Hi all!
This new release/announcement is going up later this week on Steam, but I'm putting it here first for you all if you're interested.
I know this post will likely cover quite a number of items you are already aware of, but I don't post on Steam as much as I do here, so please forgive the duplication of information from my previous posts.
However, there is one significant update...
I know there are a few subsribers that speak english as a second language, so this might be of some interest.
POST STARTS HERE:
Hi all!
Dropping in with an update to current functionality in the game. I've already started work on Ep4, but there were a number of items I wanted to address before I got into the full swing, else they'd never get done. I hope you can appreciate that I needed to spend some time doing these before I get completely lost in new renders and animations!
Translations
As you may have guessed by the title, we've finally managed to get some translations into the game. They span across ALL current content and will of course be rolled out further as new content is released.
Currently, we've just covered areas of Europe, but we WILL be expanding to Asia and other countries too as and when we can. I would anticipate those in the near future, so there won't be long to wait. This is almost a soft rollout to get initial feedback on the translations and make sure our translation algorithm is working correctly before we go further than we already have.
You can access these languages when you first boot the game up. You'll be asked once about your preference and the game will save, but you can access the languages again at any point inside the preferences screen.
This is our first time doing translations on a game, and they are automated (not manually translated) so please bear with us if there are parts that aren't 100% correct, or the occasional translation is missing. We'd sincerely love to get feedback on it, and any mis-translated items pointed out, or missing translations etc.
For all translations related items, please use THIS FORUM.
Notebook
We've spent quite a bit of time completely overhauling the notebook. While it may look similar to how it did previously, there were some drastic changes that needed to occur to allow for translations, but I also wanted to add a quality-of-life upgrade.
This comes in the form of 'Session' and 'Global' tabs.
First of all, I had to completely rebuild how the notebook worked because as I come from a graphics background, and had very little experience of coding when I started Jury, I decided to reveal images within the notebook for each variable hit - so basically a picture of the note that then got overlayed on top of a blank notebook background. This was pretty dumb, because it made it very difficult to edit (I'd have to literally edit some text in an image, render it, cut it out, turn it into a .webp, then add it to the game directory. All this has now been changed into text, which not only allows very easy changes to be made, but it also means that it can be translated.
The next great idea I had when I started the notebook is to make ALL the notes persistent. This meant that the notes saved between playthroughs. In all my wisdom, I thought this would mean that players would be happy to be able to 'complete' the pages. However, in practise, this was a bit of a stupid idea because when you do a second playthrough, you don't really know what items you've hit and what items you hit in another playthrough.
To sort this, I've added 'Global' and 'Session' tabs at the top. You can keep track of your overall progress with the notebook inside the 'Global' tab, but look at your current playthrough inside the 'Session' tab.
The only issue with this, is that it will only really work with new playthroughs, sadly. More variables had to be created in line with the persistent variables, so if you open this Session tab on one of your playthroughs, it will likely be blank. There's not much I can do about that, but at least for newer players it should help them. Thank you all who have currently dealt with the notebook in its old format. You were the trail blazers to test out my poor ideas...
Brightness
I've become aware that my monitors must be a bit brighter than the average players. I've seen quite a few comments of 'Cool scene, shame I couldn't actually see anything because it was so dark'. Honestly, this was something I've been unaware of, because I can see everything really well on my screens. But that doesn't mean that everyone else can. These days, there are tons of settings on gaming monitors so it's quite difficult to know who's using what setting.
To at least TRY and cope with this, a brightness slider has been added to the game.
You can find this inside the settings.
However, you may not want to keep jumping in and out of the settings between scenes, so there are keyboard shortcuts to allow for changing the brightness in-game.
You can use F6 to darken the screen, F8 to brighten it, and F7 to go back to default. I know it's not a full proof solution, but it should at least make it easier for players to see what's going on in some of the darker scenes.
The overall fix for this will be evident in Ep4, as I can now be more mindful of rendering dark scenes.
General UI and Save Screens
The UI has been updated to allow for not only aesthetics, but functionality too.
The save/load menu has been softened up, but also you can now have unlimited saves on each page. You're no longer limited to just 6. Quetz has had a play around and managed to integrate a scroll bar (like the gallery items) so you can just have a single page for each girl, or type of playthrough, rather than spanning them across multiple.
You might also notice that there's now an update to the main menu. This is more for aesthetics than anything else, but to make it less cluttered, the Continue, Load, and New Game options now live within the 'Play' tab.
New Notifications
In keeping with a fresher and clearer design, we've introduced new in-game popups to show when you gain or lose relationship points. However, we've also added in notifications to show when you've unlocked new notebook content, gallery items and scene replays. This again was something to help with translations. To translate the relationship points might have looked quite cluttered and tight in some languages, so we've opted for textless notifications.
I really hope you like the new updates. It's been a LOT of work to get them done, but personally I'm really pleased with what we've accomplished. Hopefully now I can get deeper into the development of Episode 4.
Other items of note
I’ve also included the forgotten Gallery items for Ep3Pt2, so those will trigger now and you can get some tasty picture of your favorite characters!
A number of bugs that have been reported have also been resolved (Images showing where they shouldn’t be etc), as well as some logic flaws that were still in the game.
As always, thanks so much for all the support and feedback. I feel like we're starting to build a really nice and welcoming community here, and I couldn't be prouder.
Nickle3DArt & Quetz