One more suggestion.
I keep getting likes on an old post I made about a warp system in this game. But maybe this is too much work for the devs. And frankly, I think that I would rather they put development time into the game and not a warp system if it will take a long time.
A simple solution is to just distribute the game with saves from the developers. Just have save games for different major events in the game but put them right in the download zip file. Have a folder called StartPointSaves and fill it with the key story and decision points. No coding required.
At the very least, it would be nice to have a start point save for the beginning of new content with each release. So if they are releasing a new version with college Charlotte content then they could also include a save for that path so you don’t have to start over from the beginning if you took the other Charlotte path.
However, the best versions of these games have a feature where you can pick a start point and choices through a start point story choice interface. So you can imagine a menu that asks you where you want to start and you might say when Sofia arrives. So then it asks you what you have done with Hang with radial buttons, like is she your girlfriend or did you ignore her or is she just starting her training? It gives you the choice for Charlotte and the other girls. But this would be way more work. And I would be happy with just getting a save that starts at the beginning of the new content as someone who already finished the game so far.
Thank you for such a thorough explanation. You are right however, there is more work which goes into creating start points than most people realise. This is because we have to account for a great many variables and event flags.
This isn't necessarily the biggest problem however, which is there is no clean cut between most characters and the main story. In order to get character x to state a, could mean completing half of character y's events, and story events c, d and e.
As for saves, any existing saves can be used to play new content. Charlotte is the only exception to this rule, as she is the only character with two distinct content paths. This does unfortunately mean you need to be on the right path for her to play the new content. However, she will be the only one this will happen for.