Update 0.59 - Intro to Haruki (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

Hope you guys have been doing okay. I'm coming here (a lot earlier than expected) to drop something I know lots of you have been dearly looking forward to for a while now.

Like I said a few times before, I'd been working behind the scenes on the plans for Haruki's route to be able to condense and streamline it as much as possible (after all, it's supposed to be a smaller route than the three main ones). I already had the script for his Character Select events mostly finalized, so I was able to pull the trigger on those a lot faster than it usually takes me to get an update done.

Now, make no mistake, this is still a long update. It ended up being about 30~50% longer than the average TA update (average TA update adds up to 1000 lines in the code editor). There's quite a bit of ground to tread here.

In addition to Haruki himself, this update also includes some changes done under the hood, so that comes with both celebration and a warning. First, the celebration:

TA has a new system that uses Ren'pys ColorMatrix function to edit the sprite colors in real time. This way I can recolor them to better suit the scene/background. So their colors will change to reflect sunsets, dim lighting, nightfall, etc. Obviously, since TA is quite lengthy and these need to be programmed in manually, I haven't added it to the entire game. However, the entirety of the prologue as well as all 4 characters' CS events have had the tint system added to them. That is a HUGE plus.

As for the warning: To fix the issue that would cause sprites to flicker whenever they changed their expression, I had to change the transition Tennis Ace uses to change sprite expressions from a transform to a Dict Transition. I won't get too much into the technical of it, but that essentially means that every single instance of sprite change transitions had to be changed or they would cause the game to crash. To be able to do such a thing in a timely (and reasonable) manner, I had to use Search/Replace and automate a lot of it. Because of that, things maybe less than perfect. You may notice sprite transitions not happening as smoothly as they should (one sprite waiting for the previous sprite's expression to change before they change their own; the game fading to black more than once per transition; among other things). If you do notice those kinds of things, make sure to report it so I can fix it. It just wouldn't be realistic for me to scour the whole entire game on my own to find these, so if you find them, drop a screenshot telling me when it happens and what exactly happened.

Now, as for the save file issue: A lot of you have been reporting that old save files no longer work/cause the game to crash. I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating: since the game is a work in progress, there is only so much I can do to make changes backwards compatible. Sometimes Ren'py will break old saves even if I make no changes that should affect them. I have very little control over what does or doesn't break old save files. In fact, I have to struggle with it too since my own save files (that I use to quickly get through the game to test new content) also break. If there were a way to fix it, I would have done it already. If there is a way to fix it, I haven't found it yet despite my best efforts. Either way, my hands are unfortunately tied here. This is why Tennis Ace has the option "Skip to Next Choice" as well as "Skip Unread" in the settings. If your old save file breaks, you might have to start from scratch. If you do, those will let you get back to the point you'd been at in a few minutes. That's the best I can do at the moment.

Now, without any further delays, to the changelog:

• Several QoL of life fixes involving sprite transitions, sprite colors and mask shadows were added into the game. They are still not done and many of them only go so far as the end of Character Select. Please be patient and wait for the changes to be made game-wide.
• Haruki's route has now been added to the game. It is not unlocked by default. Players have to first unlock it before he can appear in the character select screen. I will leave the unlocking requirements a mystery for now, but I'm sure you all will find it since it's really easy.

That is all! I hope you guys have a great day, that you enjoy the update, and we'll see each other next time for Jun's next update!

Download link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1k4oHEUE7Kex7zt5YFUX-LO-bVR_KfEZz?usp=sharing