v0.2.0 Release!

It's Done!

The v0.2.0 update is finally ready to be released. It was a lot of work but here it is.

v0.2.0 is not a pure content update but a rework of the game's core and some of it's content and therefore requires a restart. Old saves from v0.1.x will not work!

I completely reworked the source code and rebuilt the gamemode(s). This will allow 0.2.0 to be the base for a bright future, upcoming updates and all the cool stuff I have planned.

All the changes in detail you will find below.

Let's start with the core reasons I had to do this rework. While developing the new content for update v0.1.3 and before, I noticed a few problems. Something I already expected. Beginner mistakes. I wanted to do some reconstructions.

First of all the code had some issues that made it harder for me to add new content and would have caused more problems in the future. Therefore I decided to reconstruct the code, delete, add and fix a lot of stuff.

Then there is the question of the different game modes. Originally I created a sandbox free roam mode. I personally like gameplay because it adds more layers to both the creator side as well as the player side. But I also noticed that a fully free roam based game requires a lot of cheap repetitive (aka. grindy) events to fill the time with content. And I don't want that. I thought that it wouldn't be much of a problem to add an alternative pure vn mode made of the events from the sandbox mode with some transitions between it instead of the free roam. And from the coding side it wasn't much of a problem. I constructed the code in a way that two modes could use the same event dialogue without problems. But it still added more work on other layers like event constructing. It caused some problems to create events that work for both modes plot and dialogue wise. And even though the pure vn mode was ok, it didn't feel as great as I hoped. Which is ok, it was experimental.

Now to the solution. Both modes have their pros and cons and I'm happy that I tried them both. There are multiple ways to create a VN and sometimes if you are new you have to test which is the best.

I decided that I don't strictly want to go with any of those two but with a middle way solution. There are some other games out there doing this and I think it will fit the best and provide the best of both worlds. It's a Hybrid mode, a story driven vn mode with in time and space limited free roam sections in between. This means no weekdays, no daytimes, no map. The way it works now is that at certain points of the story you will move freely in a restricted area and interact with objects and characters to fulfill tasks until one interaction continues the story mode. Means no longer searching for the correct day and time for the next event. Yay!
 

Besides free roam sections the game will contain minigames and other gameplay-like interactions. Currently there is one minigame and one such interaction (the phone), because it wasn't the focus of this update, but more will come soon. The currently available minigame is bench-pressing. I used a different method to implement it compared to my other minigame (pairs/memoriax). (Ren'py offers a lot of options there and I want to try a few of them to see what is possible.)

(Minigames will be skippable. So don't worry if you are not a fan of them.)
(The pairs/memoriax minigame is currently not available, but will be added back in some way or another in the future.)

About the phone: Those who played the free roam mode know that I implemented a phone with a chat system and... never really used it...

However, that changed with the pure vn mode where the MC wrote some messages to Brooke while discovering Dark Falls. But there the chat was simply displayed as normal dialogue, because I had no implementation of the phone that could be used outside of the free roam. Now the phone will open up during the dialogue and messages can be received and written and after closing the phone the normal dialogue will continue.

I also added more contacts to the phone. Some will be added during the game, some will already exist from the very beginning and also already contain some messages (and pictures?). So make sure to check out the phone when you can!

- Mc Rework and other Characters -

In addition to code, gameplay and dialogue I also reworked the model of the Main Character. It was the very first character I created and I think it's not too bad therefore I kept most of it, but I really disliked the skin. It just looked like trash, especially the face. You can see below, the texture of the face didn't even match the one of the torso. I like the new model, it looks more realistic, more detailed, the eyebrows are better (including 3d hair). I think the image below speaks for itself :)

I replaced the model in most renders already, except for some scenes with animations. It would have costed too much time to re-render all of them for this update. I will probably replace those over time in the future.

I also made some improvements to other characters, but they are more minor ones. Skin-light interaction, eyes etc.

One new character I worked on really hard is Deana. You already saw a picture of her above. Besides the MC she is the first model with 3D eyebrows. They increase the look of a character and make a difference especially in close ups. For more beauty ;)

- File Size Reduction -

Another topic will always be file size reduction. I'm always looking for ways to reduce the filesize of the game without reducing the quality of the images. The size of the game will always increase over time, no matter what, but there are ways to reduce that growth.

For 0.2.0 I changed the way eye-blinking is implemented. If you played the game you will remember that the characters are blinking from time to time. I added this effect to make the renders and the characters feel more alive.

The way this worked before is that 3 renders, one for each state of the character's eyes (open, half closed/open, closed), are transitioning into each other. This of course means that for each render containing the eye blinking effect the file size is tripled.

The new way I want to do it is by using multiple layers of images. Ren'Py supports multi layered image display. This way most people display character sprites in front of backgrounds. In my case I'm using it to only have one image of the whole scene and 3 images only containing the cut out eyes of the character and are otherwise transparent. Those will then be laid on top of the full image to create the effect like before. This requires some more code and also produces an additional image file per effect (1+3 instead of 3 like before) but their file size is smaller.

(For those who don't know how image coding works, the file size of an image is not only determined by the image size or the file type (.png, .jpg, .webp, etc.) but also by the content of the image itself. If the image has a lot of pixels of the same color the file size is smaller.)

In this case this new method reduces the file size approximately back to the size of 1 image. E.g. a file of my game is ~750KB large. The cut out images have a size of <10KB each. With over 100 eye blinking effects in the current game that adds up and also reduces the future growth of the game size.

Alongside all these reworks, there of course is also new content.

I extended old scenes

and added new ones:

The focus for this update was to:
1. Add scenes in between existing scenes
2. Improve/Extend existing scenes
3. Fill the first full weekend and the initial sunday with content (the game starts on sunday).

I'm not going into detail here, because you would probably skip it and just play the game anyway XD. There is just one more thing to add. Some content of the previous versions was temporarily removed (e.g. the arrival of the Cyborg) because those events simply do not happen in the timespan covered in this version. But they will be added back as soon as the story reaches them.

Have fun :)

(Link in the OP)