Almost done upscaling HSD!

Almost a year ago, we started a slow but steady process of upscaling the game from 720p to 1080p, and upgrading the music from mono to stereo with a higher bitrate. This process is now around 70% complete.

When we first launched the game, 720p was a more common resolution, which is why we chose it. But now it’s time to move on to something better. That’s why we began remaking many of our images, to release the game in full 1080p. The main challenge is that some images were originally made in 720p, so we’ve had to completely redraw them.

This change comes with both benefits and complications:

• One benefit is that images and videos will now display in much higher resolution on phones and PCs.
• Another benefit is that the audio will sound much better than it does now. If you play with headphones (and we suspect many of you do, hehe), the sound will go from mono 92 kbps to stereo 128 kbps.

However, there are two main challenges:

• The game will grow from about 1.8 GB to approximately 3.0 GB. That’s quite a bit more, but still not huge; some games go over 10 GB. We're still using WEBP as our main image format to avoid making the game even bigger. We could switch to PNG, but that would increase the size drastically.
• Another issue is that very old phones or extremely slow computers might have trouble running the game. That said, there are ways to compress the game further, and if enough players experience issues, we’ll consider releasing a low-res version. The most important thing is that EVERYONE can enjoy HSD.

This update definitely won’t be ready for version 0.23, which we’re currently working on, but we hope to have it ready by version 0.24, which will coincide with our Halloween special.

We want to thank all the players who enjoy our story and the amazing supporters who make this project possible.