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Hi everyone, first and foremost apologies for not uploading anything for almost 2 weeks I haven't been on my PC at all this past few days and haven't had any time to work on the game for over a week. I'm absolutely fine, I've just had something to see to.
I actually had a drafted post half written over a week ago and I'll reference it to fill out this post but the notable info is that the update is absolutely going to be delayed and I genuinely hate having to bring anything but the most joyful news in these posts but there's just nothing I can do about it
The drafted post was actually gonna mention that I was concerned that an August deadline might be missed and that was before I lost 4 full days of work and 2/3 evenings. I'll just post a snippet of that draft:
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"Man last week I was feeling the pressure weighing in but now I'm all but crushed by it :d I'm almost certain that this update will be slightly delayed, the RPGM work has been taking an awful lot longer than I expected it to. Most events in the game run as a slideshow so inserting Show Picture, Move Picture, Flashes, Sound Effects & Text is the majority of what I do. This is pretty streamlined work for the most part with some testing at the end for general flow, formatting and typos. This update on the other hand has a sizeable amount of transparent images which leaves the RPGM ui in the background, not only that but there is a lot of the events that are "told" through the RPGM sprites so it's a sort of mix between the usual slideshow but also a non-cg cutscene of sorts.
The events in this update are also significantly more complex than almost every other event in the game in that most of them have several tiers of progression, things like greyed out choices with several different pre-requisites look simple at their face but when combined into a thousand line event they quickly become difficult to keep track of. Stack that on top of skip functionality for not only the CGs but also the RPGM sprite work which are always triggered by variables & switches have to be tested very carefully to avoid stalls which I've been painfully going over this past week ^_^ Obviously because we're still in the early-mid stages of the game these events are limited to some degree but foundationally the groundwork is set and adding to the events in future should be considerably easier.
I was working on the Queue event for about 8 hours~, it took almost an entire day off and that event is in total 27 CG / 8 per outfit. Then I moved onto the Byron Coffee events and that took several days to finish and those events only total 28 CG including variants. Currently there are an additional 317 CG but I haven't added Paul's scene to the folder yet as it's not finished but it will add surplus of another 100. I haven't event started Theo's RPGM work yet and it is
by far the most complicated scene that the game has had to date."
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I will note that I think that this patch in particular isn't worth hyping up. Realistically it's 2 larger scenes in Paul & Viv then the rest is of no consequence or real intrigue. I do however think this patch is
necessary so ripping off the band-aid to set the stones for future updates in a B patch is worth it
I'm just as per usual concerned with there being a large let down within the community.
I had also planned a poll regarding Paul's Route but after thinking on this new idea all week I've decided to go ahead with it. Basically Paul's (specifically his blackmail route) route will now be accessible in two ways:
1: Cheating with Viv
2: Cheating with Byron (and letting him in)
#2 is obviously the new addition here, it was hinted at the end of the Byron Beach scenario that Byron now knows where Lisa lives and would come visit her sometime. Lisa also states that it'd be kinda "wild" to invite him over and is leaning into the idea herself. This situation is quite clearly a perfect setup for Paul getting blackmail material. I've spent way too many hours going through the early Renshire notes of Sharon & Viv's youth to try to fit something in to fit those that didn't pursue the Viv Romance path but it's just too convoluted already without tossing more gasoline on the fire ^_^
Because Paul's route has some groundwork already I obviously want to get the Byron scene completed before moving forward too, it'll also take some tailoring to RPGM events and likely a whole new set of CG for the first Paul scene in his room. I already have these noted to-do for the 2.70 patch.
Anyway I gotta go get ready for work zz, I will grind my fingers to the bone to have this update ready within the next week or 2. Let me know what you guys think about the Byron idea! Thanks everyone, I hope you're all happy and well <3
//pG