Posted May 01, 2021 by Momoiro Software
There's been some confusion here on itch about the difference between "Preview" and the full game. I hope to alleviate this confusion, but unfortunately right now I can't do it under the best terms. The plan was to release v0.1.0.a this month which presents a stable release with previous and current core functions working.
But unfortunately due to the nature of completely rewriting how the game functions, and some other stuff this month that was not possible.
FYI builds for all platforms excluding WebGL will come in due time.
This is a very early development release, with a lot of functions broken. I'm releasing this so people who donate understand the direction the game is heading. And so people understand they are no longer donating for the "preview" game but instead the "full" game which is functionally completely different.
But do understand while I'm working as fast as possible for a time things will be place holder (like how Naomi lacks animation for a lot of things and is instead only posed), and things will be rough. But I hope as the game is updated people see where the game is going.
There will not be another release on itch until v0.1.0.a, this is because usually making a build release requires some clean up and optimization and slows down development greatly especially when it's on all platforms. So I understand there's MANY broken aspects to this release, but I ask for your understanding and patience until a more stable release is available.
Most decisions made during development is more aimed at long term goals of making adding content as easy as possible, but as a result it's require reworking entire concepts of how previous scenes and functions were built. So in a lot of cases, we're not simply moving code from the preview to the full game, we're rewriting it entirely for QoL purposes and things like performance.
I want to as plainly as possible outline some changes from previous development.
Until recently Our Apartment has been a solo dev game, but to meet my goals faster I'm changing that and as a result things slowed down in some aspects. I'm an artist first, programmer second. Instead of asking people for specific single tasks, I have people working on entire aspects and I need to make sure they under stand what the game is trying to be as a whole. This is a transition and I'm learning how to do a better job with this.
it means a lot more documentation time, and I can't just eyeball my way through things like I have until now. But this has helped narrow focus, and hopefully we'll get faster over time.
Secondly, we're moving from what was essentially a "Scene viewer" to something that functions more like a Dating Sim or a somewhat calendar based VN. This means some aspects are a little less freeform, Naomi will do things like change her outfit herself. And because of all these things, I need to make sure QoL for players is solid. Features that weren't nessecary before are critical now, like easily swapping from an outfit Naomi changed to, to an outfit the player wants. There's a lot of considerations and feedback is valuable.
On performance there's been a long running issue with the game not working on some mobile devices that could run the game fine. The running theory is this is a memory issue caused by the outfit system, the way items are called stores them and their assets (meaning the models and textures of 100's of items) into memory making memory much larger than it needs to be. This means the outfit system needs a full rewrite in how it functions. Hopefully this gives some perspective on the discoveries made and why something that works needs to be fully reworked.
Another example is in current builds you may notice after entering sex sim and ending it, changes between time of day suddenly get a lot more janky. It's a lot to work out.
Things will be rough, but I hope you'll stick with me.
We're moving toward the goals listed on the page...which I'll be updating after this post.
While there's a ton of work needed, my objective is to complete the game somewhere in the range of a year. I may fail that goal, but that is currently my intent, and what is currently planned. I hope this gives perspective on where my head is. I'll do my best.
To make it clear, for me I always view itch as an alternative to the perpetual support on sites like patreon. If you don't want to do monthly, you support on itch, and it's still appreciated. But I also hope people understand it's called donation because it's to support dev, not buy the game as is.
That said I do consider the donation a purchase, and that purchase means you'll get acess to the game until it's done. Thats the intent anyway. For me, the monthly income on itch out weighs any other issues with this you might think of effectively offering the final game for less than a quarter of my goal for what I want the game to be worth. Things are fine because of the collective, and I'm glad so many people are interested in Our Apartment and Naomi.
But Our Apartments minimum donation will not be $5 forever, after a certain milestone (I think v0.2.0.a) the price will increase to $10. And based on the way itch works, people who paid $5 should still have acess after the price increase. If not I'll have to find some means to deal with that. But just know that will happen in due time once I feel development and content justifies it, and it will happen again as I feel the games content justifies it.
My goal is to keep a decent degree of transparency. While I do have periods where I avoid responding to questions to let myself focus, I do try to get to everyone.
~sacb0y