PHOENIXES v8 update report (Patreon)

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Hi guys, this is Agang,

thank you so much for patiently waiting for us, and I’m really sorry for keeping you waiting for so long. It has been three days since we passed our initial expected release date. As someone who values punctuality, I am deeply ashamed of this delay. There will be an extra patron reward later this month.

v8 is an ambitious update. We optimized the underlying logic of many mechanisms, but it also led to a cascade of issues, resulting in numerous unexpected bugs. For the past few days, we’ve basically had no sleep and have been tirelessly dealing with all sorts of bizarre issues. Now I think we've solved most of the problems… … I guess. Please let me know if you encounter anything weird during the game.

Now let’s take a look at what we have in the new update:

The System part:

- The Autoplay mode

The autoplay mode is undoubtedly one of the crucial features in a visual novel, but we’ve overlooked it for a long time because honestly, we’ve never used it when we played other visual novels.

After being informed by some patrons about their needs, we realized our oversight and immediately started working on it. Thank god we finished the job within this update cycle.

So now we have an Autoplay mode available in v8. You can freely adjust its speed and it won’t turn off itself when you pass the dialogue actively.

We even made a timer to remind you when the text will switch to the next line. There are two different timer styles for you to choose from.

- The free script editing tool (test version)

As you know, I’m not really a good writer. The game’s text is riddled with many grammar errors and typos, both the English and the Chinese version. Many lovely people have been so kind to point out issues in the text with numerous screenshots after every update, and I really appreciate that. I’m sorry for not being able to provide you with a better reading experience, and I feel that we need to at least create a more convenient way for people who care to give feedback on text issues and even manually correct the issues that are unbearable to them.

I will upload the scripts soon, after I finish the tutorial document. 

* We eventually decided not to include the scripts in the PC version of the game. Because doing so will significantly slow down the unzip speed.

- Greatly improved the hints in the Story Progress screen

The previous hints were not clear enough, sometimes they basically forced you to guess if a requirement of a plot was achieved or not, which must be annoying. We are very sorry about the trouble it has caused.

But it will no longer be a problem in v8, we’ve redesigned the screen and reworked the whole system. Now the hints should be much clearer.

Old:

New:

- Implemented a HUGE number of animation effects and sound effects.

It’s hard to describe here, you will know what I’m talking about as soon as you enter the game.
I’m not sure if all the new animation effects will work perfectly on low-end phones, please let me know if you experience any frame-dropping issues during animations.

- Improved the game’s loading speed.

For some reason this improvement didn’t go as significant as we thought. Right now the speed of loading the main menu on mid-to-low-end phones should be 10-20% faster, and 30-50% faster on high-end phones in theory.

The speed of loading the gallery will be a lot faster on all devices, in theory.

- Small stuff:

- You can now adjust the textbox transparency and the text speed

- Implemented ‘slapping’ sound effect

- New icon for the Support Missions

- Improved the look of the event bubbles

The Story part:

- New girl: Fuying

Fuying is a mysterious time mage who had her first appearance in VIRTUES. She was also literally the first girl you saw in PHOENIXES.

Like most girls in the game, Fuying also comes with a pretty complex backstory, no, in fact she has THE MOST complex backstory. Creating her was a challenge, an attempt to step out of our comfort zone. I’m not sure if everyone will like this girl and her plots in this update, but I promise she’s going to have a very very romantic storyline.

- New interrogation target: Alnilam

The story of v8 continues to focus on Alnilam. This evil queen didn’t seem to change much after your last night with her on her island. Every crime she committed was still built upon extreme selfishness without concerning anything or any others. But this time, her goal was not to torture you, but to be tortured by you… …

- New club level & New functional room in the club

You can now raise club level to 4 and unlock the massage room. Our new girl Fuying will be the masseur.

- Alnilam, Heather, Cassy, and Fuying will have new personal plots.