On cogdemos and save files (Patreon)

Hi everyone, I have bad news to share. Apparently, the finickiness of cogdemos's save files extends to the current demo build, and you will likely find that your saves from the previous demo build are broken. As of right now, I don't think there is any method to recover those specific saves, but I'm working on a way to make sure any future saves will be properly preserved.

I've talked with a couple of fellow authors about this, and they've been gracious enough to let me know that a workaround exists which will be able to preserve future saves (though imperfect). However, implementing said workaround requires me to alter the scene files, which will break the save files which have been generated since the update went live a couple of hours ago.

As such, I'm making the announcement that the workaround will be implemented approximately 24 hours after this post goes up, at 2 AM (GMT), March 1st 2025. This is to hopefully not interrupt ongoing playthroughs of the new demo, while still delivering the workaround before too much time has passed. If you are currently playing through the demo, please ensure that you are finished with it before the stated time. If you have not played through the new demo yet, I encourage you to do so only after the workaround is implemented, so that the saves you make can carry over to the next build. My apologies for the hassle!

On what the workaround itself is:

To simplify it, there will be a checkpoint system, wherein you can save all of your progress at specified points throughout the story. Saving anywhere outside of the checkpoints will likely render that particular save obsolete when a new update/hotfix build is released, and so it is extremely discouraged. I will try to make checkpoints available after every major plot beat so that, if you wish to redo your choices, you will not have to go very far.

Later down the line, I will also try to make the Character Creator (aka the scene you get when you want to skip ahead to Book 2) able to skip directly ahead to certain chapters, and so you're able to briefly set your parameters and variables there before going directly into the content you want. However, this later method is quite work-intensive and code-heavy, so please expect a considerable amount of time to elapse before it can be properly implemented.

I have nothing but gratitude for the folks behind cogdemos, whose work is incredible wonderful talented showstopping and brilliant, and I hope for your patience as I adapt to this transition from dashingdon. Thank you, and my apologies once more!