0.42 Pre-Release (Patreon)

(Disclaimer: Pre-releases are effectively public test builds that happen a week prior to a version release. Expect bugs, jank, and potential performance issues, especially when we make major system changes. We especially appreciate thorough bug reports with export strings during this period, and you can expect the full 42 release on the 10th as usual).

Hi!

This update had a few primary goals:

Address Feedback

Nearly two months ago, I asked you for feedback on where we’re at. We received a thousand surveys, and we’ve been doing our best go to through them, and proceeded to:

1 - Address it as best we can immediately in 42

2 - Write down potential plans and fixes to address issues you may have brought up.

3 - If neither of the above were immediately possible, we at least wrote down trends and concepts such as ‘’this feature is a problem because X’’, to be addressed with future design.

4 - Attempted to improve user confusion with certain areas of the game. A lot of the feedback related to things that were already possible - probably the most common one being the ability to disable edging, which used to be on a slider, but is now a simple toggle in the edging menu.

Update to the latest tools, improve workflows, get our shit together.

Look - full transparency, spending time on things like this usually isn’t super popular among customers. The first 3 years of this game’s development, the development cycle didn’t allow for the time needed. After we changed to a longer cycle, we decided to start by making some huge changes (39, 40, and 41) which had huge risks of breaking in various ways (and they did, and we had to take the time to fix that).

Now that we’ve completed the huge tasks relating to reworking how the core of the game works, we were able to take a step back and take the time to do this.

We updated from Unity 2019LTS to Unity 2022LTS, which has been a great boon both to error-fixing and general usability. We improved most of our workflows and methodology, and are generally far better organized and efficient now. We were also lucky to have external help with this, as upgrading unity 3 LTS versions is no joke.

The better workflow has been a great help after what has been a fairly challenging year in terms of bugs and complex work - After the last 3 versions, we were definitely closer to burnout than we should have been, and now things are sailing far more smoothly.

Elaborate on the work done over the last 3 updates.

The last 2 points may not apply to everyone, but this one will.

While the last 3 updates have been about reworking the core of how tasks function, this one is about improving what we made. We added several systems that should make each task more compelling, more varied, while also acknowledging the feedback that tasks can already get too complex for some - we want to add variety and depth without having her asking too much from you at the same time. It’ll take some tweaking as usual, so give us some feedback on the new flow!

The full patch notes can be found on our site, including a question for you guys - please take a look!

Download Link: https://succudev.itch.io/virtual-succubus-42 

Password: goodluckinnovember