Hey everyone,
first round of BETA went well. Happy to report that game saves (so far) appear to not be broken. I didn't anticipate them being so, but with Ren'py, you just never know even if you're feeling confidant about it.
I'll be sending out the second round with all included fixes and adjustments today to the BETA team. I went back and optimized my code for the dialogue box, visually it just looks tighter. Font and background image remain unchanged. I also optimized the code for the choice menu. It's old ass code that I'm sure a majority of devs use (shoutout to the ren'py forums). It has sometimes caused weird, oddball crashes. So, knowing what I know now, I decided to go and optimize it. In my own testing, my saves continue to remain unbroken. But its something I've let my team know to look out for when I drop the next build for testing.
Also, happy to inform I've FINALLY brought onboard a proofreader. I haven't had a proofreader since CH2 (as my many typos have shown, heh.). Long story short, I didn't like how my previous one changed A LOT of the dialogue. There's a stark difference between what is grammatically correct and how a person's dialogue is written. And a lot of my characters personality felt stripped and it was frustrating to have to go back through the entire script and fix the dialogue. But I came up with a system that is fantastic for both myself and the proofreader. Artemis has been on GitHub as a private repo. It's allowed me to work anywhere and keep track of changes. So, inviting my proofreader to go into the proofread branch, make corrections/suggestions has been fantastic. I'm able to review the changes before merging them into any builds. So, any devs reading this. I highly recommend this method. I only have them focusing on CH7. Previous chapters will be reviewed post-release.
As the image and title said, June 5th is the date I've settled on. I was going to go with May 29th, but in the event something happens in this next beta round. I didn't want to backtrack on that date. I wanted to give you guys a date I'm confident in. This last round of testing, I can fix whatever is reported and then just have a final week of polishing before release. (polishing just means going over things like making sure nothing was overlooked, code transition for the next chapter, final review of very minor things like updating version number, just going over things with a fine-toothed comb once more.)
Anyways, I'm excited to finally be at this stage of development. Like I said before, I gave the ending of this chapter a lot of thought. There were two other versions and I felt this was the best. I hope you guys enjoy it.
I've got some music to review and sound effects to add. Then let the BETA team beat me up more. Have yourselves a great day and stay hydrated!
♥ digi