This week in BYTE was a full content week, just churning out the next steps in the plot. Firstly, I created the final round of battles. There are another three battles, one per computer in the chapel, and the player needs to install the DJ software on the computers so it’s ready when they get to the castle.

These battles I wanted to make without introducing any new skills, enemies, or mechanics. All three battles have a computer to activate in the center and different arrangements of enemies in the arena. The computer is the same as the one from the computer in the office when you get the code for the safe, but the enemy configurations are more complex and difficult.

Creating these was pretty straightforward and allowed me to really get creative, because I didn’t need to think as much about the programming, aside from a few bug fixes. The workflow on the battles is coming together very nicely.

The next step was writing some new dialogue scenes. I only needed to go up through June 3, where Jonathan, Lucy, and Arthur go to a mass held by Keons. These all went fairly smoothly (though I did need to create/edit some of my C# functions for the narrative stuff), but I want to do some heavy revisions on the scenes. With the new characters coming in, I feel like I’m not keeping the characters all unique quite as well, so I want to make sure that can add a little extra clarification between the characters later.

Lastly, I created the art for Quincey and Mina. I only planned on doing Quincey’s art, but I had some extra time and felt a bit inspired so I went ahead and did Mina’s as well. I think that Quincey’s art, at least, is my best character art yet and both the models I made are among my best. I experimented with a different art style for Quincey, but it went so terribly wrong that I just kept with what I’ve been doing. I would still like to go back and find a more distinct style for the character art at some point, though.

This has all set me up excellently for the final stretch of the main BYTE content. I have five more days to write and one more character to do the art for and then I will all be done. The entire first month+ of the game will be playable from start to finish (I hope). This will all hopefully be done by next week.