March 2020 Progress Report

I’ve got two conundrums:

(1) I want to routinely upload videos to demonstrate that I’m actively working on the game, consistently making solid progress towards my next goal, and regularly improving the game in meaningful ways. However, there are people who will be very disappointed with me if I upload a video about anything other than the release of Osana, and I’m not ready to release Osana yet.

(2) Producing a video can take multiple days away from development time, and right now, I want to focus the majority of my time on development only.

These two things have prevented me from releasing any videos recently. After thinking about it, I came up with a compromise: creating a short, simple, minimalist video, and uploading it with “Unlisted” status so that it can only be viewed by people who have the link. This way, I can provide a progress report to people who want to see what I’ve been doing lately, without notifying millions of subscribers or taking several days away from development.

Most of my videos take several days to produce, but this one was put together in less than 4 hours – writing the script, recording the narration, and editing the footage went by in a flash. Obviously, the production values are far beneath the standards of my usual content, but that’s exactly why it’s an Unlisted video for hardcore fans, instead of a proper video going out to millions of subscribers.

To read a list of everything that is new, fixed, or different in the latest build, click Continue Reading!

New Phone Theft Mechanic

• All of Info-chan’s favors (Schemes, Services, Drops) require you to compensate her by doing unethical things for her, such as providing her with panty shots or placing covert listening devices around school for her. I’ve always wanted to provide the player with more ways to earn favors from Info-chan, so that if the player is opposed to the idea of taking panty shots, they have plenty of alternatives.
• As of the latest build, there is now a new way to earn favors from Info-chan: providing her with stolen phones. Previously, it was only possible to steal a student’s phone during a scripted event (like Kokona’s shower event). It is now possible to steal any female student’s phone when they leave their phone in their locker before taking a shower.
• When you provide Info-chan with a stolen phone, she installs software on that phone that allows her to remotely access it. Then, she gives the phone back to you so that you can return the stolen phone to its owner by placing the phone on the owner’s desk.
• With remote access to the student’s phone, Info-chan can learn everything that the student does with her phone, which can provide Info-chan with blackmail over that student.
• In a future update, perhaps it will become possible to pay Info-chan to gain remote access to a student’s phone. This would create the potential for gameplay mechanics that revolve around impersonating a student by sending text messages from their phone.
• At the end of the school day, any student who cannot locate their phone will tell the faculty about it. The faculty will check your belongings and expel you if they discover stolen goods in your inventory.

Fixes, Changes, Additions

• The “Follow Me” feature offers the player a massive advantage, since it can be used to lure a student to a place with no witnesses, or keep a student distracted for multiple hours. To balance the feature, there is now a timer on how long students will follow Yandere-chan – and the timer is linked to your reputation. The lower your reputation is, the less time students will follow you for, and the higher your reputation is, the more time students will follow you for. By default, students will only follow you for 35 seconds. A reputation of -100 will cause students to only follow you for 10 seconds, whereas a reputation of +100 will cause students to follow you for a maximum of 60 seconds.
• There was a bug where, if you were sent to the Counselor’s office for having blood on your clothing, you could alarm a teacher or council member immediately after exiting the Counselor’s office, and instantly get sent *back* into the Counselor’s office, even though you just walked out of it. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed bug that would cause Light Music Club members to play their instruments while running, if the player put a note in that student’s locker to arrange a meeting that is supposed to take place while the Light Music Club member is meant to be playing an instrument.
• From now on, when exiting the counselor’s office, there is a short “grace period” where students will not be alarmed by you, so that you don’t automatically get in trouble for being bloody without getting a chance to run and change out of your bloody clothing.
• Fixed bug that would cause Yandere-chan to immediately be accused of stealing and sent to the counselor’s office, if a student council member witnessed Yandere-chan exiting the Counselor’s office after she had been accused of stealing previously in the day.
• Students will no longer investigate giggles coming from bathrooms, locker rooms, the delinquent’s territory, or the headmaster’s room. This could lead to situations where students were willingly walking into areas where they know they’re not supposed to be.
• Fixed bug that would cause teachers to ignore Yandere-chan being bloody / carrying a dismembered body part / otherwise looking highly suspicious, while the teacher was guarding something while waiting for the police to arrive.
• If Yandere-chan is spotted by Senpai and saying “No…wait…” you can now make the sequence go by a bit quicker by pressing the E key (or the A button on controller) to speed it up.
• Fixed bug that would cause Student Council members to completely ignore you charging straight towards them with a weapon if they were running to inform a teacher about something.
• Fixed bug that would cause a mission to start from the Mission Mode main menu if the player designed a Multi Mission, backed out of that menu, then tried to enter another menu.
• As an experiment, windows are transparent in this build. Students can’t see through windows, though. I’m not sure whether or not I will keep things this way or change it back.
• From now on, if a student council member or teacher sees Yandere-chan fighting with a delinquent, only that character will interfere; other characters will not get involved.
• From now on, if you complete a mission in Mission Mode, you can access a special screen that will grant you a special role in the Official Yandere Simulator Discord Server!
• Fixed Mission Mode bug that would cause the “No Witnesses” game over condition to be triggered if a student council member witnessed Yandere-chan fighting a delinquent.
• Fixed bug that would cause students to become permanently unable to react to Yandere-chan’s behavior if they had reported something to a teacher earlier in the day.
• Fixed bug that would cause any student with a reason to run somewhere to teleport to Yandere-chan’s location if Yandere-chan was engaged in a struggle at the time.
• Fixed bug that would cause teachers to freeze in place for a very long time before chasing Yandere-chan, if they witnessed Yandere-chan kill another teacher.
• Delinquents will no longer damage your reputation with gossip after seeing you commit murder, because they don’t gossip with other students.
• Improved the animation that plays when Yandere-chan is spotted by Senpai and says “No…wait…” right before the “HEARTBROKEN” screen.
• Fixed bug with “Six” easter egg that would prevent the eating animation from playing at the correct distance from the victim.
• The price of Info-chan’s “Send Student Home” favor has increased, due to the huge advantage it can grant the player.
• Fixed bug that would prevent the “automatically commit murder at low sanity” feature from working as intended.
• Fixed bug that prevented students from having a memorial service if their death was disguised as a suicide.
• Fixed bug that prevented the player from being able to attack Otohiko while he was running late to school.
• The “Camera Filters” easter egg can now apply to the cinematic camera in addition to the gameplay camera.
• Fixed bug that prevented Nemesis from being able to kill the player while during certain circumstances.
• Fixed bug that would cause blood trails to spawn in the air after dropping a corpse off the rooftop.
• Drowning male students will now use a male voice instead of a female voice.
• After 5 years, there are now props in the basement! Whoa, technology!
• Fixed bug that would cause the nurse to see through walls.
• Rivals now have silhouettes in the Student Info menu.
• Added two new hairstyles for Yandere-chan.
• Nemesis’ pathfinding has improved.
• Added one new easter egg.

Hey, didn’t you say…

Yes, 2 weeks ago, I said that the next feature “won’t take 2 full weeks to implement.” And, true to my word, I finished all of the necessary programming work within 2 weeks. However, the feature requires some new animations and voiced lines in order to be complete, and it’s taking longer than expected for those assets to be delivered.

I’ve done all I can do from the programming side, but in order to proceed and complete the feature, I need to wait until I receive those animations and voiced lines.