Just close enough

So, here it is. The big one. The announcement that nails me to a deadline. Not only I am willingly doing so - I even feel HAPPY at that.

And the deadline is, October, 30th - REC/REW's third birthday. I plan to roll out the first bits of the revised version on that day at worst.
I'll build it incrementally, one game-day at a time, but - don't let this fool you: once it's complete, the demo's going to be a 8-10 hour read. And I'm starting work on it tomorrow. Should you enjoy it, be aware that the downloadable version will offer

* the complete story (... eventually)
* more CGs and (once I fully understand how to build it) a scenes' gallery
* variants to sprite expression (do you CONSISTENTLY stick to a specific pose and expression to display a certain feeling? No? Then why a visual novel's character should?)

So - how did I get there? Well... simply put, I realized I was approaching sprites generation the wrong way - like building a house starting from the TV antenna. Instead of scrolling through thousands of body pose/mouth/eyes/brows combinations wondering, "what could I do with this?", I now start by reading the script and then asking, "how does this specific character feel here?"

Now... this likely is something professionals take for granted. The basics. In which case, well, I just took one step in the right direction.

So, tomorrow is THE day. Tomorrow I start with the real thing. Until then - one last check to the revised GUI (yep, I even found the time to work on that) and then some well-deserved R&R. Won't have much time for that once I get the ball rolling. In the meantime - I'm leaving you with a pic of the finalized cast of characters.
Something I kinda promised on my last post, I think...