Hello! The latest update is now available. It’s a “miscellaneous improvements and fixes” build.
The list of changes/fixes might look shorter than usual, because much of my time over the past 2 weeks was spent working on a new addition to the game that isn’t finished yet. What is it? Something very important that the game absolutely needs before the crowdfunding campaign is launched. Why? I’ll explain.
Over the years, a lot of crowdfunding campaigns have resulted in very disappointing products, leading to a general distrust of anyone who launches a crowdfunding campaign. Most of those campaigns all had one thing in common: they pitched an idea with little more than concept art. Anyone can pitch a product, but not everyone can deliver a product. Even as far back as 2014, I knew that if I said, “Hey guys, I’m making a game, donate to my Kickstarter!” very few people would be willing to trust me with their money, unless I was able to present them with tangible evidence that, yes, the game will exist, and yes, it will be fun. To me, the way to do that was obvious: To develop a demo.
When I launch the crowdfunding campaign, I want to say, “I need money to finish this game that is 90% complete and only needs funding for voices/animations,” rather than, “I have nothing but an idea. Please fund the entire thing.” Instead of saying, “I promise I’m going to make a fun game! Trust me! Just believe me, okay?” I want to say, “Don’t take my word for it. Go download the demo. It has many hours of content in it, so you can already see for yourself what the final game is going to be like.”
In other words, when I launch the crowdfunding campaign, I will be directing people toward the demo and stating that it’s an accurate representation of what the final game will be like. This means that, the day the campaign is launched, a huge number of people will play Yandere Simulator for the first time. So, with that in mind, I need to start making changes to the demo to make sure that anyone playing the game for the first time will be able to play the game comfortably without being overwhelmed or confused.
How do you teach a new player the mechanics of a video game? A tutorial! That’s what I’ve been working on for the past 2 weeks; a tutorial for 202X Mode that will teach new players everything they’ll need to know in order to get comfortable with the game.
I’m happy to say that it’s coming along smoothly, but it’s taking a long time. A lot of the features and improvements I’ve added to the game over the past year only took a few days to add, but a full tutorial will take a lot more work. It reminds me of an earlier phase in the game’s development, when I started to work on tasks that took more than 2 weeks of time and work to complete, so I had to stop focusing on trying to deliver exciting new updates on a two-week schedule.
Tutorials are usually the least-exciting and least-glamorous thing in a video game, so I’m sorry if you’re disappointed to hear that I’m currently spending a large amount of my time on a feature that isn’t thrilling to hear about. However, it’s still very necessary. If I launch the crowdfunding campaign, hundreds of thousands of people download the demo to play it, and they’re all completely confused and lost, that could kill the campaign’s chances of succeeding. So, a tutorial is mandatory, whether or not it’s exciting to hear about.
I’m not ready to publicly share my progress on the tutorial. However, I’ll post previews of the tutorial on Patreon in the near future. I feel guilty for rarely posting to Patreon, and I want to give my patrons some more content.
Okay! Now that you’re up to speed, it’s time to move on and get to the rest of the blog post. To see a list of everything that was fixed, changed, or improved over the past two weeks, scroll down past this gorgeous artwork of Ayano dressed as Bayonetta, drawn by OMGayano!
Changes and Improvements
- When the player is attacked by a Heroic student, the struggle minigame only begins if the player is armed with a short stabbing weapon. However, if the protagonist has a weapon in her inventory, then she would logically pull it out immediately as soon as the Hero started coming for her. It wouldn’t make sense for her to just stand there and get taken down without drawing her weapon. So, from now on, Ayano will automatically draw her weapon as soon as she is attacked by a Hero.
- After completing the Alphabet Killer Challenge, the player is teleported to the “Oh no!! It’s Megami!! Press F to kill her!!” scene. Because this was a joke scene, the game would automatically close itself after Megami was killed. However, this has been changed; the scene will now return the player to the title screen, instead.
- Previously, the “getting someone arrested restores School Atmosphere because everyone thinks the killer has been caught” feature would only restore 10% School Atmosphere. This made it kinda pathetic; not even worth the effort. So, from now on, it will restore 50% School Atmosphere.
- Students who are hiding in their classrooms, cowering in fear because they think a killer is in the school, will no longer react to being splashed with water; it’s irrelevant to them while much more important things are on their mind.
- Suitors now wait a little longer before leaving school, to reduce or eliminate the possibility that they will change their shoes at their locker and leave school before their crush has put a note in their locker.
- The boys and girls who follow Komako (the 8th rival of 1980s Mode) now perform “admiring” animations rather than “talking to thin air” animations when they gaze at her.
- The camera now zooms out a little bit when you’re wielding a scythe, since it’s weird for the character to be holding something that goes offscreen.
- It’s no longer possible to fit a scythe inside of a cello case, trash can, or weapon bag, since the scythe is way too large for those containers.
- Students will no longer react to water traps when they are busy mourning the death of a dead character on the ground in front of them.
- The gardening club girls now have unique portrait poses, instead of all of them using the “girly sway” animation.
- The little clock in Ayano’s room now accurately reflects what time of day it is.
- Added a new easter egg to the game as a birthday present for a friend. Activate debug commands at school and type “bloodmaid” to change the protagonist’s appearance. When this easter egg is active, you’ll find a new weapon in the Drama Club at school.
Fixes
- If the player picked up an object, and then dropped it, and then picked up another object, and then dropped that object on top of the other object, and then picked up the object on the bottom, the object on top would float in midair. (If that was hard to understand, just watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_BYYsnKc2M ) Anyway, this bug is no longer in the game.
- If the player used Info-chan’s “Provide Student Info” service in order to unlock a student’s info, and then immediately went into the student info menu through the “Provide Student Likes and Dislikes” menu, the student info menu would not reflect the new unlocked student info. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player killed a victim using a stealth attack, the victim’s body would sometimes pop up into the air after being killed. This was a result of an animation clipping issue. The animation has been adjusted, and this issue shouldn’t be happening anymore.
- If the player skipped school by staying home, they would lose 10 reputation points, even though the warning window said that they were going to lose 20 reputation points. This discrepancy has been corrected.
- If the player visited the counselor while a teacher was running towards a dead body, the teacher would forget about the dead body when the player exited the counselor’s office. This bug has been fixed.
- Geiju – the character whose gimmick is that he only speaks in two-word sentences – would speak a long sentence if he was forced out of the “Follow Player” state for any reason. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed rendering error that would cause the game to stop rendering most 3D models if the player was standing near the edges of the school (like near the tree where you matchmake rivals with suitors).
- Fixed bug that would prevent a character from playing the “killed by mindbroken slave” animation if they were returning a misplaced object at the point in time when they were attacked by the slave.
- Fixed bug that would allow the player to pay Info-chan to “Provide Student Likes and Dislikes” even if Ayano had not unlocked that student in the Student Info list yet.
- If the player disposed of a weapon using any method other than the incinerator in Mission Mode, the weapon wouldn’t count as “disposed of.” This bug has been fixed.
- If the player took a photo of Senpai and then advanced to the next day, the game would forget that the player possessed a photo of Senpai. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that would cause Senpai to give the player a game over for being bloody, even though the player was in the art club and wearing a painter’s smock.
- Fixed rendering error that would cause one of the walls of the Photography Club to disappear if the camera was positioned and rotated in certain ways.
- Fixed bug that would cause weird graphical glitches to occur if the player positioned and rotated the camera in specific ways while on the gym stage.
- Fixed bug that would teleport Cooking Club students out of their classrooms if the player saved and loaded the game while class was in session.
- Fixed bug that caused Ryoba’s mouth to contort in a strange way after making her Senpai reject a rival’s confession.
- Fixed bug that was preventing the “protagonist wears school uniform to street in the daytime” feature from working.
- Fixed bug that would prevent two students from completing a “Distract” interaction if the player was speeding up time.
- The names of clubrooms were not appearing when viewing the game’s map. This oversight has been corrected.
- Fixed bug that would prevent Nemesis from performing an animation when being killed by a scythe.
- Fixed bug that would cause Chigusa to confess to her suitor while wearing a bikini.
- Fixed bug that allowed the player to feed food to a dead prisoner.