Hey, remember when I said "By at least March"?

Well, I certainly didn't....

Assets: We put quite a bit of work last month into assets. As you can see attached, we've got some new backgrounds, as well as one adjusted background that should make for easier transitions between floors in the future. I also put some time into rebuilding the character models from the ground up, though you hopefully won't see that on the front end, which leads me to...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rigging: When I started building the game, I rigged characters a certain way, to make coding easier between scenes. In short, every instance of facial and body variation was saved into it's own full body PNG. This made coding easier, but it also forces me to save dozens of variants when making new assets, and that'll likely get more complicated as time goes on. Instead, I've dissected every variable body part, which - while probably being more annoyed to code - should hopefully make creating new assets infinitely easier.

Unfortunately, this means the entirety of Chapter 1's cutscenes will have to be re-rigged, so that's the first headache I'm undertaking for moving forward, the second being...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Story: I have a plot outline for Chapter 2, so we can finally start working on dialogue, but there's at least one contingency I feel important to talk about.

I'd always intended for The Ritual to be more of an actual "game", and the first step towards that is moving towards multi-choice dialogue for interactions. These could be innocuous choices that simply flavor your playthrough, or big decisions that affect the outcome of an entire storyline. I'd had a few ideas for Chapter 1's dialogue options, but they would require additional scripting to accommodate any major choices you make as a player, so - if I do backfill Chapter 1 with dialogue choices, they'll likely be flavoring to the cake.

Moving forward, however, I want future chapters to contain dialogue options to change the outcome of the playthrough, if only to encourage multiple runs. I've got a few in mind for Chapter 2, but it will likely make coding more complicated. That being said, I like the options I've come up with, and I hope it makes for more fun repeats as time goes on.

Also there will be some kinkier scenes in Chapter 2, you have my word on that!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's sadly all for now. Chapter 2 will be a big undertaking, and I'll need to break it down piece by piece. No telling when it'll be done, but I'll be sure to update you all as I have updates to share! Thanks for sticking with us on this journey, and cheers for now!

--SA