Upcoming changes for a0.28 (Patreon)

As I mentioned in a previous post, the focus for a0.28 was to start implementing a few nicer things visually for supplementary systems and alike both to facilitate people's experiences playing the game. Given the changes are fairly significant, I'll run through them here so you guys have some time to understand how things might appear or look the next time you boot up the game. (For people using only the public build, be aware that this will become available to you in January, so you have more time to prepare.)

THE GALLERY

Given it a fairly big facelift, given before it was just a black screen with three options. Notably I've brought it down to two, ditched the title screens from the gallery (as there'll be something else for that I'll plug in later) and added a total completion counter to the bottom. Just in case you wanna see how many you're missing at a glance. Obviously this number will go up as the game gets more stuff, but something to cater to the completionists.

It's worth mentioning as well that the words "Memories", "Trauma", and "Return" will all be eventually replaced with image buttons. I just haven't gotten around to solidifying what sort of style I want to carry across through the menus just yet. Plus I'm aware that the gallery completion line is hard to see, I'm working on that too.

MUSIC ROOM

This one has been active for an update or so already but I'm still filling things in. Notably though because I get asked about it every now and again, the grey box to the right will eventually have a little illustration for each song. Nothing overly important but something to just add as I need a break from the heavier stuff. Additionally, we have specific musical credits of who composed and arranged each song. For the most part it's Civ, but I've done a couple of the tracks. Again we see the hints of the same sort of background from the gallery coming through to this menu as well to keep things kinda uniform. A lot of the black boxes on this screen will go however in favor of something more aesthetically pleasing once I get the time to mock something up proper.

Oh right, each song will eventually have a piece of narration to go with it. I'll let you figure out who's narrating and why for yourself. 

"Next", "Previous", "Return" and "Main Menu" will eventually be replaced with image buttons like the gallery.

THE SAVE SYSTEM

I should preface this that none of this part would have been remotely possible without the help of Kitashi, who not only walked me through enough Python to understand how this works, but mocked up a lot of the framework ahead of time to see if it would work. If you want to thank anyone for this being done sooner rather than later, thank him.

Trust me, I've been hearing a lot of requests for a better way to organize saves and finally we're here. While not aesthetically done, functionally everything is there. This does however mean the page names are no longer there given screen real-estate but you won't need them with all the new information you can get just by looking at the save files themselves. But to properly break down what you're seeing I'll go through it bit by bit to help:

1. You now have a counter on your save file as to what current day you're on, and what path you're on. No more needing to guess when and where you're at from how you've saved things, your save file will now just tell you!
2. These boxes will eventually be replaced with other markers specific to the characters, but consider this the checklist of who's still alive. If someone's crossed out, they're dead! Should be helpful given path divergence isn't tied to character death, so for those thinking that paths E and F exist yet because of Sal's potential demise, think again.
3. This is your route marker. Again, another thing that'll change depending on whose route you're on but for now they're colored squares matching the name color of each of the cast. Additionally, when you pick a route on day 4, the whole slot will change color for easy identification. If you noticed the blue in the first screenshot, those would be Tyson save files. Everyone has a specific color, including Dave:

Blank files will look like this, with a Dave signifier and no other indicators filled in.

Additionally, each save page now holds up to 20 slots. 

PREPARING FOR THE UPDATE

For the most part, everything should work just fine. There are going to be some display errors on boot-up because the save system doesn't fill in all of the details until you actually save. To fix this, simply load a file, resave it in the same slot, and it'll fill in the rest for you.

Leading up to the build though, I'd advise starting to cull or otherwise reorganize what saves you really need. Once a0.29 is live, you will no longer be able to access any page beyond Page 9. With what's available, there are 180 slots plus 20 in both auto saves and quick saves giving you 220 total. There should be no reason why anyone would need or want more than that. That gives you a month between when the new system goes live and you when I'll be locking off those extra pages, so make sure you transfer everything you might want to keep across.

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I think that's everything? Any other tweaks should just be a case of visual stuff that'll slot in seamlessly as it gets done over the next few builds (hopefully). No, the sprites aren't coming soon because this took priority and yet again I'm back to the drawing board after some feedback. While I have sketches though, nothing beyond that to show just yet. Thankfully all these things upscale to 1080p just fine though so these new screens will be unaffected. 

At this stage it looks like there might be a small story update to go along with this on Path C and D but watch the patch notes on the 15th. Christmas plans might change still and I'm still working through my draft.