News, news, news!

Hi hi!

Apologies for a little bit of quiet of late but I've been working on the remaster side of things. I know I can be quite chatty but there were a few things I hadn't quite made my mind up on and rather than ramble on in my unusual way I wanted to be able to give you solid news on all of this.

Remastering

Firstly, the remaster is looking gorgeous - well, compared to what we had for sure. I won't pretend my art work is top tier but it's getting better for sure. A few little examples for you (I won't go overboard else you'll never be able to read the post for images!)

I'm also taking the opportunity to clear up some rather less impressive visuals at the same time. You know those rather "talk" boxes? The little picture that pops up with the text box to the side to tell you who is speaking? They've had a revamp too. For example:

vs what we had before

I know it's only a small thing but it will make everything look better for you. The boxes now contain a little bit of user information too such as a general background to represent mil, civ etc plus badges of rank where appropriate and also the characters home base (ie. Intrepid, Iowa, Ophion etc)

On the subject of text boxes I've also added a transparency slider control to the PDA. So if you prefer fully transparent to black for the talkie backgrounds it's now in your control as opposed to being stuck with what I've given you.

Movement

I'm also tweaking the movement/choice of location a bit too. Again, mainly to make it more visually attractive for you but also for consistency. In Chapt One we had a slightly clunky movement system that we've never used again, instead from Two onwards you got the standard Renpy menu option for where to go. Messy in one case and boring in another.

These are going to be replaced with something that will look like this.

So, yes, it's a choice based system but it's more consistent and more pleasing on the eye for you.

So the upside of all of this work is that visually it will pop. The advantage for newer players is obvious of course, but the advantages for existing players are that all of these graphical improvements will flow through to you too.

The downside

What started out as a fairly small remastering of gray wallspaces is turning into something bigger. Any render I touch just leaps up the scale in quality. Indeed most of those little samples above I hadn't planned on doing originally - but my curiosity got the better of me and once I saw the improvements I feel I really have to do them.

I mean....

vs 

and...

vs

Now originally I was just going to do some of the Vanny interiors. the MC's room and the hallways which would have been around half of One, about a third of Two, a quarter of Three and, say, a tenth of Four. A lot of renders for sure but mostly fairly simple and not too demanding which meant I could do the end of September.

But, .....along came mission creep. For example the landing scene in One I wasn't going to touch but you've seen the remaster of that above. How can I possibly settle for what's currently there when I can make it look like that? Would you?

Same goes for the movement system, the character idents when speaking, Vanguard on approach, Sarah's room etc etc. It's the difference between night and day. So now I'm remastering approx all of One, most of Two, about half of Three and I'm having to redo a good third of Four (Sarah's, the Mc's bedroom plus hallways in case you were wondering). I'm too scared to count them all but well over 1,200 renders is my guess.

It's a lot of very unfun work. Remember I'm a writer not an artist so the thought of having to do that many renders, especially old ones, isn't a fun activity for me. But it simply has to be done as part of the launch of Four. So how long and where does that leave us?

As to how long, I honestly don't know. On the upside a lot of the earlier renders were very simple in construct and so remastering them isn't taking that much render time. Certainly much less than when they were originally done with some taking around 15 minutes as opposed to the original hour. But certainly not September at any rate. Not now the workload has increased.

I was tempted to release Four to patrons regardless as it's passed it's primary play test (I got distracted with the remaster and so haven't kicked it out wider yet) - but I have a pirate as a patron. I know, I know, who doesn't? But bear with me.

The whole point of the remaster is when Four hits and the interest rises due to super-smut, new players see it in the new perfect glory and go wow - not meh. Of course existing players get the knock on effect of all the interiors, movement, char icons etc now looking much better too.

But there is little point in me doing all of this remastering in support of Four if a murkier version of Four will get released within the hour. It will be the murky version with all the un-remastered work that does the rounds and so all this effort will have been pointless. And yes, sadly, it will happen. 

Three was released with a game breaking bug and, although I let everyone know within the hour and had it fixed pdq, someone despite knowing this still decided to pirate and throw out the bugged version rather than waiting half a day and pirating the working version. So, if I release Four in it's current state that's the one everyone will see.

I don't want that to happen and so can't, and indeed won't, do that. I mean, obviously you wouldn't pirate it - I trust you. But I'm not sure about that guy standing over there in the corner with an eye patch...

So what am I going to do?

I did consider pausing my patreon page until I finished the remaster but the few of you I've raised this with have objected pointing out that you're all adults and you can make up your own minds. You're right of course. I just worry about being thought of "milking" you.

I mean I'm not obvs. No one can deny I'm not working on the game of course (indeed arguably harder than ever before) but given that a lot of what I'm doing is in respect to older content, I can appreciate that this will be unwelcome news when you're waiting for Chapter Four.

The plan

I think I'll be ready for the middle of October. Everything done etc but I don't honestly know and I don't want you to feel as though you're getting ripped off or that I'm trapping you somehow.

So I'll post up the remastered chapters as they get done so you can see the progress for a start. I'll also put up a public news update on progress too so if you want to cancel your patronage and then rejoin when Four is ready after the remaster work you'll have that visibility.

Finally, as the remaster work is in progress I'll be putting up some bonus pieces on here to both compensate you as best as I can and also to thank you for your patience.

First bonus piece (so at least I feel you have had something for your money this month) will be a release of what was going to be the Bored Pilot for Chapter Four. I'll be running another poll and doing a fresh one for the actual release although this one will also get added to your PDA for completeness.

I am sorry for the delay in Four. I'd much prefer to see your enjoyment in playing my game and, indeed, be getting on with writing Five than doing all this remaster work - but at the same time I really do feel I'm not doing my game, myself or indeed you justice by not doing it either.

As I've said before, I know this will cost me patreons and funding - and for that I get to redo 1,200 renders, so more work for less money which probs isn't a very sensible idea I know!

 But my game - your game - will be so much the better for it. Truly. And that makes it worth it.

Hugs and whatnot

Notty