Posted April 01, 2024 by SprintingCucumber
Finally, another update for you guys. This is actually more of a behind-the-scenes update, though, so I'm expecting not a huge response. This update fixes a lot of systemic problems caused by my lack of experience at the beginning stages of game development. Large swaths of code have been removed and put into external files for easy modification (by me or by the end users). These include almost every data point, from items and monster stats, to location and exploration data. These are necessary changes to allow for any sort of combat balancing since changing the hard-wired code poses save file issues (which I've been fighting tooth and nail for a very long time...). Anyway, that was a major undertaking and was a large part of the actual time spent on this release... I'll post the changelog and then delve into a few other minor points of interest for returning and new players.
Rewind v0.3.2 Changelog
Additions:
- Two new Lani sneaking scenes (continuation of existing content, locked behind clothing store date).
- Additional clothing store content added. You can now visit the store after the girl(s) take you for the first time and purchase any unpurchased clothing items.
- Additional variation scene added for the clothing store. If you have already visited with both girls, you can now visit with Lani alone to view a prophecy once all requirements have been met.
- New (hidden) content is available for the Goddess of Time. Unlocked by dying on day 1 after making Lani your girlfriend in a previous life.
- Preliminary content for the Goddess of Time route has been added, but fulfillment conditions for her main quest are not currently possible. Will trigger once the player has finished the Succubus Dungeon and started dating Lani (not necessarily in the same life).
- Auto-battle settings are now available. Settings include skill preference, healing preference, potion use, animation skipping, and automatic battle continuation.
- Six new recipes have been added.
- New title ('Challenger') has been added. This title lowers the penalties when fighting enemies that are a higher level than the player.
- New introduction video when the Goddess of Time is met for the first time.
- Liam, Lani, and chicken now have death animations in combat.
Changes:
- All items, ingredients, enemies, quests, regions, recipes, and skills are now loaded via external files (*.tsv).
- Enemy and player battle stats have been altered for balance. Some enemies are drastically stronger than previously. Especially rank 4 dungeons are much more difficult.
- Player level now plays a much larger role in battle strength.
- The amount of experience required for each level has been lowered, and enemies now give lower experience values.
- Cooking with potions will now lower poison levels.
Visual update/expansion for the Goddess of Time's conversation renders.
- Chance to find dungeons increases by 1% for every battle fought (cumulative).
- Enemy level is now visible on battle screen.
- You can now sleep until the next calendar day.
- Shops now have a quantity slider to allow purchasing or selling multiple items at once at player-specified amounts.
Corrections:
- Purchasing clothes now accurately increases your 'money spent' value (for the purposes of title advancement).
- Liam's lifetime poison value will now increase by the amount of poison in the food prepared, regardless of cooking skill lowering the effective value.
- You will now be given the full poison value for a recipe when it is prepared for the first time.
- 'Collecting All' in an exploration map now returns you to the correct map instead of always sending the player back to Map 1.
- After selling or buying from the guild store, you are now returned directly to your previous menu screen instead of the starting screen.
- Dungeon damage bonus title now applies to skills (was previously incorrectly limited to normal attacks).
- Various typos.
- Probably some other stuff I can't remember.
There, that's the official change list. There are also some things I need to bring to players' attention, though. This release is based on a newer version of Renpy that no longer allows me to forcefully activate the legacy renderer (openGL) on my end of the code. There are some anomalies on the new renderer (openGL2) that were not present in the old version which are causing lag spikes in battle for some players. I'm working to correct this problem by optimizing image loading, but that's ongoing and won't be entirely implemented in this version of the game. This is less pronounced on Android devices, but it can still be present.
The fix is 2-fold:
- First, the 32-bit version of the game runs better. I have no idea why (The current free version only has the 32-bit version on offer because it lacks other optimizations in the code).
- If you still experience lag spikes in battle, then you'll need to change your render engine manually. It's really easy, though.
Here are the steps to change renderer:
- Open the game and then press Shift and G together.
- There will be a list of render options. Just select 'Force GL'.
- Restart the game.
Some other noteworthy mentions:
- Command line prompts have been unlocked (Shift+O). If you're interested in using these to cheat a little, drop by the discord channel and I'll point you in the right direction... some variables can be hard to find.
- The game now has an official international version which includes a full German language translation. The current paid version is this international release, so if you have some German friends, please do point them over here.
Much appreciation for your patience as I slogged through this release. This one was not a version update that I was looking forward to, but the next one will be more in line with content expansion instead of system corrections.