Status update Episode 9 (Patreon)

I want to start this update by thanking everyone for your comments, DMs, and overall support this last week. It means a lot to me, and I can see how many of you care as much as I do about the game, and it is heartwarming. It truly felt like the entire community came together, mourned the changes, and supported the game. Thank you!

I started this week by finishing the main menu's artwork. 20 new art pieces for Season 3 have been added to the main menu, and as promised, I'd like to show you a teaser of it today.

While working on the main menu, I couldn't stop thinking about the title music and the future of the main menu. One thing that has been in the back of my mind for quite some time now is the Music section of the main menu. You know, that button that says Music at the bottom that you probably pressed once and then never used again.

I've never been truly happy with how it looks or functions. Its purpose has more or less been to show and give credit to the CC0 music in the game.

I've wanted to add a proper music player to the main menu for a while, so I spent a day developing one from scratch, and I'd love to show you some of what you can expect from it today.

You no longer have to load a free roam event to listen to the music. You can now access and play the entire music library, barring a few sound files, from the main menu. It is synchronized with your favorite list on the music app of your in-game phone too, and you can manage your favorites from this menu.

To not remove the original functionality of this menu, I've kept a CC0 section with credits and a link to the license.

So, what does the title music have to do with this? Well, from now on, you can set any song of your choice as the startup song for the game. Listen to any song in this music menu and click a button to set the song as the startup/main menu song.

I feel this is the best way to do this since we're at a status quo with the title song, and everyone has a better idea of the replacement title song than the one before them. There will still be a default title song playing from the start, and I won't stop looking for a replacement, but if you wish, you can change it.

While listening to your music, you can also hide the music menu and watch the main menu art without any GUI. I have also added a tips section to the music menu, where you can browse through some of the many useful tips you might have missed.

I hope you will come to like this idea as much as I do.

These changes will come into effect with Season 3, for starters. There are some additional difficulties to deal with if I want this added to Season 1/2, but I haven't ruled out adding this to that main menu.

Aside from this work, I posed Jill's special render set this week. She will get a set consisting of 20 static renders, just like Josy will, for this episode. The theme I've chosen for her set this time is "Surprise gift". I'll show you a preview of this series soon.

I've added code for the special renders in the Rewards app and started placing magazines in the game as unlockables. There is still some work left in this area, but it's just a matter of deciding how to unlock the special renders and testing that it works. Everything else in this area is done, including 2D art, 2D animations, and Pack Quest renders.

Two of my workstations have been rendering that long cutscene-like animation I mentioned a couple of weeks back, and it's about 50% done. I'm very pleased with the rendering speed of this animation; it's been better than I could have hoped. My other PCs have been working on static renders and other animations.

I also continued my work on both writing, posing animations, and static renders this week. I've been feeling very motivated lately, and this only gets reinforced by seeing the to-do list get shorter.

Another week of static render work is coming up. I'll have some updated numbers on the progress for you next week.

Have a nice weekendLove yaDr PinkCake