July Dev Update #1 (Patreon)

We've got some interesting development news share today!

First thing is that I'd like to officially welcome Artie back onto the project! Back in January of this year, he announced that he'd be stepping down due to personal reasons after being apart of the project for 2+ years by that point. We naturally found another programmer, but to keep it simple.. We had general issues in commutation.

It really boils down to that, as it was common to not hear back from them for over a week or more when asking how things are coming along and overall the situation only made things more awkward with trying to get development moving along again.

I reached out to them at the start of July to give them the heads up that Artie is returning after he reached out to me showing interest in joining the project again. It's going on a week and a half without any response from the previous programmer, but we can't wait forever...

So as of now, Artie is our programmer once more! I have good faith in our work history together that we'll be able to turn things around quickly. Of course I don't blame anyone for thinking otherwise until we can prove ourselves.

~When is v0.20 ready?~

We fully expect to get all of episode 5 into the engine, play tested and pushed out as intended this month! Given Artie's track record.. I fully believe this isn't a issue, it's just a matter of how quickly he adjusts back into the coding for MA. (He has already made a mention that with the HD overhaul back in March that was done by the other programmer, that there are some major differences in how he did things before. So he wants to be on the safe side and give me the heads up that it might be a tiny bit slow at first, but I have faith that he'll be just fine!)

You might be wondering about it... And I sadly have to confirm that with not hearing back from the previous programmer still. That of course means that I don't have the most up to date Ren'py folder/files from what scenes they managed to get done for episode 5.

Luckily.. I do have the Ren'py folder/files from v0.19.5 after the HD overhaul was finished. So really the only progress lost in development as a result of this is that we don't have a few episode 5 scenes already done, making it so Artie will add all of episode 5 in freshly and it's probably for the best that happens vs having him try to fix up their coding that's left behind for a given episode like that.

~Closing Statements~

With where we stand, we'll quickly get episode 5 out by the end of July as our worse case scenario. (v0.20) From there, we'd like to keep that energy moving along and possibly get the first few route episodes released in August. (v0.21)

I'm on the edge of my seat in waiting, I'm excited to see how everyone enjoys episode 5 as it brings with it a more solid flow of gameplay choices throughout and the introduction of animated cg art being displayed!