Tales from the Road: Major Update 0.2

Tales from the Road: Major Update to Version 0.2

Good news everyone!

Tales from the Road has finally been updated! And at an earlier date than I expected! It turns out that online finals are kind of a joke, just like this whole semester since spring break. Anyway, this is one of the biggest updates for the game ever! Actually, I'd say it is the biggest update this game has ever seen.

Detailing everything this update brings in a single paragraph would be impossible, so let's take a full, research paper-length look. Just what you wanted to do today, eh? Don't worry, there's a TL;DR at the end with the most important points for your convenience.

This stuff should've been written months ago

This update, story wise, finally brings us to the conclusion of chapter 3. It boasts the implementation of Holly's second date scene, as well as the implementation of the road trip planning scene.

Holly's date will take you about half an hour to an hour to complete, depends on how much dialogue you exhaust.

The road trip scene is pretty quick since it's basically just a matter of reading a few lines and selecting a few things. Choosing rather you want to bring along Valery or Holly, determining the final place you're stopping at, things like that. Unfortunately I couldn't give quite as much freedom as I wanted in choosing passengers or destinations for the road trip. Mainly because I realized just how much of a nightmare that would be to implement, and most of all, write. The current system is already pushing it, but I'm hoping I can manage.

I also added a small chat room scene that you can access on the computer right before Valery's or Holly's date.  Just a little extra side content to make the computer a bit more useful.

I did expand on Holly's date a bit more than I originally planned as compensation for being so off on my deadlines. Kinda felt bad about that. But hey, It's all good now, man.

Did I really need to do this? Probably not. Did I do it anyway? Yup.

Of course, I didn't just add story content, we've got some visual changes as well.

So...  what have we got?  Well for starters, I updated the CSS a while ago to have a bit more color. You've probably already seen it so I won't bother providing a screenshot.

Let's see... what else is there? Ah, right, there's an extra button on the sidebar now. Should let you change around some settings, pretty nifty, kind of buggy. Sometimes the switches say on when they're really off, I don't know.

Oh yeah, and I got some artwork commissioned for Sasha and Holly. Now you finally get to see what they look like! Or, at least what the artist thought they looked like. A long awaited addition to the game (for me, at least) has arrived.

If you read the previous devlog you'd know that I wanted to get all 4 of the main side-characters commissioned for this update. But circumstances dictated a different approach. So, you just get Holly and Sasha for now. With Valery and Jacob getting artwork at a different time. I'm hoping to get the artwork in game by the next minor update, but life can be crazy and I can be stupid so who knows.

Anyways, I've got the goods right (Sasha) here (Holly) if you don't wanna play through the game and see the artwork the way I intended. You dirty cheat, you.

And hey, this is important. If you like how the artist, kasscabel, drew these characters maybe consider hitting them up, getting something commissioned yourself. I don't know them personally but they did a fantastic job with my commissions, would highly recommend 'em. Here's their Twitter and Fiverr page. Which is where I originally found them.

If you're a real one you could also use my Fiverr referral link to sign up for an account before getting a commission from kass's Fiverr page. You'll get 20% off and I get 20% of whatever you spend. Any money I get from referrals will go directly to the game in someway, be it art, music, who knows. So you can rest easy knowing that I'm not using that 20% cut to get "art" of my 'sona. Thanks in advanced if you use it. 

La banda sonora de basura (o algo así. The trash soundtrack)

Alright alright, let's give it up for the visual changes, not to be outdone by the addition of audio... The visual changes might be a bit cooler than the audio ones, let's be real.

But yes, audio changes. Or should I say additions since there was no audio previously. Not so anymore, as I've added background music. Some funky and chill tunes to listen to while playing through Tales from the Road. I currently have 11 tracks added to the game and I'll probably look into adding some more later. I might also have it so the music changes depending on the scene. For now though you just get a basic playlist of 11 songs.

If you have a look at that settings menu you'll see a couple of options relating to sound as well. Music is off by default so you can turn it on in there, and you can adjust the volume if you want. You can also skip a track using that cool looking button towards the bottom of the sidebar.

And of course, here's a list of the artists I got the music from: We've got Timecrawler 82, Six Umbrellas, Nihilore, Loyalty Freak Music, and Jesse Spillane. Those links will take you to their website, band camp page, whatever I could find. Check 'em out, I'm sure they're all awesome people. Especially that Jesse dude, guy's a programmer and we all know how great programmers are.

I hate bugs...

Also fixed up a handful of bugs. Pushed most of the bug fixes early though so I didn't have to worry about someone running into them. Also did some misc. changes here and there, mostly relating to the flow of dialogue. Here's a list of those changes and fixes:

Fixes:

Typo and grammar corrections galore. (Spellcheck in the Twine editor would be tight)

Fixed a comment that wasn't formatted correctly.

Fixed some linking issues in Valery's date. (Which, if you saw the shit I had to do to get Valery's date to work the way I wanted, you wouldn't be surprised)

Fixed some placeholder stuff I forgot to remove.

Fixed lots of variable issues that never should've happened (I blame the Twine 2 editor on this 100%. Give me syntax highlighting!)

Fixed a linking issue with the Festival Walk Path and the Festival Game Area (Thought I fixed this back in February...)

Fixed an issue where you could text Holly regardless of Festival outcome

Deleted old testing passages

Changes:

Cut down and edited Holly's Cafe dialogue a bit to make it flow better.

Completely cut the east path festival dialogue if you didn't choose to hang out with Holly. (Served no purpose)

Provided better descriptions of what certain locations look like

Got rid of some really weird timing choices. (Probably added them when I was not of clear mind)

Slightly rewrote numerous bits of dialogue to try and decrease repetitive use of second person pronouns. (You know what I mean, right?)

Changed any hand references to paw (Don't get weird. Don't get weird)

and probably other stuff that I forgot to mention. Where do you think the username "Iforgotmybrain" came from?

Presentation matters

Indeed it does. I updated the description of Tales from the Road a while ago to be a bit more quick and to the point(less). And now we've got ourselves an updated logo, right here. Wow, look at that beauty, way different from the last one. The guy who made that must be real talented at graphic design, you might even say it's his passion... Yeah, it looks the same as the old one. Except now it's been remade in Photoshop, and the background color matches the game's background color. Amazing right? Maybe someday I'll invest either time or money into a proper logo for the game, probably not though.

Stuff you probably don't care about but I would appreciate you reading anyway :)

So, what's next? Well, probably chapter 4 and the start of the road trip. Right now I'm thinking I'll make it so that each road trip destination is sort of an "episode" featuring the player character, one of the passengers, and some new characters that'll be introduced at the destination. But that could change, it's just how I have it outlined right now. Regardless of how I handle it, I really do think that these road trip destinations are going to be fun to write. There's so many possibilities, so many different routes I could take.

One thing is for sure though, don't expect to see many huge updates like this in the future. I realized halfway through writing this devlog that I packed way too much stuff into this update, just look at the length of this thing (owo). Moving forward I'd much prefer to release little bits of content here and there rather than working for a month or so and releasing everything at once. Doing so is less stressful for me, and also provides a steadier stream of content for you, the player.

So instead of everything getting updated at once, expect to see a handful of minor updates focusing on one specific aspect of the game. For example, I might release an update dedicated only to fleshing out the audio system. And then a week or so later I might release another small update adding chapter 4 content, or an update solely dedicated to touching up the older parts of the game. Or whatever else I'm working on. These smaller updates will also mean you won't have to read 4 pages of update information. That's always a plus, right?

Also, I made a new Twitter account. Don't wanna use main for furry stuff anymore, just doesn't seem like a good idea. So here's the new account. Follow it if you want, I'd certainly appreciate it. I'll try to post stuff about Tales on there, provide some info about what I'm working on, stuff like that.

TL;DR:

Chapter 3 is finished, Holly's second date was added and so was the road trip planning scene. Two of the main side-characters, Sasha and Holly, now have artwork thanks to kasscabel. See art section of this Devlog for more details. I put audio in the game but it's optional and kind of needs to be fleshed out some more. New logo that looks the same as the old one. Chapter 4 and start of road trip is next but who knows when because motivation and time. Expect more frequent, but smaller updates instead of huge ones like this.

In conclusion, never use in conclusion.

Huge thanks to everybody that's played the game already, even if you didn't like it I still appreciate your time. Huge shout out to those that have left feedback as well, your contributions are greatly appreciated!

Welp, that is it for now friends. As always, take care and have fun.