2019-08-13 News

Good afternoon all, thought it was past time I chimed in with a little bit o’news.

Today’s been a particularly good day. I took the day off of the real job today and will log a solid ten hours on this game today and if all goes well, another ten tomorrow. It’s been nice blocking everything else out for the day and just focusing on the project.

But I don’t mean to mislead, there has been some steady chipping away at the “to do” list over the last week.

As previously reported, the scene selection tool is now complete and fully integrated. Along with in-game character bios (for all the characters you know and a few you’ve yet to meet). As well as some other interface upgrades.

I’m also happy to mention that all the re-coding has been completed and naming your character is now a fully integrated option.

Finishing up Nanami’s Chapter 3 is also well under way. I hope to have some play-testable material soon for $10+ patrons. There have been a lot of changes since the last release, so there are a number of mechanics that needs tested. But we’ll get through all that.

Now, onto a few other things…

Setting Expectations

This next release is going to have a lot of new things integrated into it. Some of these new enhancements have yet to be fully integrated into the previously constructed material. One such feature is the ability to change the MC’s race/skin-tone. While the mechanics for this feature are not built in, I still need to go back and update all the previous scenes with the new textures. This is going to take time and I won’t delay the game further by going back and reworking old material.

So with each subsequent release, expect some of that original content to be retouched and remastered a little to work with all the new mechanics. If each release contains a bunch of new content and a little bit of old remastered content, then I think we’ll have a good balance.

What can I say, it’s a beta. There’s going to be tweaks. But hopefully with the ability to jump to different points in the game, the lack of save compatibility will be mitigated a little.

On the upside, when I get all the old content remastered and in line with all the new content coming out, I think it’ll be a pretty awesome fucking game/story/whatever.

What’s that Sound?

Finally, I’m getting around to adding music to the game. This is also a feature that right now is a bit uneven as some scenes have it and some…well…most don’t. But I’m working on that.

I’ve wanted to include music in the game for awhile but the two things that have stalled the effort is a good source for royalty-free music and the variance in sound levels between tracks (You know what I’m talking about, one song is soft and the next one comes in thirty decibels higher). Happy to say both problems are now solved.

With an excellent source of tunes at my disposal and having done some research in the renpy documentation on volume control, I’m now in the process of constructing a music library for the game.

As the sound gets integrated I’m doing my best to make sure that the sounds levels are adjusted and maintained across the game so that you never need to adjust your volume preference more than once. It’s a little trial and error, so I’ll be hoping for feedback on the success or failure of this endeavor.

Streaming

While we only did a couple of these I must say I did enjoy doing them. Once I get Nanami’s chapter buttoned up I’m looking to return to doing one, maybe two streams a month dependent on time. So look for that to kick back up again in September.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue hammering away at this thing and will do my best to respond to all the messages and emails I’ve received in the meantime. I promise, I will get a response to everyone eventually, just hang in there with me.

We’ll talk soon.

Cheers!