Posted this on Patreon
Hey everyone.
This is the programmer for Midnight Paradise, Maim Lain.
For those who don't know me, after Midnight Paradise was ported to RenPy I helped with the code in the past few updates, and when work started on 0.6 I became responsible for all the programming in the game.
Most of you were probably expecting an update to be released around now instead of this post, and unfortunately I'm here to let you know that Lewdlab and I need a little bit more time to work on the update. (pepehands)
All of the new 0.6 scenes, renders, and animations are finished, but there's a lot more happening in this update than just new scenes. It might seem weird that this update has taken so long to release compared to the past few updates, so this dev update is going to hopefully explain the scale of this update.
The first thing I'd like to let everyone know, since Lewdlab may not have communicated this very well, is that this update is not a normal update.
There are a lot of new scenes in the update, around double the amount of renders and animations than most past updates, but there's a lot more that's been done in this update besides just new scenes. This update isn't like the 0.4 or 0.5 updates where only new events were added to the game. And this update isn't even comparable to the 0.3 update, which was the update where the game engine switched to RenPy (but despite the engine switch and new UI, nothing about the game actually changed in that update).
The 0.6 update changes and improves everything, and all of the code in the game has been rewritten to allow these changes. I only have time to mention a few of them, so here are some big ones:
Navigation & rooms:
The new navigation system we've implemented was shown a couple dev updates ago. So there's no more clicking rectangles at the top of the screen to move places. You can now click and move around the house naturally.
But who cares about navigation if there's nowhere to actually go? Personally, previously Midnight Paradise sometimes felt like a doorknob clicking simulator, going from door to door around the house clicking the tiny doorknobs to try to trigger events.
That's why in this update we've added 14 new locations! You can now actually enter every room and location in the game. You'll see different things there depending on the time of day and other factors, which leads into the next new feature.
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Character schedules:
Something else we've implemented is character schedules. Before it was only possible to interact with characters once per day. Joyce and Ruby in the kitchen, Isabel on the couch, Ms. Jane in her office, etc.
In this update we've given each character a schedule of places they will be based on the time of day, so you can now see and interact with characters all around the house at different times of the day.
For example, Joyce can be seen: doing yoga in her room (and clicked so you can do yoga with her), in the kitchen, working from home, or in her bed at night.
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Scene gallery:
The scene & extras gallery has also been completely remade. The design and navigation has been improved, the gallery is now sorted by character, thumbnails are higher resolution, and scenes that are new in the latest update are now highlighted so you can easily find which scenes are new.
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A ton of other improvements:
There's waay too many other things to mention that have been improved. If you ever felt like you were "stuck" trying to trigger events or progress the story, that's been fixed now. The flow of story progression has really been improved by removing many gratuitous event trigger requirements.
The map screen has been improved, it's now possible to repeat previous massage, yoga, and tutoring scenes, and there were even events in the game (that I didn't code, so I don't take the blame
) that had extended scene versions that were always skipped and impossible to see due to bugs in old code that have now been fixed.
There's really too much to mention and cover in this post.
It's possibly my fault that the update is being delayed. I've been very ambitious with the improvements I've added to the game, so we need just a little bit more time to add a few more things will really make parts of the game better, and to also ensure that there aren't any bugs caused from rushing out a release.
Dr Sin chiming in: I'm sorry for the delay. Who would have thought? Hopefully we can leave these behind with the new year soon.
Anyways, just wanted to let you guys know that I've been trying to improve my part as well, and not just with the amount of new renders and animations. I did an effort to improve my writing, especially during lewd scenes. I tried to write better, longer and more descriptive stuff. Hopefully you'll notice at least a tiny bit of step up in quality.
Thank you for your understanding.
