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The Official Version 0.3 of "My Wife is A Star" has finally been released after a long wait. For me, this version had been kind of a torture since the process for developing this version wasn't really fun. No matter, I still believe I should explain why this release took such a long time.
First off, I can see that many people would probably be disappointed in this release since it is not going to be content heavy. Even I myself found the content amount to be insufficient. But even though that is the case, I was surprised to find that the file size for the game has almost doubled from the previous version! I realized later that this was probably due to the large amount of code and default scenes I had added into the game in this version.
I had mentioned in previous posts that this was going to be a logic implementation heavy update. Of course, in order to not let the update seem too empty, and also for the purpose of trying out the new mechanics, I have also tried to include a few scenes to progress the game a little, but those are still lesser than the 2 updates from before. As for the reason why these game mechanics need to be implemented, I have already mentioned in my previous post, but I am just going to touch on them briefly again while introducing the new features in this update.
1.
GAME FORMAT
The main and largest change anyone would be able to notice is the format of the game has changed. While the game used to be more or less comparable to a simple VN with a few choices, that was not the idea for the game I had from the start. It only happened that way because I was trying to do an introduction to the characters and I guess I got a little carried away and placed too many events in the first few days. Now that the game has taken off, it only makes sense to revert back to the original idea I had in mind, for it to be a little more sandbox-like. This comes in the form of a daily cycle which would loop indefinitely, though planned story events would still stop on the day that there are supposed to, the player will still be able to keep looping through a few more days to trigger random events they might not have gotten yet.
Another reason for this change is to speed up the game a little more. In the last 2 releases, the game has been progressing slowly, with too many events cramped up in only the first day. At this pace, not only will it take forever to reach the end of the game, it will also take too long to explore the stories of the many different characters that the game will be introducing later on. With the new system, not only can the events be more evenly spaced out, it also allows for more easy and unrestricted additions of said game events while also adding a new sense of exploration and simulation in the game for players instead of just brainlessly clicking through text.
2.
PROJECT SCHEDULER (New in official release)
This is the next big mechanic that is added in this update. This is basically the project manager in charge of Valerie's projects on hand. This feature is important because many of the game's planned events in the future will be based on this feature alone. For instance, taking a job for a magazine cover shoot might result in 'interesting' photo sessions, or taking up an offer for a movie role might result in Valerie having to do things she never thought she is capable of doing etc... you get the idea.
This feature in particular was done after the beta was released and it gave me a huge headache while coding it as there were so many new data to save, in order for save data from previous versions to work, there had to be a lot of checks so the game would not bug out when it does not find a necessary data field in the save data of previous versions. This and the fact that I was kept busy the entire season holiday period by visiting relatives and friends resulted in the delay for the official version, and for my poor time management I apologize.
But at least this feature is done and out of the way now. Hopefully it works without any more bugs and I am excited for the possibilities it can bring to the game in the future.
3.
MAJOR INCREASE IN SAVE SLOTS
When I first created the save/load function, I only created 8 slots as I wanted to focus on the game content instead of spending time to code a multi-paged save/load UI feature. But since I had already decided that this was going to be a logic heavy update and that it would probably take up a long time, I decided to add this feature in this update. I know that people have been mentioning on forums and messages that they need more save slots, and honestly, I find that I need the slots for my game testing too so here it is.
4.
NAMING OF SAVE SLOTS
This is another feature that people have been asking for, which I also find to be necessary especially now that the number of slots have increased drastically and the game is going to have more and more branches, players will need to know what each save slot is for.
5.
CG PAGE EXPANSION
With the new format, it does not make sense anymore to only have the old CG page format as not every game event with CG is going to be in the timeline. There will be some events that will only take place if you perform a certain action (Eg. Going shopping, gym etc) or certain events that is repeatable. These will need a new place in the CG page. So after thinking on it for a while, I have decided to split the CGs into 3 different catagories, namely "Story CGs", "Trigger CGs" and "Repeatable CGs" and they can be accessed by clicking on the 3 new buttons on the top-left of the CG page.
So, these are mainly the new features in this version. Of course besides these, there are also numerous default scenes in the new daily loop, 4 new "Story" events, 1 "Trigger" event, and 3 new repeatable events that have been added which can all be viewed in the CG page.
GOING FORWARD
Enough about this update, now onto the fun part! Going forward, I plan to start populating the numerous repeatable scenes. As many of you will come to realize while playing the game now, many of the locations at home will lead to default text as their content have not been implemented as of now due to time constrains. ( Eg. The bedrooms, bathrooms, gym etc... ) Those will be slowly populated in due time along with the many events that will follow.
Also, I plan to finish the next update by the end of this month as I will need to travel for 2 weeks in February for work and I am afraid I might not get much time to work on renders in those 2 weeks. As for the content, all I can say is that in hand with the celebratory mood these weeks, it is going to be a party!!! So look forward to it, more updates will follow!
Lastly, I am truly grateful for the many patrons that have stuck with me through these few challenging months. There had been many moments when even I myself doubted whether I had the capability to accomplish what I wanted to achieve for this version and wanted to give up, but all of you who stuck with me gave me motivation and reason to persevere on. I promise you all that I will never abandon this project as long as I have patrons like you all who believe in me, and that you all can expect more things coming up.
Also, as thanks, and in celebration of the new year, I will be releasing a set of promotional images in the next few days for thanking all of you. There will be a new image for each tier of patrons ending with the "Superstar" tier and above having 4 free images in total, I hope you all will like them!
Till next time,
Cheers! DW