Revealing the Identity of the Mysterious Obstacle

It’s finally time to reveal exactly what the “Mysterious Obstacle” is! I hope you’re going to enjoy hearing all about her!

During my trip to Los Angeles last week, I became very, very sick – way too sick to record voiceover narration. Fortunately, the voiceover for this video was actually recorded before I traveled to Los Angeles, so you don’t have to listen to a coughing, sneezing YandereDev talking about the Mysterious Obstacle!

With that said…while I was making this video, I realized that there is some important information I failed to mention. Usually, when I realize this, I simply record some new voiceover and insert it into the video….but that’s not an option this time; my throat is way, way too jacked-up to provide a pleasant narration right now.

So, in order to provide you with the information that I really wish I had communicated in the video, I have to settle for writing out a blog post. Without further ado, here’s what I’d like to say:

“Are you finished working on Raibaru?”

Nope! The point of the video was to reveal the nature of the Mysterious Obstacle and justify her existence from a game design perspective. The point of this video was not to announce the completion of the MO. The good news is that very little work remains to be done; at this point, I only need to implement a handful of miscellaneous conversations between Raibaru and Osana. The MO will reach 100% completion very soon, probably within the next 2 weeks.

“When will you release a build containing Raibaru?”

I’m sorry if this disappoints you, but I won’t release a build containing Raibaru until Osana is finished. As a game mechanic, Raibaru’s existence only has meaning if Osana is present. If Osana is not present, there is no reason for Raibaru to be accessible in the debug sandbox. They are a co-dependent pair; there’s no reason to implement one without the other. In short, you’ll have to wait several months to actually encounter Raibaru in-game.

Yes, you can probably modify the game’s code in order to spawn Raibaru, but if you do this, the Raibaru that you spawn will probably not be an accurate representation of the final Raibaru. If you manage to spawn Raibaru and figure out a way to eliminate her while she’s still a work-in-progress, whatever method you used may be ineffective on the final Raibaru.

“How much more work needs to be done on Osana?”

I’m hesitant to provide a specific percentage or bullet-point list, since it’s possible that I’ll forget about something and remember it next week. At this point in time, the tasks that jump to mind are:

• Finishing work on Raibaru
• Implementing Osana’s suitor
• Implementing Osana’s “Befriend or Betray” side-quest
• Making sure that none of her pre-existing events have broken since the last time I worked on her
• Testing absolutely every elimination method and fixing all bugs / exploits / game design flaws that I encounter

Wow – it’s really not a large number of tasks, when I think about it! I’ll update this bullet-point list in the near future if I suddenly remember something important that I forgot about.

There are also a few other questions I’d like to answer pre-emptively. Please click “Continue Reading” to see!

“Is there a new build today?”

I’m sorry, but no. All of the work I’ve been doing recently has been related to Osana, the Mysterious Obstacle, or spoiler-related stuff that I can’t show you. Whenever I export a new build of the game, I disable a lot of stuff from being visible or accessible; all of the stuff I’ve been working on lately falls into that category. Even though I’ve been very busy, I don’t actually have a new build for you today.

“When will you release a new build?”

While I was in the “Pre-Osana Checklist” phase of the game’s development, my focus was on frequently implementing important game mechanics and releasing new builds as regularly as possible. Now that I am in the “Working on Osana” phase of the game’s development, it means that I’m spending all of my time working on stuff that I can’t share with you.

It’s possible that we have left the stage of the game’s development where you can expect me to regularly release new builds with cool features, since the game is nearly feature-complete at this point in time, and now my focus is on Osana. I still intend to release at least one video per month, but it’s hard to say exactly what those videos will be about, since from here on, almost all the work I’ll be doing is spoiler territory.

The next build will be released whenever I’ve compiled at least 10 bug fixes, or 10 additions/changes to the game that are unrelated to Osana.

“There are still unfinished items on the pre-Osana checklist! Save/Load, FPS improvements, and SNAP! What about those?”

I’ll implement save/load after Osana is finished, for the reasons described in this post. I’m tempted to strike “FPS improvements” off the checklist for the reasons mentioned in this post, but as always, I’ll continue doing what I’ve always done: making various miscellaneous improvements here and there, fixing whatever issues I find during the process of developing the game. (I’m planning to upgrade from Unity 2017 to Unity 2018 soon, and there are several reasons why this has a high chance of improving the framerate significantly – let’s hope that it works out!)

Those are all of the things that I wanted to mention! As always, thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!