New Build Now, New Video Soon

I’m working on a new video that will be about 14 minutes long. Currently, 8 minutes of it have been produced. It takes about 1 hour of work to produce 1 minute of video, so I need at least 6 more hours to finish off this video. I’m dead tired, so I have to call it quits for tonight and resume working on the video tomorrow…but, before I go to bed, I’ll release a new build!

But before that, I’d like to share an illustration created by an artist named Womu!

Such gorgeous artwork!

Click “Continue Reading” to see what’s new in the latest build:

After more than 2 years, it’s finally ready!

I’d like to start off by telling you about something that was put into the game just for fun!

Are you familiar with a manga called Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure? I became quite a fan of it after watching the 2012 anime adaptation. One of the most iconic elements from JBA are Stands – you can think of them as “guardian spirits” who fight alongside their masters. (It’s a lot more complicated than that, but I’m trying to keep this brief.) Every Stand is unique, but many of them are humanoid and float behind their masters.

During the peak of my “Jojo Fanboy” phase, in May 2015, I imagined a Stand for Yandere-chan and asked a talented artist by the name of Aea to illustrate my idea. He did a magnificent job:

(You can see a bigger version here!)

I was determined to make it into an easter egg. However, it was difficult for me to find an animator who was up to the task of animating such an elaborate character. I didn’t meet the right man for the job until one year later, in 2016!

Very gradually, over the course of the last year, every animation and asset needed for the Jojo easter egg was slowly created. It’s been over 24 months since the conception of this idea, but finally, I’ve obtained everything I need in order to make this easter egg into a reality!

Many of you have probably seen the work-in-progress version of the easter egg that was once accessible by simply pressing the “J” key at the easter egg menu. But, that’s not the case anymore! As of this build, the Jojo easter egg can only be unlocked by following a very specific set of steps, just like a traditional video game easter egg. If you need a hint, here’s what I’d say: Collect 8 ? Rooftop Laugh. You’ll have to figure out what that means on your own!

YandereDev! Shouldn’t you be working on Osana instead of making easter eggs?

Don’t worry! I only worked on this easter egg for a few minutes every month, getting it closer and closer to completion each time, until eventually it finally hit the finish line this month. My focus is still primarily on Osana.

(One last thing I should mention is that the music that accompanies this easter egg is most likely going to be replaced in the future; so, if you don’t like it, don’t worry!)

Now, onto more important matters:

JSON Error Messages

There is a file named Students.JSON, which is filled with information about each student; their name, their gender, their hair color, etc. Modifying the JSON file will allow players to change any member of the game’s cast. A lot of people have enjoyed modifying the JSON file to spawn custom students:

However, if there is a typo in the JSON file, the game won’t be able to spawn students, and the game will get super buggy. A lot of people have edited the JSON file, encountered bugs, and e-mailed me to ask what is wrong with their game. This leads to a time-consuming troubleshooting session that ends with the discovery that there’s nothing wrong with the game itself; the problems were caused by the user putting typos in the JSON file!

So, I’ve decided to update the game with the ability to detect typos in the JSON file and inform the player if their JSON file is screwed up:

The game will even print out a line of text like “The problem may be caused by Student 55” if the game can detect that the typo is in Student 55’s data. However, the game is not guaranteed to be able to do this, depending on the exact type of error that is in the JSON file.

And now, here’s a list of everything else that is new or different about the latest build:

Fixes, Changes, and Additions

• Fixed bug that would cause a student to return to their locker and change their shoes even after they had already changed their shoes, if the player distracted them with a giggle anytime after they changed their shoes and started to walk home.
• Removed “Midori uploads a photo to social media after witnessing murder” feature, since it was only half-implemented for the sake of recording video footage, and wasn’t ready to be a part of gameplay yet.
• Fixed bug that would cause female students to keep wearing their stockings when they were only supposed to be wearing a gym uniform or swimsuit.
• Fixed bug that would cause the game to enter a bizarre state if the player was grabbed by a teacher while speaking to a placeholder club leader.
• To help the player avoid being late for class, the game will now spawn “Class Begins Soon” and “Class Begins Now” notifications at appropriate times.
• Fixed bug that would cause the game to soft-lock if the player tried to use Pose Mode to make a character perform an animation.
• Finally removed the last few remaining copyrighted music tracks from the game; Yandere Simulator now has a 100% original OST.
• Fixed bug that would cause male hair to become detached from the head when male characters were dismembered.
• Fixed bug that would prevent a girl’s bracelet from remaining attached to her wrist after she was dismembered.
• Adjusted the volume of a few easter egg tracks that were a tad too loud (“clipping” audio).
• The game will now inform the player if the Students.JSON file is broken.
• Added more sound effects for the magical girl wand weapon.
• Replaced the music that plays for the Team Skull easter egg.
• Updated the texture of the school’s clock face.
• Added two new hairstyles for Yandere-chan.
• Finalized the Jojo easter egg.

Osana?

I finished her Tuesday afternoon sabotage event – both possible branches, depending on Yandere-chan’s actions – and started implementing her afterschool Senpai interaction event (which changes based on how the afternoon event transpired) but, I ran into weird bugs that killed my momentum, so I didn’t get to make as much progress as I wanted. I also started implementing an elimination event that takes place at the school pool, but I ran into animation issues that prevented the feature from working properly. I’ll need to troubleshoot those issues before I can continue making progress.

I was really looking forward to recording footage of Osana’s Tuesday events and pool-related elimination event and showing off the content today or tomorrow, but I wasn’t able to accomplish this for the above reasons. Sometimes I have awesome momentum and get tons of stuff done, then hit a brick wall and can’t make progress for multiple hours while I’m troubleshooting some bizarre bug that defies explanation. I wish that implementing Osana was as simple as “sit down and work on Osana”, but game development is never that easy; there’s always some unpredictable problem popping up that needs to be addressed before progress can be made.

Two weeks ago, I briefly mentioned the idea of writing another blog post about how Osana’s development is proceeding. I decided against doing this, because I figured that my time would be better spent on actual game development, but if you guys are super anxious and curious about Osana, then I should definitely take the time to elaborate about how it’s going, how much has been done, how much remains to be done, what’s slowing me down, and what might speed things up. Please let me know what you think by voting on this poll:

http://poal.me/nt6zlb

Thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!