Artemis - DevLog (Patreon)

Happy Monday!

First off, I want to apologize for the bug that seems to have affected some of you. Of the 7 BETA testers, none of them experienced this. I believe this may been caused during the building of the BETA version. You may recall I had issues getting ren'py to compile the game for testing which caused a slight delay getting the build to the testers. Trying to troubleshoot the issue, I updated the ren'py version. The build still didn't compile, so I downgraded back. I can't say for sure this was the cause as I've updated ren'py in the past with zero issues to saves. Another possible cause is how big the game is getting. Chapter 7 will cross the file size over 20gb. So, during CH7's development, I'll be looking into splitting the books. So Book 1 (chapters 1-4) will have its own exe. Book 2 (chapters 5-8), etc. With how I coded the game, you shouldn't need to do any kind of save transferring. Something I'll testing during CH7's beta. Aside from that, I have no idea what could have caused old saves to break. This usually occurs when code is altered at the point of a save and I haven't touched code from previous chapters, aside from any typos fixed.

I plan on fixing the textures for Paige's scene, specifically at the Farmers Market. The growing pains of Blender, but it's a really fun program to work with. Just very advanced. Same goes for animations. June's hair, one of the camera angles for Kindra (her textures as well), Reina's hair rendered very dark. The new main menu as well, June's hair is pretty sparkly.

Puggy worked on the end chapter's new main menu and did an amazing job on it. It had to be delayed because on release weekend, my GPUs suddenly began overheating. As suspect as that sounds, right on the eve of release day. I had to make the call of releasing Chapter 6 without the new main menu that triggers after completing the latest chapter. I suspect the GPU's just need to be repasted, maintenance I planned on doing post-release.

Lastly, a very big thank you to you all. I know this development cycle for Chapter 6 was not the best and it certainly showed with how rocky the release was. Most of you know I lost my mother last June to cancer. The months leading up were especially difficult. Caring for her, the rushes to the hospital, hearing her plead for help when the pain was too much. Taking care of her and then focusing my mindset for Artemis' development. Some days Artemis helped, some days it was difficult to focus because I wanted her to survive. Following her passing wasn't easy. She was a big part of the family and the person who brought the family together during the holidays. It was difficult going through our birthdays and holidays without her phone calls to gather us last year. So I very much thank you guys for supporting me last year. Your messages were very supportive and it's amazing to be part of such an amazing community.

With the release of Chapter 6, I'll be taking my post-release break starting now. I'll return in two weeks, April 28th and announce the start of Chapter 7's development.

I'll also continue gathering questions and answer them on my return. Feel free to DM them or reply to this post with your questions.

Again, big thank you to everyone.

- digi.B