Progress and Beta ETA

Time for another update again, and as you'd expect, we're a lot closer again to seeing chapter 6 of Light of my Life completed.

As of this moment, I'm doing my QA passes, and while it's not always easy going, with every passing hour the game is getting a little better. Then, there's also a little bit more content to create (specifically the end-of-chapter evaluation). When I got that squared away, I need to prepare the game for shipping, which involves a few steps and some more tests, and that's when we can have a beta.

Finally. What's the ETA for the beta?

Starting out by saying "when it's done" (I don't want back myself into a corner here and end up rushing out a beta that is not the experience beta players deserve to get from me), I'm really gunning to get those things checked off over the weekend, and would mean in or just after the weekend. But again, "when it's done" trumps anything I said just now.

If you're in the eligible tier, you can indicate if you want to participate (I'm thinking of using a poll, otherwise I'll DM you, but you can expect something tomorrow).
In my experience quite a few of the eligible supporters decline though, and with good reason as it is something to carefully consider, because in spite of my best efforts, what you'll be getting is a version that will still contain a bunch of glitches, errors, typo's and bugs, and is definitely not "the polished thing".

Will the Android version be available when the Beta starts?

Sadly, no. As I mentioned in previous posts, the Android version needs work to fit it into the APK file format size limits, and I'm planning to do that when the beta is underway. I aim to have it available at some point during the beta, but I can't say if and when exactly. If you're on Android, and you're thinking of tiering up especially to get in the beta, make sure to wait for an announcement.

I remember things going a little smoother and with less reservations last release, Naughty.

You're not wrong. Last two releases, I was in the lucky circumstance to have my hands completely free, so I could basically just do nine-to-midnight for the entire release stretch and add a drop of that midnight oil here and there if needed. This time round, I'm not on vacation from my other job as I was the last two times, and that means juggling my time is a little more complex, although I won't be spending a minute less that what you've come to expect from me on wrapping the update up. But that's why the announcements come on a shorter notice and there's a bit more if's and maybe's.

Who gets access to the public release when the beta's over?

Everyone, supporters and fans alike.

Give me details about the QA phase (feel free to skip from here on in).

Right now, I'm well underway of finishing my QA pass for a happy-flow of sorts (hope to wrap it by midnight), which is to say, I'm picking the most complete path through the game with all events and optional bits taking place, and leaving the myriad of quirky exceptions, lock-out alternatives for one character or another, and alternative flows for declined choices alone for now.

What I've been concentrating on mostly at this stage is making sure the tone of the story and the continuity with earlier events (both in this chapter and in the previous ones) feel right. But I've also been squishing bugs, typo's, pacing issues and awkward phrasing, and I've burned a good bit of midnight oil revising entire chunks of dialogs in a few scenes, and on some occasions, scrapping dialog that just felt out of place. In parallel, there's been bit of re-rendering and paint-shopping going on to touch up images that were flawed in some way, either because of clippings or glitches, or for having an "off" pose or expression, lighting issue, etc. So, quite a lot of stuff going on.

Next up is going over the lock-out and exception paths, some more thoroughly than others at this point, as I'm quite sure for instance that there's a few players that have locked out the office girls, but only a few will have Macy and Denise locked out in their main playthrough, so I might save a more thorough test of that path for during the beta.

So what else needs to happen before the beta's here?

When my QA is done, or at least I got most of graphics issues fixed, there's a step to convert all new images from their bulky .png format into sleek lightweight .webp. I try and do that last, as webp is a lossy format at higher compression rates, and that means any fixes are always done on .png first, and then converted to .webp if they were already converted before. Since I don't want to do that with every edit I make at this stage where it's still quite common, I'm saving that step to late in the process.
It's also a non-trivial step as I need to move some paths about, edit the image references (thankfully just a bulk find-replace in a bunch of scrip files that house the various image and transform declarations), and verify there's no issues introduced by the conversion to .webp (which does happen, from weird discoloring on edges along cut-out parts of sprites to images losing their transparency for some reason, so all several thousand of them need a quick once over with the mark I).

Then it's a few more small things like writing the end-of-chapter evaluation, making sure all the persistent flags for the gallery unlocks are in place (even if the update to the gallery itself will be implemented during the beta), and then actually building the game distributions and testing out if that runs alright, both for players continuing their playthrough and for fresh installs, and make sure I didn't mess up something in preparation.

Any word on the playtime?

Well, given that I'm muddling through the content quite slowly as I'm editing and fixing etc., I've been at it for days to finish, so my perception is a bit skewed. But I've found myself at a few occasions thinking I gotten quite a bit done, and then looking up and seeing there was still a whole lot more content ahead of me that I sort of forgot about. I expect you'll spend at least as much time on it as you did on the previous chapter in your playthrough. And there's a lot more lewds this time 'round.

And when's the beta over?

In the past it usually ran for a week or so, and by then it was polished up enough and I had the remaining tasks done, and the public release followed.
What remaining tasks you might ask? There's of course fixing the reported issues, updating the gallery, getting the android version up and running, and another few dozen little things I can't remember right now and tiny crises I never saw coming.

Busy and good times are ahead of us. I can't say I'm not nervous as hell, but I'm also really excited the job is nearly over.