My life might be, but this post isn't. The following is a public-facing post and strictly follows the community guidelines.
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Long time no see. To be honest, given what I was told by doctors last year, I wasn't sure we would ever see each other again.
I am beginning this draft on December 3rd 2024. I am not sure when, if ever, it'll see the light of day. If you're seeing this, it means I've managed to solve a few difficult problems with bringing this project up to spec.
As many of you guessed, my health degraded shortly after my last post. The reports of my demise were exaggerated, but sadly only slightly. Ugly story short, they found something in my abdomen that they missed the first time around, and the prognosis wasn't good. It wasn't the big C, but that wasn't a great consolation. It's fair to say that I spent most of the year genuinely believing it would be my last. I wasn't ready "to go", coupled with existential dread of it all. Felt unfair.
In the meantime, I let down most of you by keeping you in the dark since I didn't have access to electronics, and when I did, the health to use them. For that, I deeply apologize. As terrible as it is, when I thought it was over, I stopped caring about everything since it felt... Pointless. I also lost my job and had to go back to my family who have been taking graciously taking care of me. Coupled with the social setbacks earlier this year, suffice it to say that there is very little left to take from me. So the only way to go is up?
I've somehow been granted a second chance and while I still can't walk a lot without being dizzy and my body has atrophied a lot, I can finally work with computers, mostly on my laptop in bed.
The reason I'm not posting this on December 3rd is because I despise pity parties. Even if it costs me this entire project, I don't want to come back empty handed, regardless of the prior circumstances being beyond my control and most would understand. I want to do a No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk 2077 silent reversal.
Bindr's spring rebirth
It's April now and I've finally built all the new systems and am ready to share all the details. In December, I decided to tackle all of the issues the game had at once. I collected all of my notes as well as the feedback from patrons over the lifespan of the project:
The hacky way the messaging was implemented by subverting NVL in the engine to overlay messages on top, clumsy progression, no history viewing, limited feature expansion. It all had to go.
Bindr app was limited in the sense that you couldn't view more information about girls, additional profile pictures. People also couldn't send or receive photos.
The phone in general was just a slab for the Bindr app, it lacked any kind of meaningful depth and systems simulation.
The introduction lacked any kind of easing into the role, needed more fleshing out. Narratives in general required more depth, more choices, more consequences, more divergence.
Navigation felt claustrophobic and the locations felt disjointed, needed a better way of navigating the expanding world.
Needed more depth in interactions, how people are met and interacted with.
Needed music and SFX to accentuate various moments.
Proper scaling across different screens and crispness on all of them.
I will begin with the least exciting stuff and work up from there.
Assets now scale up to 4K
The least important, but perhaps the most visually striking new development. As I was bedridden, I had to use my old Macbook to develop and found that the current resolution of assets was severely lacking on the higher DPI displays, felt like a blurry mess. So I decided to rework every bit of UI and future renders to go up to 3840x2160 and everything in between. Whether you're on 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3024x1964, 3456x2234 or 3840x2160, it's now sharp and crisp, and there is new detail to be seen. Added benefit for people on 1920x1080 is that all the assets are effectively supersampled and filtered.
Better compression
Scaling up was made possible by adoption of the AVIF format and hopefully integrating JXL in the future, which eliminated much of the storage growth associated with amping up the number of pixels four times. Recoding the old 1920x1080 renders afforded a 30% storage decrease with no perceptual degradation. 4K footage can be stored at 300-1000 kB / image which is bonkers. This will be open to voting as it's still a formidable size increase over the current 1080p renders. One of the benefits of the early prologue release is getting feedback on this.
An actual prologue
To introduce the new mechanics and flesh out the narrative, I am including a prologue that isn't too long but provides enough context to learn all the new features and get vibing with some of the new characters. This means the game begins before the publishing of Bindr as MC is transitioning from his old job to working full time on his pet project. But things don't go according to plan.
MC will also be starting out in a one bedroom apartment which will be his initial home.
New time resolution
I am introducing weekdays as well as expanding the day to have more depth, now featuring Morning, Midday, Afternoon, Evening and Night. People and locations will have accessibility conditions predicated on the current day of the week and time of day. Some girls won't reply immediately and you will be notified once they do. I'll put it up for a vote if people want this hindrance aspect of realism in the game permanently. Again, one of the benefits of a separate prologue.
First blue-eyed character
It's been long requested and sounds minor, but Angela is one of my favorite characters I've ever made. There's also a tattooed, alternative character that's also a prominent part of the game now. Alongside everyone else you've learned to love.
Redeveloped Bindr app
I will be dedicating a post to this once the full thing goes live.
The Bindr app was fairly lackluster so far because it was mostly just a simple frontend for establishing dates. Now, the app has proper profile cards which are scrollable, girls can have multiple photos, a whole bio, verified status etc.
Originally, all girls were verified and were guaranteed to be who they said they were outside of misinformation in profile details. Revised approach has kept all the original verified girls, but I have allowed for unverified profiles to be on the app, as well as cat fishes, guys posing as girls (and you having to discern that), surprise profiles that have completely unrelated photos like flowers and what not due to being shy or other more illicit reasons.
The new messaging implementation allows girls to communicate with text and photos, but all the history is always accessible and scrollable. Photos they send as part of their messages, all of which are high res, can be saved and exported to desktop.
Full-blown location and map system
It zooms, it moves around, it updates over time, it's high resolution and provides a sense of space as you zoom about the regions. You will be able to access the coffee shop, Xara store (where various "bangers" will play on standby), your home, "quest" objectives, dates and the airport. Basically any location the game features, past, present and future.
Locations also have multiple levels sometimes, as well as perspectives. You will be able to shift perspective, which will sometimes be crucial to revealing new interactive elements which will help you progress particular quests. You will also be able to move to sublocations on locations, such as between living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, work room, sublevels in a club etc. Some locations will also just be simple ones, "classic".
The most ridiculous phone in this engine (ever?)
One of my biggest pet peeves in past versions of Bindr was the crutch of having a single app phone and a tablet. I wanted to have a whole phone. All the important apps. Functioning Contacts, Messages, Phone, Bindr, Photos, integrated CardStore (faux app store) where the user can get story related apps (which will become more and more prominent). And they all interact and can send data across.
There is also a fullblown notification system since not all messages come momentarily necessarily, and a lockscreen. You will now be meeting people on Bindr, date them, eventually ask them for their number or socials (later), then exit the app, add a new contact and message them from there. Girls are able to send you photos, you can tap on a photo and it will be added to your Photos app where you can review them and export them in full size to your desktop.
You might also remember story beats like with Soumya where she asked you take a photo of her, now when she asks you will be properly able to send it, and keep it yourself. It will actually appear in the Photos app.
Save profiles
This turned out to be much more difficult than I initially expected because the save system is highly integrated with the engine due to all the rollbacks and stuff. I had to remove the existing slot system to integrate the new profile based one. Right now, profile names are based on character names, but I will be reworking it to allow same character replays.
This will also be a necessary convenience as there will be divergent paths in the future, example with Angela and Judy.
Region traversal with airports
I've removed the tablet so it's not just us interacting with screens through a screen. You will be going to actual airports and booking flights on the phone, via an app that will be downloadable off the CardStore, well technically a "Card". This is for when MC isn't actually broke, after the prologue and building Bindr.