the playthrough.

I don't have plans on changing this in the future. A lot of the code had to be updated to get it to work which surprisingly took a lot of time for me to adjust to.

This is mainly because the [Talk to Noah], [Look around.], [Go to sleep.] and [Continue to wait.] choices weren't complete. I don't mind this since the choices, CG's, SFX, dialog, etc. in these endings were all outdated anyway. I even took it a step further and removed some responses so it's more straightforward. :P

CG updates and optimization!:

Before:

After:

This won't be too long but in very exciting news I found a really awesome way to save on space/optimization towards the game!

Basically, when I was new to everything regarding the game, I really wanted to have a Day/Night setting with detailed backgrounds depicting the different times of the day for a beautiful immersive experience.

Here are some very old and outdated examples of this.:

I had a lot of fun messing around with the different hue's, saturations, etc however, this made the file size of the game itself too large and I was barely able to upload the [Extended demo] as it exceeded 1GB and it's not even complete which heavily worries me. :,,,,[

I am still new and learning as I go but I managed to discover a way to adjust the lighting, etc within the game! This will take a bit of time since I'll have to add/remove CG's but I mighttt put a pin in this as something to look into in the future or adjust them as I go.

Also, I made two new hyper links that will be on my pinned [Extended Demo] post!:

Noah's spotify playlist's:[Listen to it here!]

For video meme's regarding Noah will be in #Noah: meme videos

I'm still working on stuff behind the scenes which includes some stuff regarding Noah's birthday month, it's just a little scattered right now! :,D

If you like what I create, please consider supporting what I do on kofi! All donations and tips help tremendously while I continue to work on the game. Thank you to those that optionally bought the [Extended Demo] on itch.io. :,]

Q&A / Ask box is open:

To know and understand Noah through Asks and random posts about lore, they'll be under #Get to know: Noah ! :]

**Some asks won't be answered if it contains spoilers but I do appreciate what I receive.

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask [here] or on itch.io please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I enjoy hearing from you guys!

Thank you guys for the continued support and influx of downloads for the [Extended Demo] recently! I really appreciate it! :,]

[circuitlv52]

Happy Birthday to Noah! 🩵🎂🎊🎉

It's Noah's birthday today!🩵 I had to post this early because I have a camping trip but I can't bring electronic devices, I stayed up until around 2 a.m to finish this project😪Welp, I guess hard-work pays paper plushies, right? 😅 Anyways, Happy birthday Noah! 🎉🎊🎂

[circuitlv52]

Y'ALL HEAR ME OUT ON THIS ONE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!!😭🙏

Lawrence x Chamomile

LET ME ELABORATE!

Law Llkes plus sized people (canon) and flower names! Chamomile got both! Also I'm sure she has sweet and caring personality. I know she's a bit emotional and will probably cry at almost everything, but Law can be empathetic sometimes! Remember when in his route MC started crying and he felt bad for them, or when he tried to calm them down when they were scared?

I'm 100% sure they will make it up!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!! I NEED MORE CONTENT OF THESE TWO TOGETHER!!! FAN ARTS, FANFICTION, EDITS... ANYTHING!!! I'LL ABSORBE EVERYTHING!!! I WANNA SEE MY TWO POOKIE WOOKIES CUTIE PATOOTIES BABYGIRLS SWEETIEPIES LITTLE PRINCESSES TOGETHER SOOOO MUUUUCH!!!

I WANNA SEE THEM HAVING HAPPY ENDING THEY BOTH DESERVE!!!

[circuitlv52]

Like hear me out 😔

[circuitlv52]

Fem!Lawrence by request ── .✦

[circuitlv52]

Lawrence 😎

[circuitlv52]

BTD Ren hana

[circuitlv52]

#REAL

NO WAAAAY 🤯

[circuitlv52]

been struggling to draw backgrounds lately so i gave up and made a new merch design instead

(acrylic standee? maybe?? let me know if ur interested!!!)

[circuitlv52]

[circuitlv52]

[circuitlv52]

　(:̲̅:̲̅:̲̅[̲̅:♡:]̲̅:̲̅:̲̅:̲̅)　The Angel had gifted these to all ｡

　Painwheel strawberry milkshake with sprinkles

╭　reblog . like . & credit if using or saving

•　Strawberry - heart　;　Sprinkles - pop-out icons

╰　requested by @red-soundwaves !　( . . )　╺╺╺╋

[circuitlv52]

Skullgirls memes I did some months ago!

There are more but they're in spanish and I'm running out of space for images so I will publish them on another post tomorrow (I'll link it there)

[circuitlv52]

Feliz aniversário, Painwheel!!

Happy birthday, Painwheel!!!

:D

(fiz na extrema pressa pq queria postar alguma coisa de skullgirls logo)

[circuitlv52]

Trembling Essence Devlog 5:💙Back into the cabin + route clean up💙

Helloooo and welcome new followers, it's been 2 weeks since the last update so here's part 1 of how things are going this month of May! :]

Firstly I want to say a big thank you as there's been a recent influx of ratings being given towards the [Extended Demo], this really helps the game behind the scenes!! Noah's birthday post for his Spotify playlist also did really well on itch.io which is very awesome given Noah's views towards his birthday! :,,,]

I'm going to go through the last few things that needed some clean up before going straight to the cabin! I mentioned before that I had some CG's and 2 more endings that needed an update.

I'm not sure if I gave these unique names so I'm going to call them downpour and marsh:

The Downpour:

This one was tremendously fixed and upgraded.

To sum it up, even though this ending is similar to one that happens in the [Extended Demo] it plays out in a different area and has two animated sequences instead of one. A animated CG I had for another ending was placed here which gives it a better immersive experience. It took some time to get it to work correctly but I think this ending might be a good 2nd/3rd favorite of mine, specifically for the beginning of the game. :[]

The Marsh:

This one got a fairly large update as far as the dialog goes and there are new CG's that happen here.

I don't want to say too much but Noah and the player(Y/N) react differently towards each other in this path due a continuity issue I came across when going through this. I'm also still in the process of cutting out stuff that isn't as necessary as I originally thought it would be and calming down on the habit of over-doing things.

**I also went through and updated a lot of the animated sequences that still had old code attached to them which makes it easier for me to read and stay organized. In even better news, I was lucky enough to find some old CG files that I needed to bring up to date with all that's new in the game and fix an issue with one animation having a small bug that turned out to be a typo. After I fixed up all of that I adjusted/removed more 'dialog fluff' and fixed more SFX's that weren't in the correct places. :[]

Outside of needing to test through everything etc, I can now confidently say that the start of the game up to the cabin is 100% finished!! Woohoo! :D

Once I update the [Extended Demo] in the future, it'll have a total of 7 different endings specifically through the beginning of the game up until the player(Y/N) and Noah reach the cabin.

IT'S FINALLY CABIN TIME OMG?!:

In really great news I found a way to keep up with everything I create for this game moving forward and I've been pacing myself. To give a bit of back story, I've written a ton of stuff for this game however, the old way my saving method made it hard for future me to find everything I did. Now that I'm getting better at organizing things I've been adapting as I go.

A lot of dialog and choices have been fixed from this, nothing too crazy but I did switch certain responses from the player(Y/N) around depending on your closeness with Noah.

That being said, I found a lot of continuity/balancing issues specifically regarding a certain path/route in the game that's more on the negative side. To be fair, this is probably one of the weakest parts of the game right now since I never really had the chance to expand on it after I uploaded the [Extended Demo] and much has changed since then. After going through more of the script, I feel more comfortable keeping this one just a bit more linear(??) instead. I have no idea how to explain this without spoilers being involved. :,]

Anywho, In great news I managed to get all the way to the 5 choices you can make at this part once Noah goes back to his room.

Playtester's advice + Updated choices:

So on and off for the past few weeks I've been talking to both of my play testers about the cabin section and this specific scene. After the recent polls I created, I was having writers block which made it difficult to progress since the "Talk to Noah.", "Look around.", "Go to sleep.", and "Continue to wait." stem from very old and outdated code/routes that contained spoilers, weak writing, etc. I expressed ideas on how to move forward with the choices and they gave feedback when I was struggling. :,,,,]

"Talk to Noah."

I managed to find a decent idea on how to go about the "Talk to Noah" choice. This one used to progress from the players(Y/N)'s choices but all of this was cut due to early spoilers/over-doing it and a lot of it isn't canon anymore. This had a unique CG too but since I want to be careful on file size/optimization I might re-use a previous CG instead since I plan on redrawing it. There was a continuity issue I came across too but I think I might've found a way around this. I was debating on how the story will progress from this choice but as I was typing this, an idea came to mind! Woohoo! :[]

"Look around."

I'm going to be vague but I was lucky enough to find a decent balance with the "Look around." choice. I was really surprised from recent polls that this choice was picked the most so I do want to focus on this one a little more. This option used to have a different situation happen but I don't think I ever got that far from the outdated code and when I came back to it, all of it isn't canon anymore. I have a interesting way in progressing the story from it which will help certain parts of the game get more shine! I also plan on re-doing the CG at some point now that my drawing skills have improved! :]

"Go to sleep."

I won't have to be too vague with this one but there was a new route intended for this choice. I don't think I ever posted any screenshots from this one specifically because I started working on the [Extended Demo] surprise update back in late 2023. Out of all the routes I wrote up, the strongest ones story-wise were the "Morning" and "Afternoon" route. At some point I'll have to go and find the route for this one.

"Continue to wait."

I won't be vague with this one too since a lot has changed but to give some backstory, this choice actually led to a completely different route as a sort of "Wait...THERE'S MORE? :[]" situation that I think I posted screenshots from but I'm not sure. As I started working on the [Extended Demo] surprise update, everything that happened here got put on hold since it wasn't strong story-wise. Much has changed since then and I've been talking with my play testers on how to progress the story from this choice since this sort-of put a wrench in things since I don't want this pick to line up with the "Afternoon" route. Some ideas have been swirling around in my mind on what to do but nothing is 100% confirmed yet. :,,,]

There's been a lot of stuff I've been working on behind the scenes which involves adjusting a lot of outdated variables, failsafe situations, etc. but I'll talk about all of that in the next game development post! :D

If you like what I create, please consider supporting what I do on kofi! All donations and tips help tremendously while I continue to work on the game. Thank you to those that optionally bought the [Extended Demo] on itch.io. :,]

Q&A / Ask box is open:

To know and understand Noah through Asks and random posts about lore, they'll be under #Get to know: Noah ! :]

**Some asks won't be answered if it contains spoilers but I do appreciate what I receive.

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask [here] or on itch.io please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I enjoy hearing from you guys!

This is part 1 of 2 of the update so I'll stop here. Thank you guys for the continued support and influx of ratings for the [Extended Demo]! I really appreciate a whole bunch! :,]

[circuitlv52]

It's my 3 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[circuitlv52]

Here's a little sneak peak of what's coming up in the future for the next game development post with Noah! hehe. :P