Weekly update - October 3

Hi Everyone,

Rendering progress this week has been excellent. I'm currently halfway through the 8th scene in this update, with just 2 more after this one planned. Scripting though is a little behind, I need to work on that a little more.

As well as building out chapter 10, I've been doing a full run through of the game, to among other things gain an idea of what I want to fix up in my post epilogue update. There's quite a bit to be honest. I should have been taking some notes, lol.

I've also been thinking about the possibility for two different versions of Best Friends.

I made the decision early on to let the player assume the role of one of the two main characters, viewing the story from their viewpoint only. I think that a lot of people like that kind of experience. However I do acknowledge that a lot of folks also would like to see the whole story at the same time, so a third viewpoint agnostic of each character, would be a great option to add. The way the code is written though makes that, not as simple as it may appear. I would have to do some considerable rework. But I am thinking it may be a worthwhile exercise at some point.

The other version, I've been mulling over in my mind is a SFW version. BF is of course an adult game but I've always maintained that the lewd scenes are there to augment the story. The story drives the experience not the other way around. Doing an SFW version would be a considerably bigger effort that the third perspective version. I would obviously need to remove all the lewd scenes and replace with clothed versions or versions where it's insinuated what happened not what actually happened. There is a lot of bad language I would have to remove, plus a lot of other content that talks about stuff I can't really talk about in an SFW game (for example the male lead's "not a" fetish). That obviously would remove a lot of content and I would have to fill the gaps to some degree with more stuff I can get away with in an SFW game. That seems like a whole lot of effort for something that may have limited appeal, I hear you say. And that may well be very true but I would like as many people as possible to experience the story. It's a project for the future for sure, something I may look into some time down the line.

Steam; thank you so much to those that left a review of BF, the game is now firmly in the thumbs up category of Mostly Positive, next step is Very Positive and then Overwhelmingly positive. That's really had an effect for the game's exposure, I very much appreciate it. The Steam Autumn sale is on currently, lots of great bargains there and BF is naturally part of that too.

I've got my hands on a Steam Deck too and been doing some testing on compatibility with the game. With a little bit of work, I've managed to get BF to play on it. I will create another post in a couple of days explaining the process. But I'm going to push for Steam Deck accreditation. In short though, to get it to work you will need to go into compatibility and select proton 9.04 I believe or higher, I haven't fully tested all the versions. You will also need to map one of the extra buttons to the "Enter" key on the keyboard otherwise you will not be able to get past the point where you pick your main character names. I am not necessarily recommending playing BF on a Steam Deck in a public area where people look over your shoulder during certain points in the storyline, lol.

Thanks as always for your continued support, I say this every week but I won't apologise for doing so, but I appreciate the heck out of each and every one of you lovely people.

Have a great weekend.

Cheers,

Fae.