Date Ariane 2 alpha release 0.5 for May

Not a real good break point, but it's almost the end of the month and I wanted to share what I got. Besides adding hot tub, shower, and starting the bedroom scenes, I have been fiddling with the code.

You can go to https://arianeb.itch.io/date-ariane-2/patreon-access 

First major code change is the elimination of the walkthrough hints. They were all broken anyways because of other changes. There needs to be a re-balancing of all that stuff anyways.

I replaced it with an emoji icon system similar to what I did with Dating in a World on Fire, it's also tied to the "Anxiety Mode" which I introduced last time. I've basically turned it into a tutorial of sorts. I've added options to turn off "anxiety mode" and help icons in the preferences screen if you don't need them.

There is no "Patch" for this version, because I also re-rendered the dance animations so they can be converted to jpg files. The size of the game is considerably less as a result, but playing the game with the PNG dance files might result in some odd images when you try and dance with Ariane. If this happens delete everything in the game/images directory. If that doesn't work re-extract the zip file.

I'm working on a plan on where to go with the game at this point. You may have noticed that I have not shared anything on my arianeb.com web or social media or the freebie posts. This is because I don't want sales for Date Ariane Remastered to drop when it becomes common knowledge that I am working on an update.

But the plan I am thinking about will change that. I think it would be best to release Date Ariane 2 as an update to Date Ariane Remastered instead of a new release. I am planning new upgrades after I am done with the re-release. I am thinking on itchio to release Date Ariane 2 as a separate game with some free codes for DAR owners to upgrade to DA2 for free, while Steam will just be a straight update. That way I don't have to go through the hassle of getting a new game approved.

This will leave the Remastered with all the "classic" scenarios and walkthroughs, as a separate game on itchio only, while Steam will only feature the latest and greatest.

New scenarios will mostly be in the form of alternate endings at key moments of the game, and I plan to add them stealthily to be discovered by the player just by trying different things.

But I can't start working on the new scenarios, until I finish updating the old scenarios, which is likely to be most of the summer at least.

DARemastered is the ultimate Renpy edition of the classic HTML game. For DA 2, I am not interested in copying the HTML, but turning it into a modern visual novel that it always should've been.

I recently discovered a character.ai version of Ariane at https://character.ai/character/dsf2wjk6 I did not make this AI, nor do I endorse it, but I was interested in doing something similar over a decade ago (see https://arianeb.com/ask-ariane/ ). So I played with it a little bit, and it got me thinking that Date Ariane is a good version of a "virtual girlfriend". That is kind of my goal with this project.

I might edit some lines to create a "returning" date, so the opening, is more along the lines of "Welcome back, nice to see you again" with some new scenarios being second date exclusives.

Would like some suggestions of new scenarios or changes I should make.