Which main character are you most interested in so far?

  • Eryn

    Votes: 8,945 56.9%
  • Lena

    Votes: 738 4.7%
  • Lucine

    Votes: 1,904 12.1%
  • Raisa

    Votes: 1,714 10.9%
  • Rithe

    Votes: 329 2.1%
  • Murfi (Lucine's Cow)

    Votes: 1,717 10.9%
  • Aline

    Votes: 82 0.5%
  • Aina

    Votes: 35 0.2%
  • Evana

    Votes: 116 0.7%
  • Silva

    Votes: 132 0.8%

  • Total voters
    15,712
  • Poll closed .

TRICKSTΞR

Active Member
Sep 9, 2021
929
10,167
667
Just under 4 more weeks. Version 0.21 is a lot of boring but important housekeeping stuff like a new UI and menu system to fix controller support on handhelds like the steamdeck. It won't feel like a huge update story-wise so have very tempered expectations on this one. The new story scenes are all on Eryn's path but build up atmosphere and tension on existing events. Her new virginity scene will be in version 0.22 which will be out faster than this one.
View attachment 5278060
Guess we’re about a week away then for v0.21? :unsure:
 

Escape Sauce

Refuge of Embers
Game Developer
Oct 4, 2020
327
2,730
381
If I read it right, this current state is just the barebones spine tenuously connecting the three acts of the story, and the real work is fleshing out each act to be a fair bit longer than they are now.
Yep pretty much, although the prologue is basically done at this point. Anything we add there will just be improvements to the romance routes or sex scenes. Act 2 is pretty much nonexistant.

Guess we’re about a week away then for v0.21? :unsure:
We're coming up to the end of it. The artist has 2 scenes left to make along with some eye and mouth movement options. She also needs to make at least some placeholders for a few more pieces of the new GUI, although I'm ready to just swap back in the old GUI for this release if it looks like it'll add too much more time.

f95.gif
 
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MiltonPowers

Twins Basil! Twins!
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Jul 26, 2023
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Escape Artist is about half way done with the last scene. She's pausing that to work on the last few bits of the new GUI that we need, and afterward she still has to make some face options and small fixes. It looks like she'll have the last of the assets wrapped up in about 5 days and I'll need another day or two after that to put the last of it together and finish testing. A very realistic target for release is the 30th or 31st.

The new assets for the gallery, journal, and sprite viewer will likely not be finished by then so it looks like we'll temporarily remove them unless things go much faster than expected. Worst case scenario though we can just reimplement them in a hotfix afterward. I'll try my best to at least get the gallery in before the release though.
 

MiltonPowers

Twins Basil! Twins!
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Jul 26, 2023
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screenshot0109.png

We're technically still on track for the 31st but some important things wouldn't be finished and the mobile version might still have some bugs hiding in there from the new UI. We decided last night to let this one cook for one more week instead of releasing it with placeholders. New target is 11/8 or 11/9. EscapeArtist will finish up the required assets before then and will move onto version 0.23.

Again keep in mind version 0.22 has been focused on replacing the UI for better device support and fixing Eryn's existing path and building out what's already there with more writing and artwork. We've been working on this one for a while but it won't necessarily feel like a huge update compared to others since it isn't adding new events to the end of the story.

Version 0.23 will go a lot faster with the UI finished up.

Also for October we're going to draw two pinups for the top two voted characters instead of just one.
 

Escape Sauce

Refuge of Embers
Game Developer
Oct 4, 2020
327
2,730
381
I downloaded version v0.20a, but I get an error just when I open the game.
Could be some old appdata from a previous playthrough interfering. Check in:

C:\Users\ (your username) \Appdata\Roaming\RenPy\RefugeOfEmbers

Then just delete everything in there to see if that fixes it. Could also be a bad download. I've also seen crashes in systems with really old CPUs, like late 2000s or very early 2010s.
 

Escape Sauce

Refuge of Embers
Game Developer
Oct 4, 2020
327
2,730
381
That and the artist needs a few more hours to finish drawing the figures in the foreground of one last scene. It'll eventually be animated but we at least want a completed still frame in this update. Gives me time to do more testing too. There will still be bugs given the scope of what has been changed under the hood but I'm finding less and less.

img.png
 

AdorableAngle

Newbie
Oct 25, 2025
18
5
3
I downloaded version v0.20a, but I get an error just when I open the game.

View attachment 5406022
Well, line 4318 here is this:
Code:
label options_config:
    default language_index = persistent.language_mode.index(preferences.language)
The error is because preferences.language is set to something that's not available in language_mode for some reason for you.

You could copy this attached file under the game/ folder to reset preferences.language which should fix the error for you.

Or remove the persistent save data. That should reset the preference value too.
 
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MiltonPowers

Twins Basil! Twins!
Donor
Jr. Uploader
Jul 26, 2023
18,388
47,327
922


00.png

Version 0.22 is now out and ready for play testing. In this update we focused on overhauling our menu systems, GUI, and designing everything in a way that fixes support for controllers and handhelds like the Steam Deck. The Android experience is also improved with a more polished interface with special made assets instead of just rescaled assets from the PC version. In the story we focused on expanding and refining Eryn's path, although the changes are part of a broader overhaul that isn't yet complete. The net play time has increased by about 10 minutes, but this includes rewrites to existing scenes. Like the last update, this version will require old persistent data to be deleted, so if you have weird bugs on Windows check in your appdata folder (C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\RenPy\RefugeOfEmbers\) for old persistent data files that could be causing issues.

01.png

Based on user feedback we slimmed down the textbox and choice buttons to increase the amount of screen real estate for artwork. The mobile version has the biggest difference since the old version was larger proportionally. In the past we also had an issue with dialogue and choice text sometimes extending outside of the text boxes on mobile. This was because the mobile font was about 40% larger than the PC font, but the boxes were only about 20% larger. Now they're both the same percent larger so if it looks good on PC we don't have to double check mobile too.

02.png

We also found a better approach for the quickmenu, which are the small buttons at the bottom of the screen. We ran a poll to see what buttons were used, and ultimately decided to turn it into a menu option. Under video settings you can toggle between the standard 5 button panel, a full 8 button panel, or just disable it entirely. There's a weird screen jitter when you change the setting for now, but we have a plan to fix this in a later update. We've also added a setting called film grain, which adds a really subtle film grain effect. We were trying to go with an old anime kind of a look to really sell the animations and we both think it really adds a lot, but it's an expensive effect for performance so if you're on really old hardware and suddenly the game is running like crap go ahead and turn that off.

The screens and logic are all be working, but the sprite viewer has been temporarily removed and will be returning in the next update. We're also missing the new journal and achievements screens this time around, but they'll both be making an appearance soon.

03.png

Eryn's path is expanded in the prologue, but still very much incomplete. In the next update we'll be adding to her festival scene. A lot of the writing is in and it's in the second to last draft, but there's a lot of artwork missing so we just reused what was in the game before as placeholders. We did manage to add in one of the animations just before release, but it's also incomplete and the final rendering for it will be in the next update.

Version 0.23 will be out much faster than this one was and will have a lot more story content, but 0.22 has a lot of necessary changes. Under the hood we've reworked a lot of the code for the screens and gui to get rid of as much tech debt as possible. There are still some remnants of the old screens and systems in there that need to be sorted out, but with the extra time we've spent this should be a mostly stable and bug free update. The story is still pretty cut up and scattered though, so that'll be in flux for a bit longer. I think you'll like the direction things are heading in with Eryn's path though. Send us a DM or drop a bug report on Discord if you find any typos or other issues.
 
4.00 star(s) 48 Votes