Dear Dev Diary - June 2020 📖 (Patreon)

Dev Diary Time! 😊

Wow – if I’d known how well the Remaster was going to go, I would have done it earlier 😂 We’ve seen a whole tonne of new patrons join us this month – welcome on board, guys! – and busted straight through the last goal 🥰

I was actually quite nervy about the Remaster – in my experience as a player, remasters are often a sign that the dev has: a) run out of ideas; b) lost faith in their project; or c) is too much of a perfectionist to move forward. Many of us will have watched in horror as excellent projects get bogged down in development hell or are even abandoned – even if I’m too polite to name names 🤐

That’s one of the main reasons I held off – you have to establish a fair bit of trust with patrons and players before spending 2 whole update slots on rework… But part 1 seems to have been received very well indeed! 😁 That’s confirmed a few of my thoughts – that the artwork in the initial scenes might have been putting some players off even trying the game, and that the lack of a dedicated start to finish m/m route was a serious omission. What surprised me most, however, was just how enthusiastic folks have been about the personnel files! 😂 Glad to know I’m not the only geek in the room! 🤓

Of course, not everything goes 100% smoothly – there are more dialogue glitches resulting from the new scenes than I was hoping for – but fortunately I know where all those are, so chasing them down will be easier (your bug-reports are invaluable to me… especially now the game’s so darn big!) Nevertheless, I am feeling extremely hyped… even if I’m champing at the bit to get on with the Continuing Story 🐱‍🚀

That especially considering that I’m going through a 2-week ‘boring period’ – simply swapping out the old images of the Decon scene with new, better images. Obviously, the thing that really excites me is new art and story, so this is a bit of a slog… if a necessary one. It’s rather like decorating a room – really fun when you go all interior designer and get to pick the colour palettes and new furniture and whether the fireplace should stay or go and if you should put in smart-tech, etc. Less fun when it needs a refresh 5 years later and you just have to move everything out and repaint the walls in the same colour because otherwise you’d have to get new stuff. [Does this analogy make sense to anyone but me? 🤣 I used to do a lot of decorating!]

But all things shall pass! I’m halfway through the new renders, and almost halfway through the additional personnel files. Soon, I’ll also be in place to figure out whether I need any more ‘fill-in’ renders… a fun bit, because I get to do all the extra expressions and movements and physical gags, etc. Oh – and the new renders for the hell fantasy after you leave decon are soooo much better than what I had before! 😈

You should be expecting the second part of the Remaster in the earlier half of July (and the next storyline update in August). There will also be some other bits and bobs winging their way to you soon too – including the Growth Animation Goal Rewards and a pic of the new study you helped me annex to my territory! 🤗

🖖🏻 RanliLabz