I’ve been under the weather the last couple of weeks. Still, I’ve managed to make great headway in scene 17. I’m already up to 82 rendered backgrounds for this scene, and still have a bunch to go. The reason why this scene is sooooo long is that it’s a “where are they now?” recap for all of the major characters in the story. And a lot of those recaps depend on the decisions you’ve made along the way. Yes, Virginia, the choices make a difference…

Because this is future-tense stuff, I had to create a ton of new environments to stage these scenes. Thirteen so far this period. Sometimes, for all of just one image. This takes a buttload of time because each set needs to be dressed, staged, color-coordinated, camera shots planned, etc. But I’m of the opinion that it’s worth it.

The hard part about this segment of development is that there are precious few images that aren’t out-and-out spoilers. I did manage to find/crop a couple for this status update.

Now, for some news.

• I re-rendered all of the game’s videos to 60 frames-per-second. I started doing this with Chapter 9 but have now extended it to all videos in the game. The jump in quality is huge, and I took the time to redo some of the earlier videos that I was never happy with.

• Because this increases the size of the videos, I’ve also revamped the videos subsystem so that I can easily substitute lower-quality versions for the compressed version of the game. The savings are substantial–the compressed videos, while of lower quality, still look good and are only 25%-30% the size of the originals. I wrote a special utility app to automate this process. If anyone is interested, I’d be more than happy to share.

• I spent even more time working on the game’s UI. There are a couple of new elements you’ll be able to choose from, but you’ll have to wait for the release to see what they are. These UI changes are towards putting the final spit-polish coat on the game before the final release, and in preparation for publishing to Steam and GOG.

I haven’t started yet working on the Jan 1 4K lewd render, which will feature Glenn. If you have any suggestions or requests, be sure to let me know ASAP so I can consider them.

There won’t be a status update on Jan 3, as per usual, because of the holidays. I’ll pick them back up a week later, starting again on Jan 10.

I’m delighted to greet all the new supporters who have recently joined our community! Your support is invaluable and keeps everything moving forward. If you haven’t already, please join me on my Discord and participate! There, you can find everything from lewd images, discussions about LGBTQ+ rights, reports on our daily progress, to programming tips for budding Ren’Py developers.

Good sirs and madams, cast thine eyes upon these two masterpieces, the product of a fortnight’s torturous labour!