Progress Report (Patreon)
Content
Salutations! Heres whats up.
Kiras character art is finalized, all new systems are in place and older events are redrawn (some require more time/editing and all of them require layering). If everything goes as planned, the next update should be lit, as youth says.
Our plan for this month consists of three steps - fixing the lag/glitch issue, finishing "new you" quest and saving new artwork for events.
To ensure that the next release will be ready, were starting this month with new content. While Im finishing new you quest, Moana works on fixing our bugs, then Ill replace ingame pictures with new art the old way to ensure that it will be in the game. It has a downside in the form that not all physical changes will be shown and it will ultimately be a waste of time, since we still need to transfer everything into the new code.
Remaining time will be spent on transferring all events into the new system, which we couldnt do previously because of two reasons - Time, and the fact that events work on the same numbers as Kiras character art, so if we change (some) numbers in character art, we need to change them in every event. So without final version of Kiras artwork, there was no point in changing events.
He's a more detailed description of our glitches problem and new you quest:
The game struggles to process our quantity of pictures which causes it to freeze. With time, the number of pictures will only grow, so we need to find a solution immediately. Thankfully, we have a couple of options:
Cut the artwork and features our new character art system has.
Optimize code manually or by using existing plugins
Resave all artwork for web (thank you Stasi) which will drastically reduce the size of the game, without ruining the quality.
And were doing all of that.
Picture cuts - Weve managed to cut around 1500-1800 right now, by removing an option to see some poses in all of the outfits.
Self grope pose wont work with outfits in the future, so well only be able to utilize it on naked Kiras. Same goes for cover pose and any potential poses. Male and female groping will still work with outfits, but I dont think we will be able to add more variations to them or animate them, at least not while Kira is dressed. I think this is fine, we dont really need her to be dressed anyways. Everything else will remain (body modifications, outfits, gropings etc.)
Code - You might remember our loading screen from v0.4.4, well, with it game works a bit better, but it takes 2 minutes and 11 seconds on Moanas pc and around 3 minutes on mine to load it, both pcs are pretty strong and this is simply unacceptable, so we wont go this route. Tests with other plugins show promise, there are at least three more ways we could further optimise the code and fix freezes/fps issue.
Theres a big chance that every location will have a small loading screen to preload all required pictures, so you wouldnt see kiras body appear on screen layer by layer, which is a separate, but related, issue from freezes/fps one.
Saving for the web - it was literally suggested to me by Stasi today (thank you again). So far I see no downside to it, apart from the fact that is would take me at least one full day to resave everything, and Im not looking forward to doing this again, but Mulans gotta do what a Mulans gotta do, as they say.
I cant believe I wasnt even looking in this direction, because its benefits are clear as day. It reduced the size of one picture from 1.66 MB to just 159kb, and the best part - it looks the same. This should allow the game to process everything quicker, and reduced game size is also a plus.
All and all, Im optimistic about it, I believe we will be able to fix our lags and glitches before the next release.
Im not going to spoil the quest in here, but Ive got a few other things to say about it.
I did intend to release it with the last version, but unfortunately it didnt happen. On the bright side, because last version wasnt ready at all, I kind of half-assed it, so now I have more time to improve it by editing both art and text, or drawing something new:
Like Ive said in the opening, were starting this month with new content. And since Olga is involved in this quest, Ive decided to update her to Kiras new standards.
Ideally, every character in defenestration should be redrawn or just drawn the new way, but I dont think its realistic for me to do them all, it wouldnt stop me from trying though.
I will post that changelog Ive been mentioning probably on monday, its nothing special - basically a big masterpost which consists of everything Ive talked about during this rework, and since not everything will be utilized immediately, it will serve as an open-date roadmap.
Thank you all for sticking by and believing in us, I promise we will do our best to ensure that at the end of this month you will get a stable and working update!