This is a quick update log of my progress in my visual novel concept ‘My Dear Yumesora’. Go here to see my previous post, and here to visit the game.
It’s been a pretty long time since I last made one of these, though I guess I did release images of Yumesora only two months ago. Nevertheless, I got quite a lot of progress concerning the technical aspects of the visual novel, and have some new improvements over the original story and game mechanics to share.
(I am not really experienced with Luau, so progress within the scripting and stuff will probably take long 
)
Also, I do understand that the Roblox Devforum may not be the best place to be creating devlogs for my Roblox game (correct me if I’m wrong), so if you have any recommendations regarding what other platforms to use, that would be great.
Now, onto the important stuff.
Section 1
For the longest time, the visual novel worked pretty much like google slides, with a static frame change. The system, while extremely simple for an inexperienced person like myself, was not visually appealing, especially with the lack of text motion.
So, I did some work, and was able to get a functional “text motion” script working. I have no idea what it’s called, but just say I required perhaps a few sources to help me out, despite the overall simplistic nature of the script.
Regardless, the visual novel system still works like google slides with a whole lot of extra steps; I was just able to make it look more visually pleasant, I suppose.
Next would be regarding the layout of the story of the game. Initially, I intended for the visual novel to be a very simple kinetic novel, but with four different endings which were all reliant on the very last episodes of the story.
Now however, I realized that a good visual novel would probably require more freedom than just following a single narriative. So, inspired by the flowchart from the game Detroit: Become Human, I decided to borrow that concept and create a flowchart within the main game menu of the visual novel.
How I vision the flowchart to work will go like this;
- Essentially, the story will have three (or maybe four) distinctive arcs, each with their own flowchart, separate from each other to simplify the process for me (and to allow the game to be released per arc, as I intend in the future).
- Each flowchart will have multiple branches, like how any branching works with a visual novel.
- For simplicity sake, no matter the branches taken, they all will lead to the same ending within the arc (might be two, I dunno yet). This is to ensure that the arc after itself does not need to contend with the branching, since that’ll really cause way too much chaos for me; however, it still leaves a lot of branching to be had in the arc itself.
- And like before, choosing different branches/ dialogue choices allows the player to unlock unique CG illustrations, scenes, badges, etc.
(also, I might make it so that each arc has its own ending separate from the primary endings of the game. I’ll just see if I want to add that to the visual novel later)
This of course means that the visual novel story will be a lot more complex than I was anticipating. But, nothing like working hard in the name of passion and literature.
This also marks one of the most significant changes I made to my visual novel concept, before it moves from concept to fully-fledged “game”.
On the basis of UI and the main menu, I will be doing a heavy overhaul. You can see screenshots of how the game looks here, as seen in my previous posts.
But essentially, I want to get rid of the in-game update log, completely revamp or remove the donate section, and change the layout of the entire UI. As of now, the visual novel still looks pretty similar to the screenshots I provided a few months ago, and that certainly needs to change. I also want to change the background, and just make it a whole lot simpler.
For the game portion of the visual novel, I actually won’t be changing too much, but will rather be adding more to the UI. Namely, I want more motion and “animation” to certain aspects of the UI, and to finally finish the backlog. I will however be completely revamping the episodes, help, and library menus, which is synonymous with the changes being done in the main menu.
As for “animation” and “motion”, they will primarily be applied to give the storytelling of the visual novel more life, like with subtle movements of the character sprites, or transitions between UI elements. Just note that as much as I’d love to add Live2D animations to the character sprites and backgrounds, assuming I re-learn how to animate, I just have no idea how to implement that into Roblox Studio.
(if you do know how to do that though, please tell me 
)
Section 2
One of the most drastic changes I’m making to the story is adding a second heroine. Despite saying that Yumesora was going to be, quote, the “the primary and sole heroine and romantic partner” in the story, I really wanted to add more depth and complexity to the storytelling.
(I also just wanted to draw more waifus 
)
Besides, this new heroine will be introduced in the third arc of the story. To summarize shortly, the first and second arcs of the story revolves around the protagonist and Yumesora, growing their bond romantically and intimately, while the third arc is where the dramatic twist of the story occurs during the (hopefully) fictional Sino-American War, itself a continued war fought after a heated conflict in Taiwan.
This new heroine has yet to be drawn, but I’ll be sure to follow up on this post with a reveal of her sketch eventually.
Eitherway, her name is still in the choosing, and will either be Huiying Tang (chinese, simplified; 慧颖 唐, cantonese; 慧英 唐), or Meiying Tang (chinese, simplified; 美颖 唐, cantonese; 美英 唐); I’d have loved to make a poll, but I don’t think that enough people actually follow the development of my visual novel yet, unfortunately.
But, as you could probably assume from her name itself, she is Chinese. For her brief character description:
- Huiying/ Meiying is a middle-class woman from Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, which explains her Cantonese references.
- She is in her early 30s, a direct opposite of Yumesora, who would be 20 by the third story arc (I’ll decide her actual age once I finish her sketch).
- She is divorced and single.
- In short, she is a complex yet nuanced character, while still being quite alluring.
I won’t go into much of what Huiying/ Meiying will bring into the story, but just know that she is a very important character in the third story arc, depending on how you see it. I’d love to explain a lot about her, but I still haven’t finished developing her as a character yet, unfortunately.
Section 3
Regarding story and character lore, I did write a little bit on Yumesora. I can’t really explain the story lore since I’d be here typing entire essays for the next few days (yes, the lore really is that deep ), but I can give some descriptions for Yumesora that I haven’t revealed yet, or at least I forgot I revealed:
- Yumesora Hara (japanese; 原 夢空) is a transfer student from Yokohama, Japan, and was born in Fukuoka.
- Her official date of birth is November 16th, 2007.
- She has an older sister and a much younger brother.
- She plays predominantly the Oboe as her primary instrument in her school band, but also plays the Trombone for marching band events.
I’ll be sure to include bits about the story and characters of My Dear Yumesora every now and then, just so I don’t have to write an essay to explain everything before the game comes out.
About the story of the visual novel. To be honest, I kinda forgot to keep writing it, so not a lot has been done to it. However, since school is out for a while, I’ll have quite a bit of free time to get back into it. I do plan on getting a job for this summer, but I still think I’ll have plenty of time to actually work on both this project and stuff outside of it.
The good thing is, once I get my job, I’ll finally be able to allocate some funds into the development of My Dear Yumesora, so that means I can probably add some new features and such. It’ll still just be me working on the illustrations and development, although there is a slight chance I could get my sister helping me with illustrations and character designs.
Again, I understand that the process of gradually building this game up is slow, but I still hope all goes well in the end, especially since I’ve now made the game three times more complex
That’s about it for now. If you have any features you think would make the visual novel better, feel free to include in your reply down below, and I wish you a great day/ night.
