Plans for February: Build 12 and VU Phase 1 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

We've ran into some unexpected difficulties with the Visual Update Phase 1 build — more details about that in a bit — and so we've decided to activate our contingency. We're expediting the release of Build 12, which continues with Chapter 20's story.

I originally wanted to release this build on February 14th but I'm aiming to do it sooner, quite literally as soon as possible. In fact, it would have been done by now had I not been dealing with some very time-consuming health issues. Regardless, we'll most likely have the build out for the Good Master tier to playtest very soon, and once we know it's bug-free it'll go out for all other patrons.

Now, the reason why we've had to delay the VU release is that we've had to re-export most of the game's original assets in order for them to work with the new and increased resolution. We tried using a batch exporter, but it decreased the quality to a perceptible degree, so dilukha has had to do it manually. This includes both sprites and every UI asset — which are made up of multiple individual files that have to be exported multiple times to account for variations and PC/mobile sizes.

There have been some other last minute assets we've decided to re-do now rather than later, but that about summarises it. We want the VU build to look the best it possibly can, I think we owe everyone this level of quality. So I made the call to give them the month of February to work through it, which I think will be beneficial. After all, the assets the team is working on now will make up the new start of the game — it has to look its best!

As I mentioned previously, Build 12 would have been done by now had I not been dealing with some unexpected health issues of my own, but in a sense I think this shows that our project management has been on the right track. Even with those sudden problems, I still think we're on track to releasing Build 12 before its originally planned release date of February 14th.

That's it for now! I hope to have a new build for you very soon!