Methods: The Detective Competition
Release XXVIII // Chapters 68, 69 & 70
Release XXVIII is here!
Release XXVIII contains three chapters and a new behind-the-scenes article! I also stealth-edited the chapter "Beth" with a new background.
Whew! Well, this arc was tough — mostly because I hadn't really planned it all out very thoroughly until just a few weeks ago. But if I thought this was tough, it's nothing compared to the next month and a half of work!
You may have been annoyed that there wasn't any mystery gameplay these past ten or so chapters. If you like that sort of thing, you're going to have an awesome time in the next several weeks. ;)
Seems like even though I try to get these updates done on Friday, it takes until Saturday.
I'm thinking that it might be a better idea to try to reset back to Thursday, which seemed to be working for the most part.
I have no idea if my efficiency will get better or worse in the upcoming chapters — with all the mysteries I'll have to create it will change my workflow a bit.
Guess I'll have to wait and see!
Until next time!
— LockedOn.
Comments
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Is February July? Ah, ahaha, ahaha...
Also, Chapter 68's title, I'm laffin' so hard, I think these salty things might be tears.
(Also also: That's enough social commentary for today. Let's talk about Detexit instead. I'm gonna stop quoting your dialogue back at you, but... Fantastic. Greg really earned that cuppa this round.)
Greetings from a snow-covered snowscape. Though physical labour has me busy at the moment, you really went all out with these chapters; there was a lot of meat here, and though there wasn't a full mystery for us to 'solve', there sure was a lot of mystery. You do a very good job with rising/falling suspense, more on that when I talk about the behind the scenes stuff!
There was a lot of excellent incidental dialogue (King and his tea, Jaime and Indigo semi-bonding and then not knowing what else to say, Greg claiming dibs on office supplies as if anyone else would, Conver being Conver and people reacting Conver being Conver), but what really got me was the hint of some purpose beyond the contest, even if the secret is... Money laundering or something, pfffft, ahaha!
I - kind of want to take a crack at Conver's unsolvable case. I feel like with it's incredibly lateral logic, I might have a chance at it, especially since it has multiple solutions. The problem is, my solutions almost certainly wouldn't be the same as his. Oh, well.
Nice stealth-editing, btw. ;P
I kind of want more glimpses of the outer world. Somehow, I feel as if it's entirely the same as ours, but even worse..?!
Anyway, I'm pretty much on board with all your charadev/art talk. I'll also proudly admit to downloading tons of VN entirely because of the character or art style. Some turned out to have crummy writing, but I also found plenty I really loved! I think it's okay to be drawn in by a captivating style or an interesting design.
One thing I can recommend is creating aliases for spriteshows you're gonna be using a lot. It's still a pain, but skt1 for show killersoul talk is a lot less carpal. Ultimately probably not worth redoing at this point, but for the future..? Maybe.
Finally, my first thought when I saw Trigoto was ANGLES so I'm glad crooked was one part of his design philosophy, heh. Now - this was a pretty big update, so I won't tell you you can't move back to Thursday. But you're getting closer to the final stretch now, and I feel it's better to shift between the two if it gives you the time you need to get things the way you want them to be (even if that's not the same as 'perfect!' perfect should never be the enemy of the good, after all!).
Really satisfying arc, so keep it up. I can't send you a cheque for $million, but I'll continue to support you, ahahaha!
Ah no worries, your comments are support enough :)
Definitely a good point about aliasing and being better with shortcuts, things like that. The problem becomes making sure that it's legible later to myself when I need to go back and edit — but I guess that shouldn't be that big a concern for me since I could always write down a "legend" for what the shortcuts mean. I will definitely look to that as a way to improve workflow in the future :)
Conver's mystery is (as you probably realized) for the most part just some nonsense. However I DID work out a very general sense of what it is, as well as Catscratcher's mysteries — nothing really polished in any way, but just so that I had something to work with in case I ended up having to actually create gameplay for them.
S4R3 "A Juicy Escape" — the prisoner uses the juice to fool the guard into thinking they were stabbed through the cell.
S4R4 "Opaque Transparency" involves the prisoner camouflaging herself with homemade paint in order to look like the wall behind her. The reason there was no evidence is that the paint she used was edible.
S4R5 "A Dance in Chains" One of the solutions is that the prisoners work in coordination with each other so that one of them is always out of sight from the guard, which lets them pull off an escape utilizing a banana in some way (obviously that was more of a set dressing type random thing than a fully-thought out method).
I will likely go into this more in a future Behind the Scenes article. Anyway, thanks as always for following my progress!
Ahahahaha, S4R4 is a classic! But S4R5 feels like it could be absolutely crazy, in the best sort of way... Banana or no. And I'm always down for S4R3-style mysteries, because the solutions often make you second-guess yourself. Also, it's neat to hear you do have some storyboarding for these, and even cooler we might get to hear about them later!
Most of all - glad I can help keep you enthused. My pleasure! c: