Public report, so you know what to expect.

Hi everyone.

I was looking through my posts and realized I haven't made anything interesting public since July, so here we go, let's get things moving again. Just so you know, this is gonna be a loooong post because I've got a ton of things to tell you about.

This isn't the first time I've said it, but I can't show NSFW content in public posts, so the images you're seeing here are pretty innocent. I had to choose them very carefully because what's coming (the update) gets pretty spicy almost entirely.

What you see above are images from version 0.6.9 for the most part, except for the last two, which belong to version 0.7, which I'm currently working on.
This might be a little confusing for some of you, since I said 0.6.9... Version 0.7 was getting pretty long, and going too long without releasing updates is never a good thing, so I had to reorganize a few things, and 0.7 ended up being split into two parts: version 0.6.9, which was released to Patrons a few days ago, and then 0.7 will come later.

The last version you guys saw was 0.6b. Then came 0.6.5, with no new content, just some improvements to stuff from previous versions. This "polishing" is still a work in progress, so there might be a few things that don't quite line up when the time comes, especially in the alternate route, which hasn't been touched yet. I'll finish the rest of the polishing after 0.7 is released.

You'll be able to get 0.6.9 for free as usual, but once version 0.7 is released to my Patrons. And of course, it includes all the changes made in 0.6.5.

Everything sounds great so far, but you might not like what comes next. The Safe Mode for the competition was removed starting with version 0.6.9. It doesn't exist anymore...
It was a lot of extra work that neither my Patrons nor I thought was worth continuing to produce (the final decision was theirs, through a vote).
So I threw away a month of work, 2,000 lines of code straight into the trash. And this may cause problems for those who never played Normal Mode, because if you only have saves from Safe Mode, they won't work since they'll try to load something that no longer exists. Normally Ren'Py would go crazy and crash the game, but instead I managed to add a warning message. However, this doesn't mean you can keep going. To continue, you must have at least one save from Normal Mode, or from before the competition started. I'm really sorry, but there's no other way.

Moving on to less dramatic things, or maybe much worse things xD... The First Elimination Competition was selected a while ago through a vote by my Patrons. I'm not gonna reveal exactly what it's about, but it involves swords and a little blood...

The first two participants who are going directly to the event thanks to the public vote (Patrons) have also already been selected, and they are Katherine and Finn (the girl who can paralyze you and the muscular guy). You should also know that Ronald will obviously be there because of his score. There's only one more person left to be decided who, also because of their score, will have to take part in the elimination event.
There are still points to be earned, so we don't know who it will be yet. And this may seem strange to you, but even I don't know who it'll be yet... but whoever it is, it probably won't be the same person for everyone, and that'll be taken into account, no problem. Remember, I'm the one who made 24 different scenes for reaching the finish line in Normal Mode just to account for every possibility.

Alright, time for you to see more precisely what's coming in about 1.5 to 2 months (when I finish version 0.7 and you guys get 0.6.9).
The changelog below covers all the changes made in version 0.6.5, along with all the new content and changes in version 0.6.9...

Version 0.6.9 Final Changelog (free public).

• More than 10,800 words in new dialogue, but since Safe Mode from the First Competition has been removed, the total for the whole game is now lower, at 134,378 words.

• 428 new images, bringing the total to 7,915. It's worth clarifying for anyone who might look at this in the future and not know why.
  The total is lower than some of you might expect, especially if you're as obsessive about keeping track of everything as I am, and that's because in version 0.6.5 I removed several images since most of them were from sequences that had been converted into videos. Likewise, this count will go down again in the near future, since I haven't deleted the unused Safe Mode images yet, and I still need to clean those up.

• Extra gameplay time: a little over 1 hour, depending on reading speed.

• 9 new animations.

• 9 new sound files. 1 is used as background audio in a particular scene, and the remaining ones are all Asami and her adventures xD

• A new sound channel exclusively for moans and similar sounds has been created. You can find its volume control in Preferences as usual, and it's impossible to miss.

• As a test, something of a proof of concept, audio has been added to a large part (not all) of Asami's hot scenes in this update. I've even left some of the animations without text for this very reason, since Asami is the only girl so far who doesn't say absolutely anything during sex, and having her just go “aahh, ahhh” over and over can get boring.... she just moans, and she does plenty of that. I recommend listening to them, because Asami's audio isn't limited to her animations. There are even sounds during some of the normal images.

• As mentioned, Safe Mode from the First Competition has been removed. Roughly 2,000 lines of code, deleted, and I didn't hesitate for a second. Unfortunately, this may have consequences for some of you... To play this update and any future ones, you need to have a save that doesn't correspond to Safe Mode, because that simply doesn't exist anymore. Normally, Ren'Py just crashes without giving the player any coherent clue when it runs into things like this, but I've managed to make it show a warning message instead of simply crashing the game. The deletion was so extensive that there was no way around it, so the only alternative was to mitigate the problem.

• The textbox issue on Android devices, specifically phones, has been fixed. The transparency control finally works properly now.

• The in-game Guide received a few small changes to account for the removal of Safe Mode. I also deleted a couple of entries where I had noted two mistakes... those mistakes have been fixed.

• Removed the recap scenes before the start of each new episode.

• One of Mother's audio tracks has been redone, and a single word has been removed from its corresponding dialogue line.

• Additionally, although it's not something you'll notice, Ren'Py's own layer management system has been restructured to properly handle one long scene, since the original default system wasn't suitable for this particular case. To avoid any issues, the information UI has also been disabled during that scene and re-enabled once it ends.

And this covers the changes introduced in version 0.6.5:

• 345 images redone (counting reworked ones and a few new additions).

• Total image count is now 7487, meaning 211 fewer than the last count. This is because some brand new images were added, but a lot of others were also removed that corresponded to sequences and are now animations converted to Video format. That is to say, all the MC animations with Linda on the bench and the sequence of the Drones near the Tower.

• 11 animations, redone and new ones. The ones previously handled by Ren'Py and now converted to video are counted as new.

• The end credits screen has been completely restructured.

• Episode titles and all large text have been replaced with images, matching the style of the game's logo.

• A new transition's been created and placed in its rightful spot all through the game.

The visual changes are entirely to old content. A large part of the initial shots of the MC at the beginning of the game have been redone. After that, a large number of images from Casandra and Sally's encounter with the MC at the dry lake have also been redone. But this only covers that location and everything up to Sally's death (or not death) there. The content later in the alternate route, after Sally's death, hasn't been worked on yet, which is why you'll notice some inconsistencies in the images. Several old animations of the MC with Emma and Linda have also been redone, and the entire sequence with the drones flying near the control tower has been completely remade.

A few final details worth clarifying. Since Normal Mode is the only thing that exists now, and what you'll see in version 0.6.9 continues to take into account only what happened in Normal Mode, it's very likely that things won't quite line up for those who played Safe Mode. And that's normal, because as I just said, only Normal Mode has been taken into account when continuing the story. Whatever you may have seen in Safe Mode never existed as far as the story is concerned.

There are gonna be some conversations that leave you going "What the hell are they talking about?" because you simply won't understand them. This is intentional and will be cleared up much later, somewhere around version 1.0 or 1.1. So if you're completely lost, don't worry, it's not a mistake and you didn't miss anything. There are just things you don't know yet... and neither does our MC.
Didn't you guys find it weird that at the end, after the Android's and Mother's ultimatum, our MC looked pretty worried while the girls were totally relaxed?... Well, that has a lot to do with what I was telling you about.

In version 0.6.9, Asami has sounds for the first time, just as an experiment. Yep, in case you didn't notice, what is supposed to happen with Asami finally happens... although not exactly in a normal way.
Asami was created as a cliché, so it's totally possible that some of you won't like what I did with her sounds... because she's quite screechy.
Anyway, it was carefully done, it was made with love, although that doesn't make her any less screechy. In fact, Kaoru says in one scene that Asami squeals like a pig. And she's right xD

All the sexual sounds are now on a new channel, so you can control the volume (or mute them) through the Preferences Menu.

Not all women sound the same, so as I keep adding sounds to all the animations and sequences that need them, there'll be plenty of variety in the future. But Asami's was necessary. I doubt anyone here has heard a Japanese woman in bed making deep sounds xD

Alright, I think that's it for now. Hopefully I didn't forget anything.
Thanks for everything, and take care.

💖💖💖