Hello everyone, and once again we're glad to be rolling into 2022. Our last Patreon post announcement mentioned some big changes regarding the studio's first AVN "Promises S1". And we're here today to lay out the gameplan for everyone.
A lot of work has gone into the season so far. Many characters, lots of new places, etc. And as we continue to grow as a new studio, we aim to get better. After releasing our game nearly 7 months ago it's safe to say we are in fact growing and learning new ways to make our game, and the studio overall even better. This past week the studio has actually been hard at work reworking a lot of content in Season 1 to make it appear even better to players when they dive into the episode 5 update. One of these changes DOES have an effect on current game saves. Below you'll find what exactly has been changed, what's planned to change, and when you could see everything take effect.
IMPROVED EARLY IMAGES/ANIMATIONS:
Over the months since our first release the studio has gone a long way in the aspect of using software to create rendered shots for our AVN. Some qualities of our work such as texture settings, post processing, lighting etc. are things we have built on over time and continue to improve on. And if you've been following the game since its first release, you can see what we mean based off of the quality of the early in-game art compared to the newer episodes. With this in mind the studio has been working to recreate a lot of early in game images to improve their lighting, posing, camera angles, vibrancy, and much more to make them look up to date with the newer episodes.
This also goes for animations. We're looking to improve early game animation quality, looping, fps, etc to help scenes look and run a lot smoother compared to the originals.
NEW GAME SETTINGS/FEATURES:
We've looked at ways to improve player experience in game and we've taken feedback and suggestions into consideration to make the game run better from different player's perspectives. Below are some new features/settings that have/are being added in game.
- Textbox Toggling
Players will have the option to toggle the dialogue textbox on or off
- Improved Menu/Choices
Along with new images we also changed the way the quick menu looks, reacts to hovering, and more. Choice menus follow as well with an improved idle/hover look as well as improved text design
- Animated Image Toggling
One of the newest features to add was the toggling of animated images. When toggled on characters will blink, breathe, and sway instead of appearing as a static image. This is still being implemented and after this rework is planned to appear only in the early prologue and newer episodes (episode 5 onward). Players can toggle animated images on/off in the settings menu.
REWORKED CHOICES AND SAVES:
And now one of the biggest changes in the rework. As you know choices in the game DO matter. Normal choices can affect small scenes, open up options for more choices, etc. Switch choices are even more important as they can drastically change the story over time and have big effects on paths throughout the season... and if not into the next season. Our original plan was for players' choices to be saved as multi persistent data. This data saved the choices upon selection and kept their persistent values safe for the next game (season). This is fine in terms of keeping your choices saved but caused major problems for players who made multiple saves with different choices and performed separate play throughs. The persistent saves conflicting with each other would/could cause certain scenes to break. To prevent this, we've made a big decision to add two types of variable flags for choices. Upon selecting a choice two types of variables will have conditions set. The first, normal variables, which the condition in game will be checked for and players can use in game to make multiple saves and run different playthroughs with. And second, the multi persistent variables. These variables will no longer be called in season 1 but are stored in the multi persistent file to be used in the second season. The plus side to doing choices/saves this way is to give players the freedom to run multiple playthroughs and saves, without messing up future scenes in game. This also keeps your choices in a persistent file for the second season, as mentioned. The negative side to doing it this way is unfortunately, previously saved choices/scenes will no longer work. Meaning with the release of the new update players WILL have to restart.
These new changes, fixes, and features are all looking to take place on the episode 5 (v0.21) release of the game. A lot of work is still being put forth and changes still being made but rest assured episode 5 production is still on track to being released in the planned time frame.
That's all for this rework announcement. We're looking to resume our Weekly Worklogs starting next week on the new schedule, every Sunday. For more info on changes and/or the status of the next game release don't forget to check them out and join our discord server (link below).
We hope everyone is having a great start to the new year, and we'll be looking forward to release day. Stay safe :D
-Tiimx
