Conviction Chronicles blog post #3 - Alpha demo released

 Link: https://evilous.itch.io/conviction-chronicles-alpha

I'm releasing an alpha version early to get feedback.

Day structure

0. Start of day roll call by Bianca.

1. Waking up in the protag's room. You can do whatever, but leaving the room forces you into the influence game.

2. Influence game. Make a choice to determine your relationship with everything else.

3. Breakfast, choose to eat or not to eat.

4. Freedom to do whatever in the day time. When ready for night time, enter your bedroom to force it to be night time.

5. Night time before sleeping.

6. Nightmare/dream sequence.

A bunch of random shit

I'll put it here, but there is a lot of smaller stuff added like food being able to be consumed. Drugs being able to be used, unknown water having effects with drugs having impacts. Taking painkillers removes injury levels for a bit for how long it takes to recover, but will make the character more needing to poop, where their limit for needing to go to the bathroom increases. Details like elevators working and other things were added. With being able to die from hunger outside of eating breakfast and being able to overdose off of drugs. The status screen being improved. It's a big list of smaller things that can't really go into more detail with since it's small. Many bugs were fixed. Right now there is Ai movement, but they cannot interact with anything in any meaningful way. Also trying to do a free time event sends the player back to the first floor. A mastermind isn't chosen, mainly since masterminds can't do much at the moment, since it needs the AI to be made for it to be worth anything. Lily has a special ability, but it doesn't do anything at the moment which gives her a special room to change her current personality in. There is also the general UI for showing the location and the time that is still in progress, but it's better than nothing.

Toilet stuff

It's a meter from 0-5. 0 means the character doesn't need to use the toilet at all. 5 is shitting themselves. Eating food increases this closer to 5 along with certain actions like taking painkillers. The player will get a unique "I have to go" animation when they are at a 4 with a warning to go to the bathroom. The player can see this animation and facial expression in other characters when they are at 4 during the influence game. Later on this will only happen when their personal toilet is clogged and cannot be used when they really have to go. It's a small detail, but later on will force a consistent action between all AIs. Actions like it allow more direct manipulation.

Injuries

Injuries have internal timers set up when they happen for normal recovery. This is made to be longer to force the usage of painkillers and the hospital beds. The player can get injured from working at a 1/25 chance each time which impacts a random body part. The injuries are not removed until the timer is up and a day is removed from the timer at the start of each day. Injuries become suspicious for trials in the future, which is going to fuel more of the AI and the player to remove them as fast as possible. 

Depending on the label the painkillers use, it will give 1, 2, or a random amount to the drug stability level. Getting to a 5 means overdosing. Every day, 1 is removed from this until it becomes 0. Victor on the other hand loses 2 instead of the normal 1.

With drugs, I changed Victor's ability to create certain drugs to having the drugs being in the hospital and he gains a natural purging of medication to prevent overdosing as much as anybody else. This is so anything drug related won't automatically be assumed to be his fault. It also makes him more useful and fits the backstory I have in mind with him.

Nightmare

At the end of every night, the player meets the Nightmare, who is a symbolic producer looking guy. This is heavily based off of Whiteout Frontier's night time dream sequence where information is told to the player. Instead of mostly being game info based, it's more philosophical. Like broken shards of a mirror. Right now there are only 20+ different speeches he could give. Later on, I might add switches which might allow certain things to be done depending on what the player has heard.

Roll Call

Bianca appears on screen at the start of a new day. Her pose and position is dynamic. The demo allows for changing her pose and position randomly. There is a very low chance that the "behind her" camera is used and she makes a statement about firing the camera director. She makes some sort of statement to the player/contestants/viewers and then her roll call ends. Unless someone new has died, which then an investigation starts after she lists everybody who dies. After the third person reported, she will say the total number. There are going to be cases where multiple people are found dead at once when the AI is added to the game, or multiple murders happen on the same night. So having support for saying multiple deaths at once was needed.

Bianca is made to be a cross breed between Danganronpa's Monaca and Miu. She is vulgar and is bratty. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to age her up some more, with a future new intro stating her age, since I don't want this game banned from Steam since she is a smaller sized girl, and her feminine outfit might be viewed the wrong way.

Bianca's theme was one of the first songs made for this game, it's very chaotic and twisted.

Underwear

Most of the cast wears pants. But there are some with dresses and it's possible to se their underwear. I might as well list which ones have unique underwear in game. 

Agatha: Cougar print with goddess additions. Her garter belt hides some of it. 

Lily: White, but has many different distorted eyes. Showcasing her split personality. Along with some other implications on who she actually is.

Crow: Summoning circle print. Since she's goth.

Emma: A chess board pattern with card symbols.

Bianca: Black panties with a pink wrapping with lots of hearts. There are words on it that cannot be seen unless squinting or being really close to read it.

They are made to showcase their personalities a bit, with some hidden details about who they are for Emma and Lily. 

Even though it cannot be seen in game, I'll go over the other girls. For the guys, they mostly have normal underwear outside Jack who has a Hawaii pattern thong. And Victor having braies. 

Aishia: Bunny print. From an older cartoon.

Alexis: Commando under the spats.

 Jade: It's not needed, as she is a robot. But if she had to, black panties.

Nova: White with a battery icon to recharge.

Tina: Purple panties with question marks all over them.

Updated to the Alpha

I actually had some time to add certain things to the Alpha.

1. Some of the females now have mensural cycles that impact their mood, toilet habits, and eating habits. There are differences between each girl for what days is what in the 28 day cycle. It didn't take long to add since nothing graphic is going to be shown, but it impacts variables and how gifts are viewed on certain days.

2. Edgar's special ability to read tarot cards was added, but with placeholder art. They can impact his mood and viewpoint on others. Mostly going to be something to impact his AI when I get to that point.

Anything else?

Some things like Edgar's ability has to be added, and I don't have enough time to make it and get feedback soon, so it's being released without it. One thing I wanted to add beforehand is now being tied to free time events, so I'd rather wait before starting it. But the order of things to do is:

0. Find and fix any bugs that may still exist. This means lots of testing with the Influence Game since it has the most moving parts by far. 

1. Add anything smaller in before doing anything major.

2. Work on the free time events with everybody.

3. Add romance when free time events are done.

4. Add AI actions.

5. Start the Trials.

6. Add flashback memories. (Might actually do this before the trials so certain things can be used during them)

7. Make the ending(s) and pre-rendered cutscenes. 

8. Steam page and beyond

Not too bad overall. But it's going to take time. Thankfully adding the Influence Game is going to make the Trials MUCH easier and faster to do. Which is going to help a lot. That doesn't mean it won't take a while to complete this game. I will have to render many things in Unreal for cutscene art and pre-rendered cutscenes for scenes like executions and special endings.  

The file size is going to get very big once pre-rendered cutscenes are added into the game. But it's on track so far. It's more of making sure everything hits the mark and runs well and it should be good.