Status Update

Just a quick update, the next patch is still in progress and will cover the remainder of Day 3 and is scheduled for release mid December.  It also has a fun and happy surprise (I hope).  For the text message components, by removing the names of the characters (while still showing their icon), I'm able to incorporate character renaming back into the game.  So, starting from the next patch up, if you start a new game, you will be able to provide custom names to each of the family members, including changing their last name and the nicknames that other characters call them (e.g. Jessica/Jess).  I've already completed this and run through the previous code to update all the instances of hard-coded character names, so forgiving the odd miss, it should be good to go.  I know that's a feature a lot of people were looking for.  
I'll also be opening up another poll.  Based on the responses of the previous poll, I see a lot of you prefer the traditional-style of Visual Novel that Next Steps uses.  It's been almost a year now, since the project started and we'll have a solid 3-days.  At the current rate of development, I can probably produce 4 days per year, which would take 20 years to complete.  I'm not sure about you, but I really don't want to wait 20 years.  The only way to increase production is with a GPU with significantly greater VRAM.  The only product that fits that bill that's currently available is the RTX 4090 with a price tag around $2300.  So far, your wonderful folks have raised a quarter of that.  It's entirely possible that we could raise enough funds for it in another year but not likely before then unless I really rework my budget to afford it.  The reason for this, if you wan the technical details, is the way the render works.  I render the 3D images using Daz Studio, which uses the iRay render engine.  It ONLY works with Nvidia cards.  The entire scene has to be able to fit in the card's VRAM.  If it doesn't fit, it won't use the GPU to render, reverting to the much slower CPU rendering, which takes 2 hours per render and is still a bit grainy after.  GPU renders, render in minutes at full quality.  My current card has 8GB of VRAM, the 4090 is the only card that offers 24GB, s significant increase.  If you have 2 cards at 8GB each, it doesn't add the VRAM, it's still only 8GB.  It just means that if it's under 8GB, it renders twice as fast.  Because I'm going for that 3rd-person perspective with a full background, there are usually just too many items in the render in order to get the realistic lighting, shadows, etc.  There are a few tricks I can do to speed that up, but it usually involves just as much time and effort unless the background shots are being recycled, making it not really worth the effort.  Thus I kind of gave up at looking at ways to speed it up without getting a new GPU.  That said, I had the idea to, on the side, create a separate game that would utilize tactics that would allow a game to be made much faster.  I thought about abandoning this one, but I don't want to and I don't think you guys want me to either.  But at the cost of slightly fewer updates, I could be producing two games at the same time.  I've come up with a couple concepts and I'll run another poll to get your input on that.  It's only with your financial backing that I am able to make these games, so I want the final choice to be yours.