> INTERIOR DECORATION

Of anything in a game like this, decorated interior rooms take THE longest to complete. There are lots of little objects, each with a sprite/animation, interaction dialogue, sometimes scripts attached and interfaces for interacting with them...

The past several months have mostly been: Create a room sketch, draw all objects one by one, add them to the room, add hitboxes and dialogue to everything, add detailed interactions. And repeat.

HOWEVER, as of about a week ago, all interior room sprites and objects in the Redleaf demo are complete!

This only leaves -interactions- with those objects, which are also mostly done. There are two rooms of these left, with one just needing dialogue and a sound effect, and the other being not much more complex, just needing dialogue and some scripting.

> EXTERIOR DECORATION

Exterior rooms usually tend to be a bit simpler, single objects are larger and cover more space generally. ALL exterior rooms have their backgrounds and hitboxes completed, with only 2 rooms having some missing objects.

> SOUND EFFECTS

This game has a very heavy focus on sound effects. Step sounds, little object interactions, even someone grabbing something off a table makes a sound. I do a lot of the sound recording myself, in my own home, with a little handy recorder thing. I take those raw sounds and edit and master them in FL studio, and all of this takes time...

Right now, there are 8 sounds I have marked as needing done, but not all cutscenes are in the game yet, so there's bound to be a few more needing done later. Still, getting these 8 done will mean big progress, and this is my immediate goal at the moment, before finishing the remaining interior interactions or cutscenes.

> CUTSCENES

Cutscenes are something that's usually not too tricky to make, but they can take a few days of focused effort. As of right now, there are 4-6 main story cutscenes left to write, script, and code. It's a bit hard to say the exact amount, but percentage wise the cutscenes are about 80% done.

The other thing about cutscenes is, they tell the story. This means they get a lot of writing revisions! These revisions are to make the storytelling better, and they require a lot of thinking on my part and reviews/thoughts from others as well.

At the moment, I feel pretty good about where the writing's headed, the story feels strong enough and the characters are working the way I want them to with each other. I can't wait for yall to see it!!

> CODE

The backend code of Petrichor was developed by me, on my own custom engine, called Storyteller 2 (If you're wondering where Storyteller 1 is, check PS!Outertale's source code, lol).

I work just as much on this as I do on the game itself, improving performance and adding new features. I eventually want to release Storyteller 2 engine in a usable state for ANY game developer. It's code-only, which isn't for everyone, but I think a lot of people would find it useful.

When Petrichor fully releases (the entire game, not just demos), its source code repository will be made public! All source code changes, edits, and progression over the course of the game's development will be visible for everyone to see.

If I haven't gotten Storyteller 2 as a usable engine on its own by that point, I'll make it my full focus and get it out ASAP.

> RELEASE DATE?

I'd like to get this demo released by the end of this summer. That's not a hard deadline, but I'd really like if I could. The Redleaf demo has been in development for almost a full year now!