Dev Log 62 (Patreon)

Hey guys, it's time for another dev log, and I have a bit more to say than in the last one!

First, I'm happy to report that I've had a very productive couple of weeks! Since the last dev log I've completed another 200 renders, bringing the current total up to roughly 1500 now. However, the lion's share of my time has been spent on animation.

The new animation method I mentioned a while ago is taking more time than I expected, which is partly why I ended up pushing my target release date back, however it's opening up a lot of new possibilities for animated scenes. This update will include five in total, a new record, for which so far I have completed 45 videos. I'm currently part way through animating the third scene, and I have one small one, and then one very big one at the end of the update left to go.

UI improvements

Beyond the story content, I've also started working on implementing a bunch of new UI features designed by the same person who did the total UI overhaul a few updates back. These are mostly little improvements that have been requested by players since the last major UI work, but I think it all adds up to making the game nicer to play! (skip past the bullet points if you don't want to read the full list)

First, when starting a new game there will be a new screen for selecting a specific day to start from (WORK IN PROGRESS):

The different chapters will split between the planned time skips that I've mentioned before, and the window at the bottom will allow you to start from any day you want, instead of being limited to a specific update like with the current menu system.

Next, a few minor additions:

Added Left/Right buttons to the image gallery and character bio screens so that you can easily scroll through the stuff you've unlocked (this one has been requested quite a bit!)

The save/load screen will now highlight the current page at the bottom, and will scroll the bottom numbers when you go beyond page 10 - not something I'd ever thought about, but this is another frequent request from people who make loads of saves.

The main textbox will now become scrollable if you increase the font size. At the moment, increasing the font size much beyond default just mangles everything!

Added alt text across the whole UI - this is the text used by screen readers, which was requested by a blind player.

Finally, we've fixed a bunch of minor bugs (like the "mute all" button on the audio section messing with your in-game font size!), and made minor performance improvements to the load times of the bio and gallery pages.

4k game version

I was discussing the game recently on the Cosy Cafe discord server (feel free to join it if you want to chat!) and the subject of a 4k version of the game came up. It just so happens that I actually do all of my raw rendering in 4k, so it would be possible for me to make a 4k version of the game... This would come with a few caveats, however.

First, not all of the 4k renders have had post work done on them (the final stage of cleaning them up using photoshop and other image editing software) so it would take some time to do that.

Next, the file size would be huge. When 0.13 comes out, the total render count will be somewhere in the region of 17,000. Think 100GB+ for the 4k version. With that in mind, this would be limited to desktop only (so no android).

All in all, it would probably take me a couple of weeks of dev time to put this together. So the main reason I'm bringing it up here is to ask you all if you'd be interested in it? I'm more than happy to do it, but if the file size puts everyone off then the 2 weeks would be better spent working on new game content.

Patreon currency changes

This one is just a minor PSA more than anything. Nothing to worry about:

Someone asked recently about me changing the patreon tier pricing, which confused me as I haven't changed them at all since I started. After looking into it a bit, it turns out it's just currency fluctuations. As some of you may know, I'm English, so my tier prices are actually set in pounds and then converted to other currencies. Patreon update their conversion rates once or twice a year, which is why you might see a little fluctuation if you look. But, to the part that they wanted me to clear up:

THIS DOES NOT EFFECT YOUR ONGOING SUBSCRIPTION.

Whatever you agreed to pay when you signed up is what you will continue to pay. It won't change without you being asked/informed, and I have no plans to change the tier prices.

Conclusion

And I think that's everything for this one. We're slowly closing in on the release of version 0.13 at last. I think for the amount of content it has probably been pretty standard, but I feel like I've been working on this one for ages. Possibly because I've also been doing a lot of the detailed planning for the updates that come after it, and I'm really excited to start working on some of the story in those!

There's gonna be at least one more dev log before the release, at which point I should finally be able to give you a somewhat accurate release date.

So, until next time, and as always, thank you for your support!

- Cosy Creator