RoE Devlog 6 - Version 0.09 And Beyond

Hey everyone, we've been hard at work on version 0.09 and have a lot of things planned that I'd like to go over.  First up I'd like to welcome all of the new patrons with a recap what the next couple of versions are going to include.  The first 6 days in the game are a short prologue chapter that we plan to complete by the version 0.10 release.  Version 0.09 is going to cover day 5, and version 0.10 will cover the day of the festival which will feature some major events and need to be very heavy on new renders.  Everything has been pretty linear so far, but after we wrap up this prologue the story will open up and we'll be relying heavily on polls to determine what characters and stories to focus on.  We'll also be introducing a few new main characters as we move further into the plot.  Releases have been taking 2 months on average because we're still spending a lot of time adding core assets like backgrounds and sprites as well as touching up existing artwork.  When we wrap all of that up and are free to spend all of our development time on the story we'll be able to do bigger monthly releases.  We want version 0.10 to be a milestone that represents a completed section of the game, so we plan to be at that point by then.

So how close are we to meeting that milestone?  We have to finish the last 6 of our placeholder backgrounds, touch up 9 existing scenes that have awkward dialogue and renders, and build 5 completely new scenes into days 1-4 in game.  We also have some new UI elements and features planned.  All in all it's a lot of content, but we'll do our best to jam it into the next couple of releases and keep you posted on where we are with everything.

So aside from that what else is coming in version 0.09?  Good news, another animated h-scene but this time with Raisa!  We're wrapping up a new render with Eryn tonight and should be able to get started on it afterward, so I'll post up some progress pics when we have something to show.  There will also be some movement in everyone else's stories including Lena.  Of course I'll also be doing some more of the necessary but boring stuff on the back end, like adapting Eryn's sprite to be pose-able in the gallery and continuing the optimization of the game files so that we don't hit another wall with the cache in RenPy when we have more than two characters in a scene.  Should be a pretty beefy release overall, and we're on track to have it out in 40-45 days.

Oh, one last thing.  We're going to make the pinups a monthly thing decided by votes, so look forward to a lot more of those posts as we move forward.  As always thanks for your support, we're both legitimately really proud of this project and can't wait to wrap up this prologue with a 100% completed section of the game in everyone's hands.  If you have any questions for us feel free to slide into our DMs.