[10/09/2024 v0.5.0a Fixed a bunch of bugs]
Sorry for the constant delays everybody! Finally it is here! Feast your mouse clicks (or finger touches) on these links!
And here are the text documents such as Patch Notes and Guides:
Phew, alright. Quite a lot to say about this one:
Here's a few important things:
Gardening was added retroactively and is supposed to unlock around the time the bakery plotline happens. Because of that, you might not be able to go through all of the scenes without going over the date limit if your save is too far in.
A lot of flags for various events were added retroactively. In a few rare cases where it's impossible to determine which path you took, the game defaults to some values, so some dialogue might not match up to your previous decisions.
There are missing Journal entries for the gardening storyline, MQ4, and Ikem's storyline. They should by ready by the next minor update where I also finish the next new Ikem scenes I had originally planned. Hopefully it won't be too much of an issue in the meantime, as two of them are literally the brand new content.
The big feedback and bug report question
The Journal entries ended up being far longer than I expected! It's very likely there are a few errors, such as typos, incorrect entries for branching, or entries appearing earlier than they're supposed to.
I had to restructure a lot of the internal workings of the game UI to implement the new dynamic UI sizing for android. It's possible that it broke a few of the existing parts of the game (even on desktop builds), not to mention it might not work as well on some phones, as I was only able to test it on one device: my phone. So if you run into any issues with that, most definitely let me know.
The new materials retroactively changed most of the old card recipes, so if you're using a previous save with the cards already crafted, you likely won't feel the changes all that much.If you're in the mood to replay the game from the start, please let me know how you feel about the balance between material rarity and amount of material needed for crafting. There will likely be a bunch of rebalancing of numbers happening along the way.
Unlike the previous tutorials which featured an interactive step by step introduction, I decided to do something similar to the jogging tutorial, where the first time you enter the gardening and foraging minigame, a popup appears containing a written explanation of the minigame.
This has the advantage of being an easy way to refresh your memory if you don't remember how it works, since the tutorial is accessible at all times using the (?) button.
However, it may be a bit less intuitive this way compared to a more fool-proof step-by-step introduction, so if you had any trouble understanding how the minigames work, let me know! It's possible that I will implement more interactive tutorials for them later if it's too unclear. I'm particularly worried about the Forest Puzzle tutorial, since the minigame itself is already somewhat complex on its own.
Let's get real for a second
To be frank, I am very unhappy with how this development cycle has gone by (a development cycle being the time from one update release to another). Between the constant delays and some life interferences, this is perhaps the most stressed I've been working on the game so far.
Most of it stems from the fact that I had to constantly delay the update due to things I thought would take a month at most. However, I also mentioned once in one of the previous development logs that I've been taking longer to work on the game to make sure all the art and writing lives up to the standards I have for the game looking forward.
Obviously, that kind of thinking has brought me a non-zero amount of headaches, but I can very honestly say that the extra time I took to create what I truly envisioned was fully worth it. In my eyes, all of the content added in this update features some of the most interesting and fun writing so far, and I hope you will feel that way too!
As I mentioned in one of the previous logs, a lot of worldbuilding was done behind the scenes, and I even added little tidbits here and there into some of the old dialogue, so if you decide to replay the game, keep your eyes peeled for those!
And on that note
I've been stepping down on the gas pedal nonstop for the past month or so trying to roll the update out, so with that, I'll happily take the next few days off to rest a little.
Of course, I'll be on the lookout for any potential bug reports, so if anything particularly game-breaking is found, I should have it fixed within a few days like I usually do. If you have any other questions, you can also let me know as well.
Thank you once again for supporting the project and helping me keep everything afloat! Enjoy all the new stuff and I hope all of the time and effort I put into it shows!