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Okay... I have a few things to talk about.
First, the progress for episode 14. All renders are done, and the post-render work is also done. The "re-coding" for the episode-3-remake is done, and I coded the first part of episode 14 and tested it already. I put some music/background noise in the first episode, but only on the first day for now. That's because of 2 reasons. The first reason is that I want some feedback from you on whether you like it or not. On the plane, for example, there's the typical plane noise with some soft chatter from other passengers, on the street, you can hear some cars passing by, when inside the house, talking to Emily, I've put some self-created indie lo-fi and so on... That way you can compare and let me know what you like more, music everywhere or keep it switched up like it is now, sometimes music, other times typical background noise. The second reason I'll talk about a little later in this post.
Now to a, I don't know if it's an issue, but I call it that for now. When working on a new episode, I always want it to be better than the previous one. But when I tested the first part that I coded from this episode, I wasn't disappointed, but some other word I can't think of now. Maybe I'm too hard on myself here, since it's not always possible to one-up every episode. Take a TV show, for example, not all episodes are better than the previous one, especially if something big happened before. Episode 13 was very big with a lot of progress for several characters and storylines, and episode 14 is the opposite. There isn't much progress with the characters, maybe a little bit of a storyline. It's more of an episode to set up stuff for the upcoming episodes. So, I felt a little let down by myself, or that I failed in some way, I don't know. It's a short episode. Especially after the biggest episode so far, it's gonna feel even shorter. If you only play solo paths, it's very very short and not much there for you. I suggest skipping this one and waiting for the next episode. My opinion, of course, you can do whatever you want.
Now to something you all probably gonna hate. Not the upcoming release, but episode 15 will break saves. I don't know for certain if I'm gonna do it with episode 15, but the earlier I do it, the better. As some of you might know, there are several bugs still in the game, and I found another big one which I can't fix without new variables that I have to put in previous episodes. I found out that you can't be on an Iris path without Alexis because most of Iris' points happen during the beach date, and if you don't get those points, you're not on her path any longer. That, of course, shouldn't be the case. I lowered some requirements for now as a quick fix, so it could be that you're on Iris' path all of a sudden. That's something I have to change and re-assign several points to a non-Alexis path. There are also lots of problems with Nikki and Cara variables. Meaning, I probably do a full recode for episode 15 from episode 1 onwards and change the way you get variables to what I've been doing in the last few episodes, and I might change some point requirements too. I also want to keep count of who MC has kissed/had sex with, and so on. It might be something I need in the long run. That's also the second reason why I won't be putting any music in the first 3 episodes since I will be changing the code then. I will start working on the code change simultaneously with episode 15. I'm sorry, hate me all you want, but it's a work in progress, and stuff like this happens but I'm always honest about this.
I promised to give an ETA last progress update, I'm not too sure yet but 2 weeks maybe? I still need to do 2/3 of the code and the testing. If something changes I'll let you know.
... it still takes too long for literal dozens of possible routes and you still have to actually be in the game to make choices. Had enough with the fucking borked saves. Will do the main LIs and that's already a chore.
