Alright folks, time for a development poll, and this one could be rather impactful on the schedule. Phase 2 is almost upon us, and it's time to decide where to start. First, I'll go through what each of the options are:
1. Tutorial/First Day Revamp: This will involve taking the current info dump Hellfire gives you at the start of the game, and turning it into a full day or two in which to introduce the player to the Departments and game concepts at a more reasonable and in-depth pace. This is the simplest Phase 2 goal, and will probably take a few weeks.
2. Office Upgrades: Right now office upgrades are just something that you click through as they come up. The goal is for each upgrade to have a few options with it, and depending on which department assets you use to do the upgrade, will customize the office in various ways. This will involve revisiting the Director scenes to update as necessary, and may involve somewhat different sex scenes depending on some of the upgrades used. I haven't done an in-depth look at how many scenes I'll need to update, but this will probably take at least a few weeks.
3. Exploration Missions: This is the big one, one of the core features for Phase 2. It'll involve collecting assets, new minor encounters, and expanding your relationships with your Specialists who will be joining you on the missions. Now, this is a code-heavy feature, and I've actually done very little coding for most of the past year - mostly writing, some art management, and just enough functionality changes to get new content working. As a code-heavy item, it may mean a number of updates go by with very little to show to players. I'll still do random encounters and other such scenes, just to keep you all from getting bored, but do be prepared for potentially a couple months of light updates with this option.
4. And finally, Specialist relationships. I put this last as relationships will be blocked at a certain point by Mission requirements anyhow. But, take eight specialists, times a couple of pre-mission scenes each, and that's still a good month or two of specialist work to be done. If you really want to see more of the Specialists, and don't mind skipping the heavy smut scenes for a while, here's your option.
There's a few other Phase 2 objectives on the list, but they generally require one or more of these to be finished first. As usual, order will take precedence in the event of a tie. This poll will run for two weeks, but vote soon so you don't forget! If all goes well with the schedule, I'll like be beginning work on the chosen option by the end of the month.