Hello! The past 2 weeks have been very productive. I knocked a lot of items off of my pre-crowdfunding checklist. Some are only half complete, since they are reliant on some other checklist item in order to be 100% complete, but I’m really happy with the process I made.
I’ve prepared a list of everything that was changed or fixed over the past two weeks – but first, I want to share something with you! An artist named Momo_Fujimi created a 24-page manga about Himari from the Gardening Club giving chocolate to all of the other students in class 3-1:
It’s a super cute and sweet manga, and it makes a lot of use of trivia that I have shared about the students over the years, such as the fact that Borupen’s favorite flavor is grape.
Please read the whole thing, because it’s absolutely adorable!
With that said, please click Continue Reading to read the rest of the blog post.
Garbage Bag Changes Coming
The current implementation of the “wrap a corpse in a garbage bag” mechanic is imbalanced, and trivializes the act of hiding or disposing of a corpse. I’ve been saying “I have a plan to figure that mechanic” for a long time…and the day has finally come to enact that plan.
First off, a normal garbage bag is too small to hide an entire human body. It could theoretically be done, but you’d need to use multiple garbage bags, not just one. With that in mind, a new mechanic has been added to the game – the ability to craft a “Makeshift Body Bag” at the workbench using masking tape and a box of garbage bags.
A roll of makeshift body bags contains 5 bodybags. If you use up a bodybag to conceal a corpse, you will see a notification appear at the top of the screen informing you of how many bodybags are remaining. Once the bodybags are all used up, the roll simply disappears.
I think that this is a fair concession; instead of being able to conceal any corpse by simply obtaining a box of garbage bags, you actually have to craft bodybags, and you’re limited to 5, since that’s the maximum number you could make with the supplies available to you.
I acknowledge the possibility that the majority of the game’s userbase may have become completely reliant on garbage bags, and can’t imagine playing the game without access to infinite bodybags. So, I’m considering the idea of allowing the player to purchase a box of garbage bags from Info-chan. Each purchase would let you conceal 5 more corpses (once the garbage bags had been crafted into bodybags).
The question then becomes, how much should a box of garbage bags cost? A low cost like 5 would allow players to easily afford enough bodybags to conceal the corpses of every student at school. A high cost like 25 would mean that the player would have to do a lot more work just to earn the right to conceal a corpse, and probably wouldn’t even be able to earn enough Into Points to conceal every corpse at school – maybe 25 corpses, tops.
As of now, you will see that the “corpse wrapped in garbage bag” texture has been updated to feature strips of masking tape, and you will be able to craft bodybags at the crafting table…however, in the current build, it’s still possible to use a box of garbage bags to conceal corpses. You won’t be forced to use the new bodybag-crafting method until a future build…probably the build that will be released on April 1st. This is because I don’t want to “officially” implement this feature until after the 1980s Mode Tutorial has been updated to walk the player through the crafting process.
(The tutorial should also be updated to walk the player through the put-a-note-into-a-student’s-locker process, too, since it’s canon that Ryoba put a note into Sumire’s locker to lure her to the bathroom. It’ll be annoying to update the tutorial, but…that’s what we’re down to. The “Ugh, this is annoying, I don’t really want to do this, but I have to…” part of the pre-crowdfunding checklist.)
Speaking of things that have been on my to-do list for a long time that I finished recently…
Intro Changes
I’ve updated various parts of the intro cutscene. I’m not 100% finished/satisfied with it yet, but I’m happier with it now:
- The part where Ryoba talks to young Ayano now has floating glass shards to represent young Ayano’s pain.
- The part where Ayano meets Senpai now has doors/windows in the corridors, instead of completely blank featureless walls.
- The part where the camera slowly creeps forward through a corridor full of corpses now has additional post-processing effects to make it more spooky and creepy, and also has the camera cut to shots of Ayano’s victims to emphasize her brutality.
Improvements
- It’s supposed to be tricky to get away with drowning Osana in a toilet stall because of the witnesses nearby. However, if the player closed the bathroom stall door before drowning Osana, nobody would witness her death. So, from now on, when a student shouts “HEY, WHAT ARE YOU – ” before being drowned, they will attract the attention of any nearby student, who will come investigate.
- Nemesis is too tough to care about stink bombs. So, from now on, whenever you throw a stink bomb at Nemesis in Mission Mode, it won’t stop her – it’ll only make her angry. Throwing a stink bomb at Nemesis will cause her to completely stop pretending to be a normal student; she will charge at you aggressively until she has caught you and killed you.
- It is now possible to read manga in the Photography Clubroom after joining the Photography Club. This means that it’s now possible to max out an entire stat (Seduction/Numbness/Enlightenment) within the span of 1 week, if you read manga at every possible opportunity (and increase your Literature stat so that you read through manga faster).
- Because Ryoba states “I was having so much fun watching him, learning everything about him, and planning our life together…” in the 1980s Mode opening cutscene, 1980s Mode now begins with all of Jokichi’s interests unlocked. This has absolutely zero effect on gameplay, but it makes sense for lore reasons.
- Ritsuko Chikanari, the 5th rival of 1980s Mode, depises poor people, and only wants to interact with rich people. To reflect this, the 7 girls who sunbathe with her at the pool are now the 7 richest girls at school, instead of just being 7 random female students.
- Previously, if Student A was running to warn Student B about murder, and Student B was in an event, Student A would politely stand there while waiting for Student B’s event to end. This was silly, so from now on, Student A will forcibly end Student B’s event.
- Some of the books in the faculty room had titles that referenced things that were created after 1989; JavaScript, HTML, C#, etc. These book titles have been adjusted to have more generic names that don’t explicitly reference post-1980s things.
- If it’s Friday and the player hasn’t participated in a club activity yet, a warning notification appears at the top of the screen to inform the player that they will be kicked out of their club unless they attend a club activity.
- It is now possible to change the resolution and change whether or not the game is running in windowed mode from the Settings Menu; this means that you can do it from the title screen or while at school.
- Changed the texture for the leaves and roses on the arches in the school plaza, since they were photorealistic and didn’t match the art style of the other leaves around the same area.
- The “over-the-shoulder camera aiming system” can now be found in the asylum level, too. (This means that it can be added to any Befriend/Betray stealth mission added in the future.)
- Updated the icon for Money to reflect the age that Saisho Saikou actually would have been when the Japanese government decided to put his face on their currency.
- Updated the Counselor’s portrait to reflect her new model.
Fixes
- If the player destroyed a bloody weapon using the incinerator and then used the incinerator again later that day, the game would count two bloody weapons as being destroyed instead of one. This bug would interfere with the game’s ability to know whether or not the police should be summoned to school. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player dropped a car battery towards a puddle of water and then immediately tranquilized a student who was standing in that puddle of water, the student would enter the “being tranquilized” and “being electrocuted” states simultaneously, causing a lot of bugs. This scenario is no longer possible.
- If the player concealed a corpse within a garbage bag and then walked into the field of view of another character within 1 second of concealing the corpse, that character would magically become aware that the player was a murderer. This bug has been fixed.
- Sometimes, students and teachers would not react to bang snaps. This bug should now be fixed, I think. But, it was a somewhat inconsistent / random bug, so I’m not sure if it’s really fixed. If you encounter it, please report it to me.
- If a student died by drowning and police discovered the corpse, School Atmosphere would not drop by the proper amount, and the number of security cameras present at school the next day would not update properly. This bug has been fixed.
- Doors open if students walk close enough to them. So, during the “Kidnap Kokona” tutorial, it was possible to open the gym’s doors and exit the gym by getting Kokona to walk close enough to a door. This oversight has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that would cause a teacher to play the “I’m sending you to the guidance counselor” voice line after getting annoyed by the protagonist, but then fail to actually send the player to the counselor.
- At the end of the intro cutscene, a montage of images appears onscreen. There was supposed to be a picture of Amai here, but it was accidentally removed a few months ago. This oversight has been fixed.
- By standing in a very specific spot, it was possible to complete the “steal a key without being spotted” tutorial without actually distracting the nearby NPC. This oversight/exploit has been removed.
- Fixed bug that would cause Raibaru’s pathfinding to break if Musume’s Friday “talk to Osana” began while Raibaru was investigating a dropped object or returning a dropped object.
- If the player dismembered a corpse and disposed of all body parts, there would still be a memorial for the dismembered student the next day. This bug has been fixed.
- When aiming and throwing a throwable object (such as a bang-snap or a stink bomb) sometimes the protagonist would throw two simultaneously. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player toggled Vsync on or off in the Settings menu, it would affect Vsync at school, but not within the protagonist’s home. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that would cause Science Club students to retain outlines on their lab coats even if the player had disabled outlines in the Settings menu.
- Some of the player’s postprocessing / detail options were being reset to default when closing and relaunching the game. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that was preventing the game from creating a “Reset Week” save file at the beginning of the week in 202X Mode specifically.
- The “Subtitle Size” option would only affect the size of subtitles if it was changed during gameplay. This bug has been fixed.
- Choosing the Poison elimination at the corkboard was unlocking the Matchmaking scheme instead. Oops! This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that would cause Senpai to appear bald during the intro cutscene if the player chose hairstyle #7 for him.
- The “Kokona asks you for help with a play” cutscene featured a prop from 1980s Mode. Oops! I’ve removed it.
- Fixed bug that caused one of the bully girls’ earrings to rotate in weird ways (physics problem).
- Fixed a typo in one of the 1980s Mode teachers’ profiles.
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