Glad to see the team working on this full force again. If all characters with portraits gain, i can’t wait to see progress through the school year. Especially cutie hips 
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Seeing the info you guys are putting out has me excited. Can’t wait for a updated demo.
It’s great to see you guys giving us an update on the status of the game after such a long while
and while i do hope this new upcoming demo is going to be enjoyed i do have some conerns.
i am hoping you don’t mind me asking a few things:
Firstly you did mention cutting it down to one route months back
is that still happening or are you planning to get more than that as the story progresses.
Is their any plans of getting some of the side characters more involved with the MC weight gain
or be influenced by it throughout the story
What has been the toughest story cut you’ve done so far?
Routes for Rea, Hannah, and Grace were always planned, but being the only writer, I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to slowly write them all at once, or complete one before doing another. It was a little jarring writing scenes for everyone simultaneously as they’re all different, but it’s gotten easier as their personalities coalesced. I also don’t know if life’ll make us have to take another break- thankfully it hasn’t yet!
Secondly, all characters will be involved with the MC’s gain in some way. We don’t have the time to make a huge cast (especially with everyone getting so many size portraits, that’s like 30 characters), so we’re keeping everyone close to each other. Other characters, like Ryan or Mina, might be shown, but right now we’re focusing on who’s already drawn.
Lastly, the toughest story cuts all had to do with off-campus stuff. Forks 1.0 used photos for backgrounds, so I was able to write a waterpark scene, roadtrip, and have ~15 shots of Red Glen Campus. If I wanted to have Alex work the lunch line in at her high school for one scene, I could just do it. See for yourself:
When we revamped for Forks 2.0 (switching from TyranoBuilder to Ren’Py to build the current demo), we decided to use painted backgrounds because dangit, we wanted to do this right 
Unfortunately, that means lots of cut backgrounds, and lots of cut locations. They still leave campus though!
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wow i dont think ive ever seen forks 1.0. Looks like the team has come a longgg way, but no matter what quality > quantity and a few things cut here and there is never a bad thing
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Painted backgrounds aren’t that important, though I can understand the attraction. and that early Alex design isn’t exactly an eyesore, either! Though I do see that sneaky hand-hiding pose.
Just played this game and, to be honest, it got me hyped.
Really enjoyed your writing and the art is excelent. Can’t wait to see where it all goes.
I’m just curious, what made ya’ll change the character art again? In my opinion the previous art work was perfect, and dare-I-say some of the best art I’ve seen! And changing the design seems like creating extra work to me
Yep, those of you counting may’ve noticed that Alex is currently on her eighth iteration, and you bet it takes time! When FoxFire and I first started on Forks, we had a specific style in mind that we never ended up being able to hit. It was his first team project too, and so neither of us knew how to build an optimized production pipeline. We’ve both learned a lot since then 
His skills improved and as time passed, he wanted to take more stabs at character design. Over time, he was able to naturally progress to the original target, until we are where we are today. Thankfully, he’s also learned how to significantly increase his turnaround time. He knew he could do better, and you need to give your team their best chance to shine. Plus, he wanted to fix his hidey-hands problem!
Again, one of the best things we did (and I can’t stress this enough for any prospective creators reading this) is that we didn’t show anyone anything until we thought we had something ready. Not just a concept, but something ready to play. Otherwise, we never would’ve gotten this off the ground. Unfortunately, life got in the way and we had to take a ~7 month break anyway, but work continues!
We currently have everyone’s new smallest and largest sizes lined out, and FoxFire is planning to start the middle weights tomorrow. Rather than a straight progression, we’ve always started with the smallest and largest, then middle, then kept drilling down until we had the whole ~7 step progression done. I’m filling out the rest of the narrative between the ends of the old demo and new. Currently, that means extending the old Hannah/Grace/Rea scenes from the old demo, as well as adding ~10 new ones.
It’s not much, but here’s a screen of Grace’s extended scene, wherein Alex has chosen to play into Grace’s…flattery?:
The nice thing about working on a VN is that I can placeholder all assets, and replace them once the finals are ready. I’ll hopefully be back with another update soon!
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Thanks for the response! It’s really cool to read about your process of learning and crafting a VN, it’s like a behind-the-scenes in a movie 
. I wasn’t sure before, but now I’m excited to see the new sprites!
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Has this gone beyond the teaser at all? It seems like it would be nice to play through more of it.
We are presently working on post-teaser stuff, but it’s far from ready. I’ll be sure to continue posting updates as we make progress we can show, and redo the main post once the new teaser’s out.
It’s been about two weeks since any news, so here’s some! FoxFire is working on coloring the first steps of the new portrait lineup, and I’ve been doing a continuity pass to make sure the new scenes mesh well with the old. The entire narrative for the vastly expanded new teaser is locked in and I’m slowly plugging away at it. Ars has been looking into remastering some of the old teaser’s OST, since he’s also learned a lot since then.
Hopefully next update can be a preview of the new and (very) improved portraits!
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I’m pumped for the new portraits! You’ve really been hyping them up
Good news! FoxFire was able to put in a solid day and managed to get the new Alex done! I present to you, her eighth, and perhaps final* iteration:
Can you believe the same guy did this, folks? It’s the culmination of a new toolset, tons of practice, and seriously helpful feedback. Look at that new and improved shading! You’ll also notice a few other things:
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The idea has always been to skew towards an anime look, and with this newest Alex, we’re finally back to it. The previous Alex from last August ended up being a good stepping stone as we rolled back up for full Forks development. Green eyes for color contrast, and hair that doesn’t totally look like it snaps on!
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Alex is never truly skinny, having already put some weight on prior to the game’s intro. We wanted a portrait and build that better reflected that. She’s still capable, but no longer quite the athlete she was in high school.
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Visible
hands -
Visible feet too! When Alex jumps in the old demo, her body had a slight chance of getting cut off on screen. No longer! Now, if Alex ever falls from the sky, it’ll look a little more natural**.
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I always wanted to include a full, tracked sequence for everyone as an unlockable. It only made sense to double up the portrait shots for just this purpose!
From here, the goal is to spend the next couple of weeks coloring the other characters’ new portraits, as well as redo the graphics to match this brighter look. We want it to pop, and we’re better equipped to do it than ever before! As for what Alex looks like in game…
What a mess, right? We’re scaling everything up for the new demo, and that means most of the old’s UI is broken until we put in the new assets. Alex’s position and height is correct though! Unfortunately, we never had time to get beyond the “working” UI for the first demo, so I’m not going to fix what very well might get completely replaced. With FoxFire having since done some professional UX work, who knows what we’ll come up with?***
That’s it for this update! If you guys liked the comparison above, then I can toss more together for everyone once the new lineup is complete. This project’s been a mountain, but we’re slowly digging through!
*We hope this is the final, final version. FoxFire sets a high bar for himself, and this has been his favorite set to do.
**Alex currently only falls from the sky in the secret Agent Alex route. It’s been handy for testing animations.
***Seriously, we don’t even know!
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How does best girl Grace look now?
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Well… I am new here, and i think this is my favorite VN for now
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Are there any other characters done in the new style? I bet they look amazing!
Well, let’s go for another pull on the Forks gacha…
No Grace this time 
. FoxFire just finished the new Rea a few hours ago; I’m letting him tackle them in any order, so I was surprised too!
It’s amazing how these new portraits highlight the problems with the old ones. Old Rea looks pretty okay by herself, but next to Rea 2.0 ? Eh…
- Until now, Rea’s blue hair had been a rare constant. We took a stab at purple hair, and liked it enough to switch her over!
- Rea’s personality has barely changed over development, yet this actually captures a whole lot more of it than the last. Unfortunately, the old demo didn’t really give you a chance to dig into anyone besides Alex
Two down, three to go! I doubt we’ll post every little thing we do, but these new portraits are fire!
From my end, here’s a lovely, boring slice of Alex’s homework plight with Ryan:
I’ll later tie this into the (hopefully included) “PC Mode” screen the game switches to whenever Alex is chatting with someone online. It’ll show a bundle of lines at once, so no need to click through each one.
Fun fact: I used “y” for Ryan because Rea already uses “r”. Also, the script is currently one enormous file, because I’m not very organized and would have an even harder time parsing through multiple . Eventually you learn where everything is, it’s easy when you’re the only writer!
Aww, thanks! We’ll keep plugging away to make this the best we can!
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You know what, I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical about the new art, but after really observing the new and old art, as well as letting go of my bias from the absolute love I had for the original (the writing AND art in Forks is what got me re-hooked on VNs), I think I can say that the new art is looking really slick, and I can definitly appreciate it
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Will you be posting the new character designs as they get finished? I can’t wait to see how Hannah looks!