Re:QoL I remember on old playthroughs of the unmodded game I would find doing any of the storylines involving the park tiresome because walking from one end to the other was a slog. Now with the teleport I can skip areas that are too-big. Also being able to wash the church windows to earn money reliably is a lifesaver.
The original game doesn't use parallax mapping for the park, which caused the slowdown. The mod uses parallax mapping so now it runs softly for the park and several other areas as such as the town in the Otherworld. It actually took me a long time to figure out parallax mapping myself. The teleports still exist because I know some people will still prefer to use that method instead.
You can also earn money at the park via working for the fisherman.
re:areas I love the new areas like the church or the arcade. They have a certain warmth or livliness that a lot of the original areas didn't. I'd suspect it's because there are NPCs walking around so it doesn't feel dead. The areas for the store where there are actual streets to walk between the multiple stores are very nice too. The streets don't feel overly wide (like the streets in the housing area for instance) and the distances between shops are long enough that you feel like you're "doing something" without it feeling like an intentional time waster. Also I can't say for certain if things are changed or if I just have a bad memory but the house feels a lot more 'warm' too. New spritework perhaps?
The church was made by
Xalenda , the arcade was made by
MystZER0 (he even made maps for the official release!) Several other new maps were either also made by them or by
Darwin7 ,
bubajn , or me.
I'm glad you like the new street ways for the stores but I will admit I was lazy when making them, they are simply modified versions of the original shopping area.
Adding extra NPCs around was mostly my own idea, I dislike having areas that feel dead. Which reminds me that I need to add more NPCs to the areas within my own game...
Some of the houses do have some alterations to them, but it's not much. And yes, several things in the mod itself have new sprite work done. I like making sprites, the thread probably knows this all to well.
I haven't spent enough time on the new characters to really have an opinion yet (grandma looks promising) and so far I've liked all of the reworked artwork I've seen. I especially like Kimberly's rework, having her face actually look asian makes her a lot more distinct.
Seems like you are talking about the "more realistic" images done by
SecretSal .
We, as in the people of the thread itself, established the head-canon of Kimberly being Asian super early on, and then official release 0.9 pretty much confirmed the head-canon when it gave her the last name Patel!
Grandma is best girl and I love her. I love her so much that I have her cameo in my own game, I might even promote her to main character status in the future...
Since I've got your attention I'll complain about the two bad things I've encountered so far
. I've gotten locked on the overworld map when attempting to go to the question mark in the bottom right of the map...Said I couldn't go there and then I could not move off of it, teleport away, or access the menu. Similarly I've gotten locked when the event plays for the teacher getting chewed out by the principal for kissing her husband. It triggered when I entered the area from the top entrance (like the one that goes to the cafeteria) instead of the bottom entrance and I think it was unable to complete because of the MC sprite being in the wrong place. Not huge problems since both times I just knew not to repeat my mistake but it can be frustrating if you haven't saved in a while.
Coding the overworld map is difficult, I'll admit that I'm still figuring it out, but I should be able to fix it... one day...
The bug fix fixes the issue with Mrs Jennings and Ms Taylor, for the most part... This post actually made me go back and make some more alterations to those events in order to avoid even further issues.
I'm waiting on a few things because I release another "update" with the game and bug fix combined together. I'll be sure to include the compressed images by
Cloud64 and compile it in a 7Zip file so that the download isn't like 10 Gigabytes or something. I learned my lesson okay!
On a related note, the scenes for the genie harem all have dialogue. I just need to make sprites for them, and code in the events for them, and you know, actually make the scenes for them...