Stuff that needs doing - a running blogpost (final update). (Patreon)

Right now, I'm getting a ton of questions fired my way about the impending release, and I imagine there's a lot of hand wringing and hopping from one foot to the other, and I find I'm writing a lot of similar answers, so I'm gonna try a little experiment.

I'm going to put up a little list of stuff that needs doing. It'll be spoiler free, as is, and not open for debate. It is not inclusive, and items may appear on or disappear from it on a whim, and it will be updated whenever I remember about it. It is not a countdown checklist.

Let's see how this goes. My hope for it is that it's informative. If it stirs up a lot of anxiety or raises more questions than it answers, I'll take it down again.

Beta's done, lets release this thing.

Stuff that needs doing (update 16):To do

Release notes

Making builds

Sanity checking the builds

Getting mirrors up, getting links ready

Update to Itch.io on release day

Will do in a service release

Investigate option for an unsupported "Android hi-quality pack". nice to have, M.

Spoilerfree task description 7, S, nice to have

Spoilerfree task description 8, S, should have

Investigate Android compatibility issues on some devices. Seems unrelated to model, make, architecture, age, or resources. Some setting or other app?

Done

Fix beta feedback, must have

Final acknowledgements and call to action, must have; S

gallery overhaul: now we're save based, let's get all that hardcoded stuff sorted: make a list based menu with generic code instead of all these hardcoded menus within menus.

Missing dialog for M+D Lockout Paths (~4 scenes, no new image ); must have, M

Missing image variants and dialog for M+D Lockout Paths (2 scenes); in progress, all missing images have now been produced. must have, L

Spoilerfree task description 11, M, should have

Spoilerfree task description 2

Build for Android, plus sanity check it runs. Must have for beta. Ren'py seems to be generating builds alright, and they install, but don't load. Need to hook up logcat to find out what exactly is crashing.

Actually making final distribution builds, and uploading them to mirrors. Must have for beta.

Setting up discord roles for beta participants, and creating some channels. Must have for beta.

Release notes, known issues list, bug report instructions. Must have for beta.

Kick this thing out the door (red. thing=beta).

Happy flow testrun of chapter7 using the distribution build. Must have for beta.

Spoilerfree task description 10: Must have for beta. XS

Evaluation screen; must have for beta; M

Spoilerfree task description 11: Must have for beta. XS

Test/revision passes (most paths) for continuity , spelling and grammar, flow and pacing, scripting specials; must have for beta; L. Nearly all scenes completed (see infographic). In these final passes, I'm making sure to hit every path through a scene, in all its variations and modifiers for choices, preferences, relationship statuses, etc.

Test creating builds for pc/mac/linux distributions. Creating builds doesn't crash, which is something.

Set up new Gradle version in ren'py (which was a breeze with the new ren'py), next up, do a test build to see if there's errors.

Android build image compression, must have for beta; M/L. Interesting result from the test passes: it seems that I might not have to go as hard on compression as I thought I would. Will know for sure when the android version is actually built.

The bofhorg file (big dump of previous chapter fixes), M

Spoilerfree task description 9, S, nice to have

Spoilerfree task description 3, S,

Spoilerfree task description 4, S,

Convert pngs to webp; M/L. The new version will end up being just shy of 8 GB in size.

Spoilerfree task description 6, S

Spoilerfree task description 5, S

One full playthrough for happy path done. Obviously, I fixed a whole bunch of stuff as I went so it was anything but a speed run, but the time it took to play through all content still took me by surprise.

Several more scenes had dialog revisions and some bigger re-writes.

Beta warning notice added, updated version number, updated outdated mod warning system.

Spoilerfree task description 1.

Also, using Frame inside Composite images behaves differently following the ren'py upgrade. Tested remaining instances and they seemed to hold up, so moving on.

Refactored displayables using string interpolation, and settled for a combo of recutting some images, and biting the bullet on some exponential multiplication of image declarations, so transitions look half decent again for these images without generating a few MBs worth or boilerplate script to multiplex all possible combos out. Gonna have a long hard look at generating images from code at some point, or stay away from this type of setup for an image.

New gallery system pans out, and is now based on saves so dialog is present. You need to play through a scene to trigger it though, so no more unlocking without playthrough. Old version is still in there for those not starting a new playthrough of previous content.

Upgraded to ren'py 7.6.1 fixes memory errors and random crashes that started occurring lately. On the down side, that's the end of 32 bit support.

Tiny but annoying side effect of the upgrade. After a load, when you roll back to before the point you saved at, ren'py messes up the zoom/pan, so the parallax effect is broken. Until they fix that, I had to disable rolling back beyond the point you saved at when you load a savegame.