I can’t believe it’s been more than half a year since I last talked about the mod’s development. Time sure flies! Here’s the previous post for those who need catching up.
In that one, I spoke about the decision to include Joel as Ryuji, the scope of the new story mode, and some technical background on the changes.
Gotta admit, I haven’t been working on enough “visual overhaul”-type stuff to warrant video clips lately. Many things have moved forward in great strides, but not many are in a state that I’m comfortable sharing just yet.
That said… It’s unlikely that the mod will release in 2024. We’ve moved on from simply adding Vinny and Joel, instead crafting an entire new party, as well as re-themeing every major dungeon in the game (and their bosses and enemies). I can’t give an accurate estimate when it will release, but I will continue to give periodic updates like these in the meantime.
Somewhat unrelated, but during the time since my last P5V update, I’ve become an official editor for the Vinesauce YouTube channel— which naturally takes some focus away from this project. It means a lot to me having a chance to work alongside one of my favorite creators and help keep the channel alive. This never would have happened without everyone who helped make this project a reality, so thank you all!
My first edit for the main highlight channel should be coming out any week now. 🙂
EDIT: It’s out! I may be biased, but this turned out to be one of my favorite playthroughs. I still don’t get tired of watching it. Hope everyone else enjoys it too!
Where Our Focus Has Been
Behind the scenes, we’ve been having a lot of internal discussion about the specifics of our scope. We may have agreed to cut the story in favor of redoing dungeons, but that still leaves a lot of questions, like:
How much of the art do we make for the bosses? Should they just be reskins, or do we change how the fights play out? What about dungeon textures, objects, lighting, dialogue?
It’s challenging to decide all that for 10+ Palaces each, so I’ve come up with the following chart to help with our decision-making process.
Just like with self-care, we have to prioritize our basic needs— things required for the mod’s overall survival– before we spend too energy on fun embellishments. I’d say we’re about halfway up the pyramid by now, on average.
We recently announced on our Twitter account that the full party has been designed. They all have their models and UI art completed. Some more voice replacement need to be done, and All-Out-Attack sequences need to be polished.
They also need weapon and Persona replacements still.
I’m looking forward to posting videos of each character in action once these tasks are complete! Then I will move on to focusing on bosses and enemies in general.
Under the hood, I’ve added Discord Rich Presence to set the mod as your status when running it. I’ve also migrated over the green menu coloring code, which used to be a separate mod made by Zarroboogs. Finally, I started using Ryo Framework for some BGM, voices, and sounds that weren’t easy to mod before.
In addition, I’ve written a guide for map editing in Blender, so that other artists can apply their creative vision more directly to the mod. You can read the guide yourself if you’re curious about the process! On a similar note, I’m working on an internal wiki of all our ideas so we can collaborate more efficiently as a team. Oh, and I moved the mod’s webpage over to this domain and added more details to the FAQs.
Details I Can Share For Now
As shown in the video, the title screen has been fully reskinned, which confirms the following party replacements:
- Vinny as Joker
- Joel as Ryuji
- Scoot as Morgana
- Two Faced as Ann
- Sponge as Yusuke
- Gnorts as Makoto
- Slime Champ as Haru
- Chat as Futaba
- Dante as Akechi
- Birdo as Kasumi
I’m also able to confirm that Speed Luigi will be the boss of the Museum Palace. You’re able to see a portion of the reskin here in this video. I can confirm that edits to this dungeon are ~99% complete. Other dungeon bosses will include characters such as Mr. Dink, Grey Leno, and Gordon Ramsey.
The van you drive in the Metaverse also got a facelift, now featuring a Scoot-themed skin by default (along with some new revving noises). You can still change it to a Vinesauce, Red Vox, or Mario Bros. theme at any time.
Vinesauce Card Pack Stretch Goals
So, regarding the Vinesauce Trading Card Pack, one of the Kickstarter stretch goals was met: “Vinny will play Persona 5 On Live for Exactly 20 Minutes.”
To be perfectly clear: we didn’t have anything to do with this being decided on. I’m assuming it was an agreement between Vinny and Retro_Stew (the creator of that project).
That said, it’s still up for consideration whether this mod will be involved in that stream or not. I’m willing to prepare a demo on short notice, but since it may be a long time before the mod is ready overall, it’d make more sense to go with the original P5.
I would be just as happy with that outcome, because that means we won’t be disappointing anyone who wants to see his reactions to the unaltered base game. I’m in no rush to complete the mod just to make a stream happen.
That’s all I’ve got for today, thank you as always for your continued interest! I hope in my next blogpost I’ll get to finally show off all of our new playable characters. Take care till then.