Hey everybody. Just wanted to go over what I've been up to.First of all, I mentioned near the beginning of the month trying to get a monthly update out if I found the amount/quality of content to be up to snuff enough for a release that wouldn't feel thin and leave you guys wanting. In retrospect, while this is still something I'd like to try, perhaps choosing the shortest month of the year, immediately after a release, wasn't the month to do it in. I've spent the past several weeks tinkering with boring coding/ui stuff, which is something I do definitely need and want to implement as it will not only be useful and more visually appealing, but it will also set up some of the systems I want to put in place. I want to get the game to feel like a more professional production and I've kept putting it off and if I don't do it, I know I'll just keep putting it off until things are way more complicated, making it harder to implement at later stages that would sort of hinge on some of my desired systems.So the idea is to craft a more aesthetically pleasing user interface, that's also function and useful for you, the player. Right now I've introduced a gallery system so you can replay old scenes without having to replay the whole game each time. I'd also like to create a character profile system which will give you a brief bit of backstory on each of the primary characters as they're introduced as well as tracking their relationship status with you (something that people have asked me for. I was initially against it since I wanted to keep it feeling a bit more natural rather than just seeing point values, but it will probably help people keep track of their current statuses). As the chapters continue and the relationships with characters change, the profiles would also reflect these changes so you'll have a refresher at your fingertips.I'd also like to implement a little encyclopedia function. Nothing gigantic or anything but just a bit of context for some of the world, regions, religions, factions, etc. This would probably expand a bit with each chapter too.Another element that I've wanted to add for ages is a sort of hidden render system where if you click on specific things (like vests hidden in the backgrounds of scenes)you'll unlock special renders which would have its own separate galleries. I have some ideas for what those renders would be but I'm not going into details quite yet.I've already added a pretty basic gold/money system for the current chapter which is largely used to track if you purchase specific items from a certain familiar merchant. This is done mainly through a basic variable system and I'm not sure how important it would be to future chapters, but I am considering having a basic inventory system just so you as a player would have a visual aid so you can easily check if your character purchased certain items at a glance.I've also been tinkering with some image interpolation software to try to screw around with animations but they're in pretty dire shape lol. I experimented a bit with the kadijah scene from the special and, while it's somewhat smooth transitioning from one image to another, it's still very jerky and robotic since it's not a "true" animation but a series of images with interpolation. I don't know how much time I'll have to dedicate to learning actual animating any time soon, but I still definitely want to add things like that in the future.