Thank you so much for the input!!First of all, (belated) congratulations on your first (?) release and thank you for sharing your project with us.
I haven't tried Discovering Herself yet (I'm downloading it right now), but I wanted to make two remarks:
1. (Version number) nomenclature
It's common in the software industry (not only in the adult games sector ) for a finished product to be released with the version number 1.0.
Since Discovering Herself is (I assume) not yet a completed VN, but "only" a first version, it would be better to name your version 0.1 - and the subsequent versions 0.2, 0.3, etc. - until your VN is completed as version 1.0 - or you have released more than 10 versions (in that case you'd continue with 1.1, 1.2, etc.).
In the case of bug fixing, the revised versions would be named either 0.1.1 or 0.1a, etc.
That way you avoid people coming into this thread having exaggerated expectations:
"Oh, a 1.0 - that means it's completed or already has a crazy amount of content."
2. Image format and file size
I see that your first version is a whopping 1.15 GB - that's a lot and means either that your first version has an extensive amount of content or (more likely) that you are using an image format that is quite taxing in terms of file size.
Whilst this is not a major problem at the moment, it could become one in the future.
Imagine your project in one or two years from now after 10 releases with 10 times the amount of images and maybe even animations - your VN will easily become 10, 15 or even 20 GB in size.
Apart from the memory required, many people (especially those with poorer internet) will be discouraged from giving your VN a try.
Sure, there are always helpful people around who are willing to make and share compressed game versions with a fraction of the original file size, but I wouldn't count on it.
It's therefore better to switch to a more efficient image format now to prevent these future problems.
As far as I know, webp is the preferred image format over jpeg and png (because it saves space) - I'm no specialist though, but I'm sure there are more experienced people around here who can give useful advice in this regard.
I hope my comments don't come across as patronising - that's not my intention.
If you want to stick to your nomenclature or image format, that's perfectly fine, too.
Cheers!
When it comes to the nomenclature, I went with 1.0 because Discovering Herself is technically finished, and the small continuation I'm doing would be its own separate thing. That way whatever changes I'm going to make (e.g. removing the black bars or changing the images resolution) wouldn't clash with the previous release. So when the cotinuation releases I was planing on going with 1.1, or PART 2, or something along those lines (I've seen some releases that specify part or chapter plus the vX.X).
This is the exception though, moving forward with whatever project I decide to go, I'll be using the usual v0.X until a final v1.0.
Now, related to the images. I do have in mind probably changing to webp moving forward, but I still have to read a bit more if there's a potential loss of quality or any other issues. Again, part of the reason as to why the continuation will be a separate download, I don't really want to cause any troubles with changing image format mid-way.