For anyone wondering where the update post is, it is in a separate post. This post is just so everyone can see the changelog.
I want to reiterate:
The game has restarted from Episode 1 with a whole new opening.
Full Episodes 1-6 are not implemented.
Your saves will not transfer from Ren'Py.
We restarted because we felt very limited by our old game engine and that the story needed a redo now that we knew where we wanted it to go. I don't wanna go into too much detail since I've talked about it so much over the past year.
Changelog
New Content
2,259 words added. (21,991 total)
Average Reading Time: 10 Minutes.
Reintroduction to a certain character.
Animated Sprites for 3 characters.
6 Static Cinematic Moments.
2 New Locations.
Conference building lobby.
Conference room.
New Features
Continue Button! Finally up and running. Will check your save file folder on loading the start menu, and if it finds a save file, it will let you load the most recent save immediately.
Point and Click navigation: Some scenes will let you click around to explore the scene you are in. Some things you click will start a dialogue, or progress you to the next part. Right now, it’s just the reception.
Changes & Fixes
Reworked the main menu and save and load screen for more stability. Under the hood, changed the script to be more maintainable. Performance will not be noticeably different.
Now the confirmation box should properly appear when overwriting or loading a save file.
Dialogue skipping is a little faster now. We’ll keep fine-tuning it until it’s just right.
Moved the notification messages so they no longer overlap with other UI elements.
Changed some of the old background music tracks around, which affects a few of the scenes in the earlier chapters.
Increased the clickable area in the save and load menu to make it feel more responsive.
Text skipping is rewritten so it skips with more consistent timing and not before the text line is displayed, allowing the player to spot-check their place in the script.
Fixed some UI overlap issues, particularly around the character creator and name input menu.
When the dialogue is hidden, clicking no longer advances the dialogue.
Volumes of previous play sessions are now retrieved and applied at the start of the game instead of when opening the options menu.
When loading the game, it now correctly applies the volume settings of the previous play session (if there was one).
Corrected some typos (Nemtek was corrected to Nemtech).
Contents of the Build
We announced it previously, but since we are now trying to push out a build a month, not all builds will be created equal. Our goal is to bounce back and forth between big and small builds. The last build was larger, so this one is small.
There will be No Lewd Scenes.
I know that for some of you, this is disheartening. Please understand that, for the pacing of the story and the development of the game, we cannot include new lewd scenes in every update. Each lewd scene needs to be drawn and animated. Having one a month would not give our animators time to animate cinematic moments and sprites. Not to mention, the story's pacing does not always allow for a lewd scene.
If this displeases you, you may skip this month, as next month will have lewd scenes.
This build has Isaac, your player character, going to his big meeting that we alluded to back in the Ren'Py days. For those who remember what was said about this meeting, you know who will be appearing. As for everyone else, I'll leave it a mystery.
This is an important scene for Isaac as a character since it challenges his morals. It also establishes the power dynamics in Jade City. This update is doing a lot of groundwork for future updates. So while it may not have any sexy times, it does have character-building and world-building.
We have also brought Erassdz on as a part-time animator, and he has animated three cinematic moments that were left static in the last update. Since Koth is getting out of school and we have animation help, hopefully we can get animation back on track.
What is Missing
Gallery
We have this coded; we just need to make it pretty with some UI.
SFW Mode
Backer Guided Mode
Player Cellphone
Roll Back
Going to be a pain to do, if we can even do it.
"H" to hide UI
More Save Slots
Known Bugs
Still issues with menus not suspending the game progression when clicked. Will fix this in the upcoming hotfix when I tackle the following known issues from the previous update.
Changing text speed doesn’t update until you restart the game (seems to be a problem with Yarn 3.1 since it worked on Yarn 2.5)
Still have some occasional issues with animations where the character's arms pass through the animated person. Also, rarely Max's animation for throwing away the cigarette doesn't complete correctly.
Release Schedule
$20 - June 2nd, 8 AM Pacific
$10 - June 9th, 8 AM Pacific
$5 - June 16th, 8 AM Pacific
$3 - June 23rd, 8 AM Pacific
Where do I report bugs and feedback?
Either in the comments of the update post, on our Discord, or in our Google Form linked in the update post.
Wrap Up
A very solid month! There were some hiccups since I was sick and two of our team members were finishing college. But we were able to bring on another animator part-time and an intern to help with the narrative.
We focused on developing key features, such as the Point & Click system and the Gallery.
Next month, we have an extra week to work, so we're going to take full advantage of it!
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy v0.15.3 when it drops!
Remember, this isn't the end of Ep 1 ;)
Stay Rad!