Joyous July!

Alliteration rocks, and no one can tell me otherwise.

1. We begin July with the last of the game backgrounds. I worked a 60 hour week last week, so I wasn't able to start back up on backgrounds for real until June 30. I'm exhausted!
2. AS A REMINDER - if you did find problems with the demo of the game, IE it didn't launch, doesn't work, didn't load, or has other significant problems, would it be too much to ask if you could let me know before just writing it off? I'm not just making un-launchable .exe files, the goal is that they actually work and function as games. Rainbow Heartbeats runs on my system, on my fiance's system, and on my playtesters' systems. If it doesn't work for you, I need to know so I can try to fix it. Optimization may be poor for systems with lower RAM, or older graphics cards, so please be patient and let it load. There seems to be reports that people using Thinkpads have been having trouble. This is unusual and I'm not sure why it's singling out those laptops specifically - but again, I'll work more on optimization as soon as I can.
   
3. July 2! All backgrounds complete! WOO!
   
4. Went through and reorganized Trello to account for new backgrounds, because now I'll be starting on ambience and music tracks, so I have to make sure I have an up-to-date list for what all is needed!
5. It seems like we're getting pretty close to wrapping up, but there's still much to be done, most of which is programming. I still have to actually insert the story routes, which includes visuals, music, and audio; character interactions need to be completed, a randomized script needs to be made for the special gifts that you can buy, birthdays and event days need to be accounted for which includes adding new interactions for characters due to their new outfits, then there's seeing if I can scrounge up some voice actors for the remaining characters.
6. Another update is that the game will be releasing for free. I decided worrying about how much to charge was too much of a hassle for a game that is not only my first large scale project, but is also a game no one asked for. Hopefully I can get it out before Christmas!
7. Since ambience tracks are the quickest to complete, these were what I finished up next. There were 18 of these left to do. The process for this is combining various tracks to achieve the desired effect, then ensuring that they loop nicely. Each ambience/location track is usually less than 2 minutes long, as they are made to loop. So once I'm done editing them in mixcraft, I export them, and throw them into audacity to make sure they loop nice. Of course, mixcraft does have a built in loop feature, and the method I use always means that the loop is smooth in mixcraft, but if the loop is smooth in audacity, then I find it's smooth everywhere else as well. - These were finished by July 7th.
8. After that it was the remaining location music, which consisted of finishing 14 additional tracks. Honestly this took forever. Longer than I wanted it to. It was just difficult finding a unique sound that I liked and thought fit the tones I was going for, and I'm sure that I lost my motivation for it because of the sheer amount of tracks I needed to make. All in all there were about 60 tracks that I finalized, the majority of which I am currently here creating and loosing my momentum for haha. I'm sure a professional music designer would have no problem hammering these out in no time but man oh man, I am not one of them and this was a struggle. It took me about 2-3 weeks to finish up the remaining music tracks, here and there when I had time and when I felt the motivation for it.
9. July 17 - success! Music is all done, after many days of not having the foggiest on how to do it because I couldn't think of another tune to save my life, I managed to complete the last few songs by literally humming random songs while audacity was recording and then choosing the ones I liked to make music of. Success is success I guess, I guess!
10. Then I redesigned the friendpulse profile cards to include being able to see the current level of friendship or romance you have with any character you've met.
11. After that it was time to do the graphics for the full moons, holidays, and events!
12. I opened the Unity file for the first time in probably 4-6 months. I forgot that I had the new Editor downloaded, but I can't live in 2019 for forever. So we had to update, and reimport everything, and then I had to import all the new assets that I've spent the past couple months hammering out.
13. Let the programming begin!

The remainder of July is going to be spent on programming and the actual game design for the remaining assets and story lines. So this update is being put out now with that in mind!