Update Info v0.2.0

Wait whaaat?! 0.2.0?! What about 0.1.3?! Confusion Confusion Bum Bum🤯!

😁

Ok. Let's clear this. Most of you were probably expecting v0.1.3 to be released or at least more update news. But I decided to skip that and go with v0.2.0 and what that means I will explain below. For the content of 0.1.3, it is not lost and will be released together with v0.2.0 a bit later.

v0.2.0 will come with some changes. While developing v0.1.3 (and also a bit before that) I noticed a few problems. Something I already expected. Beginner mistakes. I wanted to do some reconsructions. I was debating with myself for some time if I do it now or if I release one or two more updates first. I thought it would be a good idea to fill the first two weeks with content. (Those who played the experimental pure vn mode know that it covers the first week till the weekend and 0.1.3 was supposed to cover that weekend and maybe 0.1.4 the second week.) But while working on 0.1.3 I decided to break hard and do it now because every bit of content I added before the rework (0.2.0) would cause twice as much work because it had to be reworked as well. This means no update right now, but I'm confident it will turn out better in the end.

So here are the changes I plan to do and also already did in the last two weeks:

First of all the code had some issues that made it harder for me to add new content and would have caused more problems in the future. Therefore I decided to reconstruct the code and fix some stuff. That's also almost done. The code is now way cleaner and will make things a lot easier for me.

Then there is the question of the different gamemodes. Originally I created a sandbox free roam mode. I personally like gameplay because it adds more layers to both the creator side as well as the player side. But I also noticed that a fully free roam based game requires a lot of cheap repetitive (aka. grindy) events to fill the time with content. And I don't want that. I thought that it wouldn't be much of a problem to add an alternative pure vn mode made of the events from the sandbox mode with some transitions between it instead of the free roam. And from the coding side it wasn't much of a problem. I constructed the code in a way that two modes could use the same events, no problem. But it still adds more work on other layers like event constructing. It caused some problems to create events that work for both modes plot and dialogue wise. And even tho the pure vn mode was ok, it didn't felt as great as I hoped. Which is ok, it was experimental.

Now to the solution. Both modes have their pros and cons and I'm happy that I tried them both. There are multiple ways to create a VN and sometimes, if you are new you have to test which is the best.

I decieded that I don't strictly want to go with any of those two but with a middle way solution. There are some other games out there doing this and I think it will fit the best and provide the best of both worlds. It's a Hybrid mode, a story driven vn mode with in time and space limited free roam sections in between. This means no weekdays, no daytimes no map. The way it works now is that at certain points of the story you will get the option to move freely in a restricted area and interact with objects and cahracters and solve events/quests/tasks (haven't decided on the name yet) until one interaction continues the story mode. Means no longer searching for the correct day and time for the next event. Yay!

The last part I want to rework is the content itself. When i created the experimental pure vn mode I noticed that some stuff just doesn't work out in the chronological timeline. For the sandbox mode that doesn't matter because unless the events are directly related and gated behind each other the player can choose freely when and in which order to play them. So I do some reconstructions here too. But I think I'll cover that in more detail in another post.

So, that was a lot of text. I will get back to work now. In the next post I will cover the actual story content. Including extended scenes, new scenes, new locations and characters as well as the introduction of the first crew member of the Arcadia! Stay Tuned! 😃