Here is another high-level update so those of you that want to follow along with the development can read through some of the recent progress. Story wise I have been working on using my notes and outline to write all the scenes and dialogue for the next update. There has been lots of work to create all the needed environments as well as new characters. There is a large scene in a village outside of Castle Helmsworth that needed a large cast of characters as well as background NPCs. Both the current Damerek or Branson paths will have scenes in the village, but they will be very different and take those stories in different directions. Afterwards you and your group will arrive at Castle Helmsworth for some climatic scenes and a few choices that will branch the upcoming story in very different paths. I added a few images of some recent work, a flashback from the Branson path and an image of your arrival in town with Damerek. Following that are some updates on new improvements for the gallery, replay system and journal rework.
Gallery
I updated the Gallery screen to include more than just the unlockable images. Now when you enter the gallery you will have 3 choices: Images, Dreams and Scenes.
The Images button will take you to a new screen that will have images of a few of the main Characters: Qinara, Kaela, Viviara and Varisha as well as a fifth option with will be an Others category. Clicking the images for each character will take to you an image gallery of just their images. The Others page will contain images of side characters who might not appear as much during the story but have special renders. This will hopefully make it easier to find images you have unlocked for specific characters easier in the future as the number of special renders grows.
The Dreams button will take you to a special replay gallery that contains just the scenes from your character's dreams in the game. New dreams will be added as you experience them during your different playthroughs. Your dreams will give clues about your character's past and since they are not shown in chronological order in the game, I thought it might be nice to have a place to replay them. This will give you the opportunity to play them in a certain order to see if you can piece together your character's memories.
Lastly is the Scenes button which opens a screen that contains certain scenes from the game that might be of importance or that you might want to replay. I am still working on the code and images for this screen, but I am planning on it being divided by the main characters in the same way the images gallery will be.
Journal
The overhaul of the journal system is underway. It will no longer appear as a long wall of text detailing all the actions and interactions you have made. It is instead turning into more of a codex of the game world and the people that inhabit it. Created to appear as an actual journal book from the period on the left side is a scrolling navigation area. It will be broken up into a few sections for characters that appear in the story, the different factions you will encounter, locations and items and lore. As you progress through the story, new entries will be added to the journal or existing entries will be updated. A small notification will appear also to let you know when new information has been added. The journal pages will contain information and details along with images such as character portraits, maps item images etc. The journal pages by default are displayed in a handwritten font style. The options menu does have a toggle that you can use to change the font to a more traditional typed font for easier reading.