Progress report on v0.3.0 development (Patreon)

What's up, guys!
Today we came to talk a little bit about the progress in the development of v0.3.0.
A lot of things were done over the last week, so let's try to list them and detail a little more about each one.

Escort Forum: All content from our previous project, Escort Forum, was merged into Living in a Brothel.

Yes, I know, this has already been mentioned in a previous post, but at the time of that post, there was still content to be implemented in the game, such as the new Renders and the dialogues that would come with them.

This new part of the story, which was never published in the previous project, is done and has already been implemented in both the PC and mobile versions.

Some changes were made so that the story of the previous project fits perfectly with the story of Living in a Brothel, so that these contents can be cohesive with each other.

The only thing missing in this regard is the Portuguese translation, but we decided to leave the translation as the last task of all, so we'll only work on it after v0.3.0 is completely done.

The overall game size (in Megabytes) has been significantly reduced: We want to make a game with hours of content available so that people can enjoy it for a long time, and we are achieving that, but the total size of the game was getting too big, so we had to solve this problem.

Previously, we've released all game renders without compression of any kind, as we wanted to make the game available in the highest quality possible, but this has become an issue for us in the long run.

So we decided to compress the game images in order to significantly reduce the total size of the game, with a minimal (almost imperceptible) loss of quality.

Here is a comparison for you to better understand what was done:
v0.3.0 PC (Current State): 3,56 GB | v0.3.0 PC (Compressed): 1,67 GB
v0.3.0 Android (Current State): 947 MB | v0.3.0 Android (Compressed): 510 MB
v0.1.7 PC (Next Demo): 2,12 GB | v0.1.7 PC (Compressed): 791 MB
v0.1.7 Android (Next Demo): 625 MB | v0.1.7 Android (Compressed): 312 MB

Taking a look at the table above, you can see that there was a reduction of about 50% in the size of the game in the Android versions, and about 60% in the PC versions.

This has several advantages:

• Easier upload to Steam, Itch and Patreon.
• Easier download for users.
• Small ingame performance boost, as the files are smaller.
• It takes up less space on users' devices. On mobiles, this makes an important difference.

The only drawback is that there is a slight loss of image quality. In most renders, this loss of quality is imperceptible, however, in some specific renders, you can notice a slight reduction in quality.

Despite this, we believe that the pros outweigh the cons in this case, which is why we opted for compression.

Some users have also complained about the game being too big in file size, so this solves that problem while allowing us to pack a lot more content into the game without making the overall game size too big.

The English translation is being redone: We'd like to take advantage of this post to give a special thanks to our Patreon supporter, JJS.
He volunteered to help with the English translation of the game. As he is a native speaker of the language, he can better help us with cultural contexts of the language that we don't know. In addition, he has helped us to rewrite the dialogue in a way that sounds natural to native speakers.

Of course, rewriting all the text for a game this size takes time, but we hope to release the game text rewrite along with the next version.
If it's not 100% done by then, we'll release with as much dialogue as we've managed to rewrite so far, and update the dialogue later in subsequent patches.

Some users complaining about the writing is a problem that has stuck with us over the last few patches, despite our efforts to try to improve the writing and correct the English errors. Now, with the help of a native speaker, we can probably solve this problem.

New content: A portion of the opening dialog for v0.3.0 has already been written, and we intend to work more and more on that as we want to deliver new content as quickly as possible.

To be honest, at the moment there is still little new dialogue done (Not considering the new content regarding the Escort Forum project), as we needed to focus on solving the other issues mentioned in this post.

But we've already decided what content will be available in the new version, so let's give you a brief preview of what you can expect in the next update:

The central focus of the next update will be the Escort Forum. It appeared briefly during Veronika's unfolding story, but in this update, it's going to be at the center of the story, as it's going to be an important part of the plot going forward.

We'll have a photo system, where it will be possible to take pictures of the girls in Photo Studio (One of the floors that had not yet been unlocked in v0.2).
Each new outfit that is unlocked for a girl (Example: The bunny and kitty cosplays) will unlock a new photo session with that girl to be shoot.

In the plot, these photos will be posted on the Escort Forum, along with the girl's advertisement to promote them and bring new customers to the brothel, in order to date them.

Furthermore, there will be a new threesome scene with Luna and Veronika wearing their respective cosplays (Bunny and Kitty), something that had been planned for v0.2, but we had to postpone it so as not to delay the release of the game too much.

With regard to the unfolding of the main story, it'll be focused on showing the customers' perspective.
You'll hear the story of a customer, Thomas, and what led him to date escort girls and frequent brothels.

In addition, you'll also get to know another customer better, in a very special way, fucking her. Yes, you'll also be an escort for female customers in this game.

This customer mentioned is Erika, the ebony character that is present on the cover and appeared in previous versions. There will be another threesome scene, where Erika was having a date with Luna, and they invite you to join.
You'll have to satisfy the customer, without leaving Luna out of the game, since Erika likes both men and women, so it's important to satisfy her as much as possible so that she keeps coming back!

Well, that's the roadmap we have for version 0.3.
As soon as we have a scene concretely implemented in the game, we'll bring here a post talking a little more about it and also some preview renders.

Phew, today we had a lot of things to tell you, so the post got a little long.

But we hope this gets you guys hyped for version 0.3 to arrive. We're working on it daily and want to release it as soon as possible, as this will be our launch version of the game on Steam, so we want it to be a big update.

The prediction is that v0.3 will contain a total of 8 hours of gameplay, so it's going to be a bunch of new content available to you.

That's all for today, folks!
Cheers! 🍻