Weekly Update - Jan 10th

Hi Everyone,

Great news on the progress front. I've begun rendering out the final scene for chapter 5, as I write this I have 23 renders left to go. Most of these renders are already set up or require small changes to other frames. On a good day I can bang those out in a day, it may spill over a little to tomorrow.

I do sense with this release though that the final testing period will be a little longer than previous ones because there are so many different scenes, the final count was 21 scenes for this update while I tend to average in the past 9! I've also noticed one animation I'm not overly happy with so I'll probably want to redo that, animations take a while to render.

I'm a little reluctant to put a specific date on the release of the full chapter 5 but, it's days away not weeks at this point for sure. This is a busy release in terms of storyline, the first part of chapter 5 was very different, that's actually a little concern for me in that I hope I haven't made it too busy and lost you, feedback as always will be hugely appreciated.

This release in it's raw form stands at over 5gb in size. That was the point where I was going to have to make a change. Patreon limits file uploads to 5gb, I could split the zip files up but that's going to get messy. So I have decided to switch to .webp image files for this next release, I expect that file size to come out at around 1gb. With previous releases to itch.io  I have had to use .webp for that platform as it limits file size to 1gb, the image quality drop off, for my eyes at least, is negligible. If you start to notice any major drop off please let me know and I'll re-evaluate the approach. Also if you are particularly enamoured with one image, send me a note and I'll happily send you the original 1440p .png image file if I can (just please do not re-use it commercially).

Things for the future: I've started scripting out chapter 6 already so I can be rendering as I test. I've also been referring back to my original script document which outlines the flow of the chapters. While I'm staying true to core storyline, I've wildly detoured away from certain detailed parts. I thought that was interesting, also discovered a character I completely forgot about which I'll probably introduce in the next 2 or 3 chapters.

The Steam release: I have a lot of work to do to get the game Steam ready, more from setting up everything on Steam than reworking elements of the actual game. I do need to take out references to the Patreon page. I have to put together a trailer and stuff which I'm not looking forward too as I have ZERO experience of video editing, outside of the animation work I've done in the game but that's not the same. I am probably going to target a Steam release for sometime after chapter 6 and be preparing for it from now on. That may eat in to my development time, so there could be a little slow down, I will try to minimise that as much as I can.

Oh one last thing, I will obviously release part one of chapter 5 to Great Friend Tier once Best Friend Tier is on the complete chapter 5. I will also release Chapter 4 to the Good Friend tier too to give that tier something a bit more than I have be able to offer them so far. It will also be a cheap way to get Chapter 4 right now as it's only $2 for Good Friend Tier, on Itch.io  it's priced at $5.

That's it for now, thank you all for your support and patience, This update is perhaps the one I've been most excited for since I started development, I hope you'll agree with me that it has been worth the wait when it drops.

Take care,

Fae