Hi, hello, hey!

Because I have a lot of followers here not following me on my other accounts, I wanted to officially announce here that YES. I have now finally begun working on that remaster I mentioned in a devlog a few months back. But in addition to that, now that I've gotten a good chunk done so I have a better idea of what I'm doing, I thought I'd take the opportunity to dive into exactly what the remaster will include! So, uh... so you can know... I guess... I don't know... and be excited(???). I'm not sure exactly how many people will be genuinely excited for this, but I am genuinely excited for this, because I think it will improve the game a lot! And just create a much better experience overall. And for evidence of just how excited I am, I had originally planned to kinda just hack away at the remaster in the background while working on other separate projects, but once I began dinking around with remaster stuff, my Whole Focus went into it (as it's wont to do) and so now I officially can't work on anything else (because that's how my brain works I guess). So pretty much 100% of my project work time is now devoted to the remaster until I finish it. (Which I suppose the benefit of this will be that I finish it sooner rather than it dragging on...)

ANYWAY. No one cares about that, Carrot, stop rambling.

What exactly do you mean by "remaster," Carrot?

That's a great question! I'm calling it "remaster" rather than "remake" as it's not a full remake. I think of a remake like... remaking the entire game from the ground up. And that is definitely not what this is lol. "Remaster," here, is basically me saying that I'm gonna go through the game and give it a really nice scrub and polish. Because I don't know if you've noticed but I was working on this game a long time... almost three years actively. And a lot can happen in three years! Particularly if you're working on it like, every day, and drawing the characters every day, and also coding and working on other games, and generally just like... improving... skills... getting better at... stuff...

...anyway. So what this remaster will hopefully do is bring the entire game to the same level of quality and consistency across the board. Since the quality and consistency of, say, Arc 5, is quite different from that of, say, Arc 1.

What are the main things you're working on?

Well, art, for the most part. And particularly the art in the early arcs. Because it's the early arcs where sometimes the art is just soooo different and soooo cringe to me that I literally cannot stand it anymore LOL I'll be redrawing or tweaking CGs. Redrawing or tweaking sprites. And even drawing some new CGs! The arcs that will get the most work will be Arcs 1 and 2. Arc 3 will probably get some work. Arc 4 a little bit. And Arc 5 likely won't get a whole lot.

Besides art, though, I've also been hard at work on other things, such as a revamped menu structure and GUI, adding a new Iggy side sprite that will pop up in conversations and Iggy-heavy solo scenes, making small tweaks to scripting or writing where I think it can be improved, and also a few secret surprises(!!!).

When will it be done?!?!?!?

As always, I have no idea. I don't even want to give any sort of estimate as I'm honestly just having a ball right now fixing up and redoing parts, and for the first time, I don't feel limited by time (I always felt some pressure to get the next arcs out somewhat quickly) so I don't want to put any new pressure on myself and limit the improvements I can potentially make with an arbitrary deadline. Obviously I don't want this to drag on forever, especially as eventually I want to work on new projects, but I'm still early enough on that I'm in the discovery and uncertainty phase. I'll probably have a better idea of a timeline once I get more done.

YEAAAAAHHH!!!

Ok so now that those basic questions are out of the way, I can start to show some of the actual progress! And also take this opportunity to reminisce about three-years-ago me that had absolutely no idea what they were doing!!!!11!!!1

Back in August of 2021, I started messing around to see if I could turn the story for OW into a visual novel. This wasn't the first time I tried to turn OW into a game mind you... I tried making an RPG horror game out of it twice. And also started a storybook-style CG-and-dialogue-only visual novel of it once. And when none of those worked, I started writing it as a novel. That initial novel script is what would then become the base for the final version: I threw it into Ren'Py together with some quick and rough BGs and also the initial music I'd been hoarding and collecting for the game for years and scripted out the first couple of scenes, which was so motivating for me seeing it come to life like that, even without sprites or art, that I decided to P R E S S F O R W A R D and ordered a tablet for the first time so I could try working on some art.

The rest shall live in infamy...

No, it won't, we're talking about it now. I already had some preliminary designs for the chars since I had worked on the previous versions already, but I'd never drawn on a tablet before and never made a sprite or anything like that, so it was all incredibly new to me. That is why so much of the initial art looks so strange and bad. I had only ever drawn the characters a few times, so many of their designs were still kinda... evolving... And also my style itself had a lot of aspects that would evolve and become more consistent over time. AND just like... my own skill level. I had literally never used a tablet before but just jumped in and started drawing and everything went straight into the game hahaha. But now, 3 years and thousands of drawings of these chars later, I've improved a ton art-wise and my style in general has become a lot more organic and fluid and consistent. I'm not even joking when I say that looking back at a lot of the old art, I barely recognize it as my own art and chars. It just looks so different to me...

Some of the most egregious examples I already fixed while working on Arc 5, usually because I actively needed to use that asset again, like the case of Orlam's original sprite:

I can barely bring myself to look at Orlam's original sprite anymore LOLOL goddddd... but you can see just how much both my style and his design has evolved, from the shading, to the hair, to like... what even in the world is happening with his hands in that first one... I could not tell you... dang...

Since I needed Orlam's "normal" sprite again for Arc 5, I redid it before releasing the finale, along with Bucks's sprite and a few other things, like some tweaks to their kid sprites since I needed to reuse those and a few redraws of some especially egregious early CGs:

However, because I was still actively trying to finish Arc 5 and the game in general, my general motto regarding this old cringey art was to just "let it be" as I had more important things to do. Hence, why I only focused on redoing the assets I needed to actively use again for Arc 5.

Now, however...

...I obviously do not have to worry about that as the game is complete! Which means I have all the time in the world to go back and start retooling a lot of that old bad art. And let me tell you............ when I originally was entertaining the idea of the remaster, I had in my head that I'd perhaps redraw a few CGs, do some tweaks to some sprites. But now that I have started and am really looking at some of these old CGs...

...I'm redoing basically all of them LOL

OK not completely redoing all of them! But at least tweaking all of them. Th-they just all look so off!!!! I can't help it...

I use a ~ completely arbitrary vibes-based ~ approach when deciding what to do with a CG or sprite. If there's just a whole lot bad going on with it, I've been just redrawing it from scratch (usually this just means redrawing the chars, fortunately, as I'm not touching the BGs unless I redraw it in such a way that the old BG doesn't work). If the general composition and poses look mostly fine, I will just tweak the faces, as those are usually the worst offenders (in particular the eyes). Also if there's an inconsistent design element in the char, particularly with the hair (almost every single character now has a very particular way that I do their hair that I didn't originally, so I'm trying to fix that and make it much more consistent).

Let's take a look at a few examples!!

Sob this one was so bad... tbh almost all the memory CGs had to be completely redrawn. Just wildly inconsistent and and they all look SO strange... now they actually look like themselves hahaha. Gidget's hair in particular has to be tweaked in just about every single CG as I only really fleshed out how I wanted it to look towards the end of... Arc 4??? It took a while. I also added more variations to the CG so that it's not just a static image any longer, which I feel gives the CGs more life in general.

This one, however, wasn't completely bad (and I still think it's rather cute even if it feels a bit off). So rather than completely redraw it, I simply tweaked it. Mostly in the faces... I think the way I've drawn eyes and noses has changed the most as my style has evolved. I used to draw the eyes much smaller and more weirdly oblong, also the pupils were WAY too small, making the chars always look like 0__0 constantly. Noses I also used to draw smaller, so those have all needed to get bigger. Ears... I've always drawn big ears, but I used to draw the middle part of the ear a bit too small in comparison, making them look a bit strange. I have NO idea what I was trying to do with Genzou's teeth in the old one. Fix that!! Also with this CG in particular, skill-level wise I wasn't drawing their faces very well angle-wise and also it didn't even look like Genzou's face was touching him when it should have... just lots of little things like that. I think the new version looks much better!

Ok both of these were more or less redrawing or tweaking the CG in such a way that it still essentially looks the same (even if the level of how much was redrawn was different) but what about if I felt like a CG was just so bad that I need to redo everything compositionally-wise from the ground up???? We've got some of that, too!

Everything about this CG was awful so I decided to just scrap and start from scratch. Also like... why? Was the BG pink??? I don't even know. See, these are strange decisions that three-years-ago Carrot made that I cannot explain. Fortunately, these complete redos are a lot less common than the other ones.

Anyway, in addition to redoing and tweaking CGs, I am also adding new CGs!!!!!!111! YEAH!! I think there are a lot of places generally that could be better served with a CG thrown in there that didn't have one originally. Also some scenes that did have a CG but I felt like the addition of another one (or two more, or three more) could help give the scene more weight and make the overall flow / intensity / vibes better. Also sometimes I just wanted to draw more CGs for scenes I really like because I'm self-indulgent like that.

I've always really loved this scene from Arc 2 so I thought it would be nice to give it some more weight and ~ feels ~ by adding some more CGs and fleshing it out a bit more. I really like the result as it stabs me in the heart even more. I have a few other places I've also further fleshed out already, as well as a number of other brand-new CGs. Arc 2 in particular will really benefit from having more CGs as it's currently the arc with the least amount of CGs. I find this distressing for not only the self-indulgent reason of my liking that arc and thinking it deserves more, but also it's the arc most similar to Arc 1, so having more new CGs will help better differentiate it a bit more I think. Other places that have already gotten new CGs include the BBQ in Arc 1 (since I felt like giving that whole sequence a bit more weight would be good as a better lead-in to the rest of the story), as well as some other one-off ones throughout Arcs 1 and 2. I'm not sure yet if I'll be adding many more brand-new CGs in the other arcs as they're quite full already (in particular Arc 5 LOL I cannot think of any reason I'd add more CGs to Arc 5...). But I may get some ideas for some once I reach Arcs 3 and 4 in regards to tweaking (since I do think those arcs will require some CG tweaks, especially when it comes to consistency). It's all really up in the air right now and I'm just having fun thinking of new things to add, so nothing's set in stone yet!

So far since starting work on the remaster a few weeks ago I've:

• Tweaked 15 CGs in Arc 1
• Redrawn 13 CGs in Arc 1
• Drawn 14 new CGs in Arc 1
• Tweaked 3 CGs in Arc 2
• Redrawn 7 CGs in Arc 2
• Drawn 9 new CGs in Arc 2

My process is really all over the place lol. I'm like... kinda going in order... but then I'll randomly decide to work on another part, and then I'll work on other parts around that part. And then I'll go back and forth a bit based on what I feel like working. That's why I have decent chunks of work done on both Arcs 1 and 2 since I keep kinda going back and forth between them. For the best, I suppose, as it lets me kinda work on whatever I feel like working on that day.

Of course, CGs aren't the only form of art in the game! There's also...

...The Sprites.

The thing about sprites is... it seems so simple to be like, "oh I'll just make a little tweak to a part that feels off," but then you realize that you'll need to replicate that tweak on every single iteration of the sprite. And then re-replicate that tweak for every iteration of every new version of the sprite in a different outfit or that has WOUNDS for the FINALE because ALL THOSE SPRITES are ALSO different FILES.

IT'S A LOT OF WORK ACTUALLY.

Let us take Genzou's sprite for instance. Genzou probably has the most sprites out of any other character. ....ok maybe not. Gidget probably has more. But the thing about Gidget is that they have a lot of completely different sprite versions, like the Arc 5 version and the other Arc 5 version so even though their original sprite does have a ton of iterations (and outfits) because they split off in Arc 5 it becomes less that I would have to tweak the original sprite for. As opposed to Genzou who keeps the same sprite the whole way through the game just with different iterations.

Anyway, I'm rambling again UHHHH. Genzou's sprite, right...

Genzou has... obviously his "normal" sprites, also a glasses version, also a hatless version, also a coat open version, also a coat open black eye version, also a coat open finale wounds version, also his different outfits, for instance his tshirt version, his suit version, his sweatshirt version. Also also some random little one-off combinations like the hat-off black eye version that just has a few expressions in the Arc 5 cabin scene. Also also also I gave him even more versions already because I've now added cigarette and apron variations to make those scenes feel more immersive.

Counting it up now, Genzou has 278 separate files that are JUST variations of his standard sprite. Which means any tweak I do to his sprite needs to be replicated across those 278 files... and because my original Aseprite files that store all my layers for sprites are really weirdly organized because I hadn't figured out very well how to do my sprites yet way back then, they're a major pain to sort through. So my solution mostly revolves around creating a "fix" layer at the top of the Aseprite file (or multiple different fix layers LOL) that tweaks all the elements I want to tweak, then I open up each individual sprite file and copy-paste that new layer(s) on top and resave it. It sounds like a hassle and it is, but it's usually faster than sorting through the Aseprite file itself to load up each expression layer with the right outfit layer and the right fix layer. It takes a really long time though sob...

Fortunately Genzou and Gidget are the worst offenders as they have a ton of files, but the rest of my sprites don't have nearly as many versions so they're a bit quicker if I want to make a change. For instance, I already redrew Orlam's normal sprite so I have nothing to worry about there. But I did desperately need to make tweaks to his "king" sprite. Luckily, he only has two different outfits for that sprite so it didn't take nearly as long to copy over the tweaks onto all the other files. In Orlam's case it's less about sprite tweaks and more about redrawing all the freaking completely different sprites he has... I had forgotten how many different poses he has even in the early arcs my gosh. All those need to be redrawn as they all look super weird now sob...

Orlam's (king version) and Genzou's tweaked sprites. I think they both look a lot cuter now <3

There aren't a lot of sprites that I will need to completely redo. Thankfully, the worst offenders, Bucks and Orlam, already had their sprites redone before this. I did redo Hunar's BBQ sprite though as it was also a bit strange looking since it was one of the first sprites I did. Since it doesn't need that many expressions since he only shows up at the BBQ, it felt easier to just completely redo it rather than tweak it. Plus I could give him some new expressions and make him look more in proportion next to Bucks lol.

PROPORTIONS.

Now that I mention it.

That's another thing that I've been trying to better compose in the game. I am... not the best when it comes to drawing things always at the right proportions and sizes they need to be. IT'S A PROBLEM I HAVE, OK???? Even when I try very very hard and reference something directly, it still might turn out not quite the right size when compared to everything else on screen...

In the past, I mostly just tried not to care. But now that I'm polishing stuff up anyway, I decided to use in-engine modifiers to actually better size chars on the screen so they look more Right™ compared to the rest of the chars. Some of the worst offenders when it came to this in the original are Cecil's sprite, which just looks way too big compared to the others, Hunar's Arc 5 sprite, which looks just a bit too big compared to Genzou, and a few others that I can't remember off the top of my head. So while I'm going through and polishing up some of the scripting and adding the Iggy sprite, I'm also resizing sprites a bit to make them more standard. So if you notice some sprites are just a tad smaller than they were in the past, this is why.

Also just small things maybe only I would notice such as adding some tint to dark scenes:

In the original game, I only did this for like... two different scenes I think??? The castle scene in Arc 5 and the random bit with Genzou in the dungeon in Gidget's mansion. I'm not sure why I never did it for any other scenes that were also supposed to be dark, so I'm updating that now! Always trying to increase immersion, am I right or am I right???

Anyway...

...what else.

Ah, yes. You've seen him in some screenshots now already, but I haven't talked about the new Iggy sprite! This was something I've been interested in adding for quite a while but didn't want to go through all the trouble before the game was done. I thought that Iggy having a little side sprite that pops up during conversations and some of the Iggy solo scenes could help a lot to make scenes feel more lively and immersive! Plus gives me a chance to help players connect more with Iggy's emotions or something who can say. Either way, I really like how it's turned out. It feels very non-intrusive and I can have it pop in and out just when necessary. Because some people may not want to play it with the side sprite though or might want to replay a more "classic experience," I've made it optional: you'll be able to toggle it on and off in the options menu. (Though you'll only be able to change it when the Iggy sprite is not on screen as I haven't yet been able to figure out how to make the toggle delete the active sprite on screen... unsure if I'll be able to figure that out, but I figure it's not a huge deal anyway as I don't imagine people will be constantly trying to turn it on and off LOL More like people will choose one or the other and may test it on the other option a few times but not be going back and forth often.)

Anyway, I think he's very cute <3

Plus it gives me a chance to show Iggy in different outfits you wouldn't get to otherwise! Since normally you can only see Iggy in CGs. So look forward to that teehee.

Of course, art isn't the only thing I'll be revamping with this remaster, even if it is the main thing. The other big thing I wanted to revisit now that I have more time is the GUI. Not really the dialogue stuff so much as that's fine to me, but the menus. You may or may not have noticed but the OG OW experience has... extremely simple menus lol. Like... there are barely any changes from the default Ren'Py menu GUI tbh. Sure some of this got better over time as I added more stuff as production went on, such as finally adding a gallery, music room, replays, and what-not, but the basic structure and look wasn't ever really changed much from the default besides changing up some fonts and colors. That's because when I started working on this game 3 years ago I was brand-new to Ren'Py and just learning everything as I got to it. So even making simple changes to the GUI was quite an endeavor!! I've come a long way since then though and worked on multiple other games where I've experimented with and learned a lot more about menus and GUI, so I thought I'd put some of that back into the main game.

Now... I am not the type of person that thinks things need to be changed just for change's sake. Like I don't want to do anything wild with the menus or completely rework them solely for the sake of making them distinguishable from the default Ren'Py structure. HOWEVER. I do think some general polish would definitely help the game feel a bit more, I don't know... professional??? Or something. LOL who knows. At any rate, I decided to revisit the menus and do a bit of work here and there.

One thing I wanted to do first was slightly alter the default menu; basically, have it be a kind of "pause" screen rather than leading directly into one of the menus (the default for that being the "save" menu):

There were a couple of reasons for this. First up being that I thought a basic info screen would be helpful to see where you are in the game. It's a rather long game after all!! LOL And maybe this type of info isn't that useful to people who've played it before and know the story, but I've noticed a lot of first-comers to the game have no idea what arc they're on or how the story is structured. And though I do also have the current arc on the save slots, it's not very visible, so having the current arc and chapter front and center like this could be helpful for those unsure where they are in the game.

Secondly, because of how Ren'Py is set up, the "save" and "load" menus are quite similar, and there have been times I accidentally saved over slots rather than loading them because I didn't know I was on the save menu LOL I have noticed others do this, too, so I think I'm not alone in this... I thought that being forced to click into the save menu rather than defaulting into it might help this. And it would also allow me to take more advantage of space??? Since I didn't have to have the navigation on the left of my menus if the navigation is only on the pause menu:

I think it just looks a bit nicer even for basic menus like the save screen, but particularly as I wanted to include a couple of new menus that would need even more benefit of space, such as a new extras menu to handle all the, for lack of a better word, "extra" stuff lol:

Speaking of extra stuff, I am adding some NEW extra stuff! For instance, character bios! They're are not particularly groundbreaking but I thought having them would be a nice touch to give all their basic information that I sometimes get asked about on Tumblr, etc. Plus, it gives me a chance to finally use some of this char art hahaha:

I was also particularly proud of the character bios menu that I whipped up (which again benefits from having the full space/not needing the navigation menu on the side):

AND........!!!!!

I am honestly surprised that only one person asked about this so far, but you'll see it says "After Stories" on the extras menu. I do plan on adding a bit of new content just for funsies in the form of a short story for each LI you can unlock if you get their epilogue hohoho. Like the character bios, they won't be anything groundbreaking. Honestly just a chance for me to write something short, cute, and sweet for each pairing tbh. But I thought people might like a little something new in addition to the rest of the remastered stuff.

I have pretty good ideas for what I'll write for both Genzou's and Orlam's already though am still trying to figure out Gidget's. It'll be a little bit before I actually start working on them though as I'd like to get a good bulk of the remaster work done first before starting on the new content. I'll be able to share more about them once I actually start working on them!!

Other than that, uhhhhhhhh...

Less exciting but I'm trying to do additional optimization... I have already whacked 30 MB off the game build by converting all the BG images to webp for instance LOL I'm always looking for new ways to decrease the game build size as it's quite large. I'm also continuing to fix small errors. I swear I always think I've found every last typo but then I'll watch someone new play the game and I'll see a new one SOB. I suppose it'll happen in a 280k word game where you are the sole editor BUT STILL.

I feel like that's the bulk of it! It's quite a lot! But all stuff I feel like the game will really benefit from! And I feel like it'll really make the experience a lot better (and hopefully fun even for people who've already played it to replay!). I will say now that save files from the original version of the game will likely not be compatible. Some of the menu stuff I've been working on has required me to rework some stuff, which will lead to oddities if you then try to open up older save files (I've noticed this in my own old save files while working). That and there's just gonna be so many changes and new things to unlock that it just doesn't make any sense to try and open up an older save file. Everything will just be so out of whack and I won't be able to guarantee things will work properly. But I figure that if you're even interested in playing the remaster to begin with you'd want to replay from the beginning anyway, especially considering a big bulk of the updates will be for the earlier parts of the game. And it's also not like it's a huge bother to use the skip function if you're really that anxious to unlock things quickly LOL

And that's about it!

I hope you've enjoyed this journey into both everything I'm working on and the history of the game and its evolution. I hope if anything it's been interesting to see the design and art decisions I've made along the way and how things have changed over time. As I said at the beginning, I'm not sure when I'll finish up work on the remaster stuff, and I don't want to give myself any sort of time limit or deadline right now. But as I get more done, I'll probably get a better idea of around when I may finish. And as always you'll be able to get more updates and peeks at everything on my Twitter and Tumblr!

I'm really excited with how all the new changes and updates are looking and I can't wait for everyone to be able to play the remaster once it's finished!!!!1!1!!