February 16th and 17th Bug-Fixing Update

Bonus update! I got a lot of very valuable feedback on yesterday’s build, so I decided to fix most of the bugs that people reported and make some miscellaneous improvements to the game:

February 16th changes:

• Disabled something called “Occlusion Culling” which was preventing the game from working on computers that have an Intel graphics card. (Occlusion culling can improve a game’s performance greatly, so eventually I should try and figure out how to re-activate it without affecting Intel users.)
• If you press the Escape key or choose the “Quit” option in the pause menu, the game asks you to confirm whether or not you wish to quit the game, instead of closing immediately.
• It is no longer possible to talk to NPCs during circumstances when Yandere-chan would not be able to talk (such as while laughing, attacking, or throwing a corpse).
• When Yandere-chan was bloody, a bug caused nearby NPCs to become bloody as well. This bug has been fixed.
• On an Xbox gamepad, click the right stick to re-center the camera (this feature may be removed one day).
• Inside of a building, you can no longer stab NPCs who are on the floor above you or beneath you.
• It is no longer possible to have a friendly chat with NPCs while dragging a corpse around.
• Improved the “Pass Time” code so that it should no longer undershoot the target time.
• Added a new easter egg, activated by pressing one of the letter keys on the keyboard.
• Attempted to fix the “schoolgirls spin in circles when walking down stairs” bug.
• Replaced “Ambient Obscurance” effect with real-time shadows.
• You can no longer stab NPCs through walls.
• Disabled V-sync.

February 17th changes:

• Pressing the escape key and then choosing “No” returns the player to gameplay immediately, instead of sending them to the phone menu.
• Shadows change direction as time passes, simulating the effect of the sun moving across the sky over the course of the day.
• The phone menu can now be navigated with the WASD keys in addition to the arrow keys.
• There was a bug involving running and dragging ragdolls that has been fixed.
• Toast and toaster can now become splattered with blood.
• Support for non-16:9 aspect ratios has been added.
• The incinerator works again.

If you haven’t seen the Feb 15th update yet, be sure to check it out!

Weapon Select, Dynamic Lighting, Custom School Uniforms, and Other Improvements

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Valentine’s Day yesterday! If you’re looking for a link to the latest downloadable build, it’s near the bottom of this blog post.

Here’s what I managed to get done over the past two weeks:

• NPCs now have a wider variety of reactions (weapon, blood, insanity, weapon+blood, weapon+insanity, blood+insanity, weapon+blood+insanity, etc.)
• There are now five different weapons in the game, and interfaces for switching between weapons on both Gamepad and PC.
• Added multiple graphics quality settings and the ability to disable some of the game’s post-processing effects.
• NPCs now react differently if they witness you performing the same reputation-damaging action repeatedly.
• It is now possible for blood splatters to appear on any uniform, not just the default uniform.
• When speaking to an NPC, the player can now use the mouse to select dialogue options.
• Re-worked the way that the game selects the nearest person or object for interaction.
• Fixed the bug that allowed the player to farm infinite positive reputation points.
• It is now possible to navigate Yandere-chan’s smartphone menu using a gamepad.
• As time passes, the color of the sky and the scene lighting gradually change.
• All conversation options that are not yet implemented have been darkened.
• It is now possible to put your own school uniform texture into the game.
• Some weapons raise suspicion, others do not.
• The NPCs now have different hair colors.

I wanted to make more progress that this, but personal obligations have been keeping me away from Yandere Sim. I should have a lot of free time over the next 2 weeks, so hopefully the update on March 1st introduces some cool new features!

Weapon Select

I added 4 new weapons into the game. They are all “stabbing” weapons, so for now, they all use the same animation. The syringe should probably operate differently from the rest of the weapons; it can’t piece the brain or severe the spinal cord like the other weapons that Yandere-chan stabs with, so it should probably be used to inject oxygen into one of the victim’s arteries. Either that, or the syringe will inject a tranquilizer and knock someone out.

The reason that new weapons were introduced was so that I could test out a method for swapping weapons. Currently, Yandere-chan can only carry two concealable weapons around with her, and the weapon-swapping menu is as simple and minimalistic as possible to facilitate easily swapping between Weapon 1, Weapon 2, and empty hands.

None of this artwork is final, but here’s how it currently looks in-game:

Gamepad Version:

Keyboard Version:

The space at the top of the gamepad version (or the far right of the keyboard version) is for a container. Yandere-chan can wear something on her back (like a cello case) where a much larger weapon (or a corpse) can be concealed. This feature isn’t available in the current build, though.

When Yandere-chan is carrying a large, non-concealable weapon, it won’t appear in the weapon menu. It will remain in her hands until she drops it.

Where exactly does Yandere-chan conceal her weapons? Well…

Ah, just look at the color of the sky in that image. That “golden hour” lighting is familiar to anyone who has watched an anime set in a high school. It’s that comfy lighting that you see when the day is winding down and students are walking home. Which brings us to the next new feature…

Dynamic Lighting

I managed to make the game’s lighting change as the day progresses. I don’t think this is a huge selling point of the game or anything, I just think it looks pretty, so I’d like to share it.

Custom Uniforms

A lot of people have been asking how “moddable” the final game will be. I can’t guarantee that anything will be moddable outside of art assets such as textures and music files, but I would like to make it easy to drop those sorts of things into the game. For now, I will give players the ability put a custom school uniform on Yandere-chan:

When you download the game (link below) you will be able to find a folder named “StreamingAssets”. If you put a texture named “CustomUniform.png” into this folder, the game will load that .png as Yandere-chan’s uniform. There is also a .png named “UniformTemplate” in the StreamingAssets folder that will show you how Yandere-chan’s uniform texture is set up.

Progress Report and New Test Build

There are so many wonderful people volunteering to help out with the game that answering e-mails about Yandere Simulator has almost become a full-time job! However, I still tried to make as much progress as I could manage over the past two weeks.

Here’s what’s new:

• Fixed the bug that would make Yandere-chan drop a ragdoll if the player held down the “drag” button without releasing it.
• Implemented “warning notifications” that appear at the top of the screen when the player is in danger.
• Fixed the bug that would cause Yandere-chan and NPCs to launch into the air when they collided.
• Fixed the bug that allowed the player to stab NPCs without actually holding a knife.
• Fixed the bug that would cause ragdoll necks to deform in bizare ways.
• There are now tiny splashes of blood when you step in a blood puddle.
• The game now spawns students based on data from a spreadsheet.
• A schoolbell now chimes whenever the school period changes.
• Added original music composed just for Yandere Sim!
• Implemented the “Pass Time” feature on the phone.
• Re-implemented the “Yandere Vision” feature.
• Re-implemented the “Laugh Button” feature.
• Learned how to implement hair physics.
• General code cleanup.
• New Easter Egg!

Warning Notifications

When the player performs an action that puts them in danger (such as equipping a conspicuous weapon, becoming bloody, becoming insane, standing near a corpse, etc) a notification will pop up at the top of the screen to inform the player that they are in trouble and that their reputation could drop (or worse) if they are spotted. What do you guys think of this feature? Is it lame? I’ll be sure to make this something that can be toggled off from the Options screen.

Spreadsheet-Driven Students

I’ve configured the game to spawn students based on data in a spreadsheet. Now it will be extremely easy for me to add students to the game; I just add another row to the spreadsheet, fill in all the columns, and I can dictate every detail about a student’s appearance and daily routine. In test builds, this spreadsheet can be accessed by the player. In the final version of the game, you won’t be able to modify the students in the game’s story mode, but there might be a “Custom High School” mode where you can customize every student to your heart’s content. If you screw around with the spreadsheet in the test build below, I can’t guarantee that the game will still be able to run. I don’t recommend messing with it.

Passing Time

In this game, certain events will only occur at specific points in time. You might need to spend hours lying in wait for the perfect moment to ambush your prey. That might be so boring that it could kill the game! That’s why Yandere-chan’s phone is equipped with a “Pass Time” feature.

You can use this feature to skip ahead to a point in time that provides you with a certain opportunity. Passing time will also restore lost Sanity. It takes about one hour to restore Sanity from zero to full. Yandere-chan can spend a total of 11 hours at school. At maximum time speed, an hour goes by in 10 seconds. So, it would take about one minute and six seconds to speed through the entire day.

How does Yandere-chan pass the time? She gazes at a photograph of Senpai on her phone. She is so entranced by Senpai that hours will pass in the blink of an eye, and the world around her will become a blur!

Yandere Vision

I once discussed Yandere Vision a long time ago, but the latest implementation looks much better. If you hold down the “Yandere Button” during gameplay, certain things will be highlighted in Yandere-chan’s vision, even if they are behind walls.

• Senpai will have a pink outline.
• Neutral students will have a green outline.
• Your current rival / target will have a red outline.
• Evidence of murder, or witnesses of murder, will have an orange outline.
• Students who have witnessed you doing something naughty will have a yellow outline.
• Helpful objects (spare uniforms, weapons, mops, the school incinerator) will have a cyan outline.
• Yandere-chan will have a black outline. What does the black outline mean? Maybe there is another girl with a black outline somewhere in the game who will shed some light on that mystery…

Yandere Vision allows you to see characters through walls. This is a very powerful ability, so it will have to be balanced. You will have to “tag” characters before you can see them through walls. You “tag” them by taking a photograph of their face, and sending the photo to an “information broker” who gives you information about that particular student. Once Yandere-chan knows that student’s daily routine and their personality, she can mentally picture where they are at any point in time, which is why she can “see” that student through walls.

Laughter

If you tap the Yandere Button instead of holding it down, Yandere-chan will giggle. If you tap it more, she will chuckle. If you tap it even more, she will laugh. If you keep tapping it, she will cackle maniacally with insane evil laughter.

If a student hears giggling, but doesn’t see you, they will walk over to inspect the source of the noise. This is the equivalent of knocking on a wall to draw a guard’s attention in Metal Gear Solid, or throwing a coin to make a noise in Hitman: Blood Money.

The purpose of insane laughter is to regain Sanity that you have lost. Cackling maniacally will allow Yandere-chan to “blow off steam”, and will restore her lost Sanity. However, if a student catches you laughing like an evil villain, your reputation will drop. If Senpai catches you laughing like this, he will instantly realize your true nature, and it’s game over.

Hair Physics

For a long time, I’ve been struggling with trying to get hair physics to work within the Unity engine, but I’ve finally gotten the hang of it. Now I can begin implementing schoolgirls with long, physics-driven hair!

Here’s a little demo that you can download if you want to see the new hair physics in action:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Xb4Pl1gykjV1pCYzE4Q1UybFk/view

• Spacebar: Switch between Yandere-chan and a character model that has physics enabled.
• WASD: Moving around.
• Left Shift: Running.

Blog Traffic

This blog has been seeing some serious traffic recently!

I think that more people have discovered Yandere Simulator in the past two weeks than in the past 8 months combined. I’d like to extend a hearty welcome to all new visitors! For those who don’t know, I update this blog two times a month – once on the 1st day of the month, and once on the 15th day of the month.

So, just where has all of this new traffic been coming from? I decided to take a look at my blog’s traffic stats to find out. Yesterday, for example, the traffic came from…

1. Search engines
2. Niconico – Probably because of this gentleman.
3. Tumblr – There’s some pretty nice fanart coming out of this place!
4. VK.com – This is the Russian equivalent of Facebook. Hello, Russian comrades!
5. Twitter – Thanks to everyone who tweets about the game!
6. Facebook – Thanks for spreading the word about the game here!
7. YouTube – I’ve noticed a lot of entertaining Yandere Simulator videos showing up on YouTube lately!

“Let’s Play” videos

I’m a big fan of video game comedy channels on YouTube, and I have no problem with anyone who wants to upload footage of themselves playing Yandere Simulator test builds to YouTube. However, I have just one request: If you play one of the builds available on this blog, please don’t call it a “demo”. Please call it an “early build” or “test build”. The download available below is not a true demonstration of what the final game will actually be like; it’s just a sandbox level for testing out the game’s features.

I’m going to sound super pedantic for a moment. If you call the test build a “demo”, people might assume that the test build is meant to be a demonstration of what the final game will be like. This would be highly inaccurate, because the test builds have no goals or win/loss conditions whatsoever, and Yandere Simulator will definitely have goals. Also, if you upload a video where you’re playing a test build and calling it a “demo”, people might ignore the ACTUAL demo coming a few months from now, which will have far more depth than any of these simple test builds. It would be a shame if the REAL demo gets ignored because people thought they had already seen “The Yandere Sim Demo” played by some random guy on YouTube in December.

Thanks for your cooperation!

Patreon

As I’ve said before, Yandere Simulator is a pet project that I work on in my spare time. I have to spend most of my time working freelance programming jobs so I can make money. If you’d like me to work on Yandere Simulator full-time, I would need to make enough money through Patreon to stop taking freelance jobs.

So, if you’re interested in supporting Yandere Simulator’s development, please consider Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/yanderedev