Monthly Update - January 2024

Hello everyone once again! I hope you've had an amazing start to the year. Whether you celebrated it in a big way or with something much quieter, I hope there was no shortage of food! Now, that's definitely something Enid would say, hehe :D.

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As for the project, after some unexpected complications, I finally published Chapter 8 a few weeks ago! In the end, it turned out longer than I had planned, but I'm getting used to that happening, hahaha! Now it's time to start writing Chapter 9, the last one of this first act! Initially, this chapter seems like it will flow much smoother than the previous one. I usually have a clear image of how each chapter will go and then create a brief summary. In this case, I've expanded the summary a bit more than I usually do, hoping it will help with the writing process. But of course, part of the beauty of creativity lies in the unexpected, both for the good and the bad, so we'll take it step by step each day.

Man, I can barely believe I've reached the end of Act 1. I'm very excited! For several reasons that I can't reveal yet, tempting as it may be, hahaha! I'll just say I have a surprise prepared that I hope you like :D. Besides that surprise, it will finally be time to implement all the changes I had in mind and fix certain things about the characters and the plot here and there, especially in Chapter 2, which I revisited a few days ago, and... let's just say, to all those who read and understood Rayco/Gara and Enid's explanation, congratulations, because I dumped a lot of unnecessary info there for no reason, lol! It's definitely something that needs fixing, and as I mentioned recently, all these changes and revisions will come out alongside Chapter 9.

Finally, there's something important I want to say about this story. Once Chapter 9 is published, a week later, this first act will be available to buy, and the playable demo will be reduced. I still don't know exactly when the demo will be cut, but I was thinking roughly halfway through the story. However, this has brought a small issue too, which is that I don't know how to export it for mobile. I've been experimenting with the Monaca platform, and it looks interesting, but there's something that doesn't quite convince me :/. I've also thought about switching from Twine to ChoiceScript, but it seems confusing and limiting in terms of customization, and no matter how comfortable it is that Hosted Games handles all distribution and such, it’s just a big no for me at first glance. The good thing would be that at least with ChoiceScript you can export your save files from one book to another, which is something you cannot do with Twine or Renpy. Well... you can, actually, but that involves a lot of programming and coding that I have no idea about and if something goes wrong I wouldn’t be able to solve the issues, so it’d be more of a disadvantage than anything else.

Going back to Renpy would be more viable and comfortable for exporting, as I could maintain a single itch.io page. With Twine, I would have to create one for each act to keep the demos separate, and I’m not sure how to feel about that, to be honest :/.

I don't know, I’m just rambling at this point. These are things I'll have to think about since I don't want it to be confusing when playing Remnants. Anyway, I'll do some tinkering and play around a bit with Renpy to see how it feels, and if I'm not convinced, I guess I'll stick with Twine and add an intro for the player to pick all the important choices from Act 1 before continuing with Act 2. I appreciate any suggestions if anyone has them, though :D.

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Have a fantastic month and see you at the end of February ;)

By the way, I’m making a few gifts for all of you for February 14! Nothing huge, but a nice detail that I hope you like :D.