A message of thank you, sneak peeks and other stuff~

Hey guys, first I'd like to open by giving everyone a huge thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Honestly, I was mentally preparing myself for shit hitting the fan, sell my computer, and eventually be homeless. But your enormous generosity and support have given me a window to avoid that disaster, while allowing more time for me to work in the game. I wish I could find the words to describe how much this means to me, but it's kinda hard. So, at least let me say that I'll never forget this and will arm myself with your kind support, improve myself and work hard to give you better games.

With that said, let me tell you what I've been working on since the post last month.

Okay~

Since I got myself more time in my hands, I wanted to invest some of it in fixing bad practices I had while coding the functions implemented in the game. Last time, it was the Memories function and some other functions that decide which girl visits you at night. I continued optimizing code, let me tell you about the changes without getting too technical in here.

Let's start with the rewritten Memories and Other Perspective screens.

Last time I mentioned how the functionality of the Memories screen was changed. Previously, I relied on duplicating the unique lewd events and have the screen jumps to them. While this worked, it wasn't ideal. Not only it obviously bloats the script, since we have the same event twice in different parts of the game's code. It also makes it annoying to fix/adjust the lewd events as you have to do it twice. The new approach gets rid of the duplicated events, and now it simply adds a [START HERE]/[END HERE] flag in the actual, original events. And the Memories screen uses that to basically "replay" the event. This is basically a better replacement to the old method.

That said, while this fixes the issue of duplicating events, the actual code that makes it happen still relied on a ton of copy-paste code. So, with new knowledge at hand, I rewrote the whole thing:

The new screen has a lightly different look. I added a scroll bar, so I can potentially add as many buttons as I need, without the fear of running out of space to add them. The internal logic now sorts the buttons automatically without me having to manually figuring out the X and Y coordinates, but with the possibility of me telling it which button comes before or after. This is particularly useful in the Other Perspective screen, which works similarly to the Memories one, as I can now add more events in-between the old ones, without the need of having to rearrange all the buttons manually. Hence, saving a lot of time in the long run.

Satisfied with that, I switched to the Achievements screen. This is (supposedly) a simple one. A form of in-game collectible. Unlocking achievements as you progress with the game. It rewards you with a unique render, and a bonus income each Sunday.

Yet, this screen also relied on a TON of copy-and paste spaghetti code. So it was also rewritten entirely:

There was no real need to change how this one looks in-game, so no big change there. But internally, it now sorts the position of the buttons automatically, and only enables in-game the achievements that can be, well, achieved. So, no more gray placeholders. Initially, it'll look like the game has fewer achievements now, but that's not really it. It'll just show the ones obtainable in that version of the game. Also, I didn't notice it, but the amount of money given by each achievement as a bonus was incorrect, giving less than intended. This was fixed as well.

From all the rewritten screens, this one was debloated the most. To give you an idea how bad it was, the original screen had more than 1750 lines of copy-paste code in it, and the new one has less than 200.

Yeah...

The Characters screen also got a small update:

The buttons that open other menus got replaced. From having text to having cute icons. This was done because I was running out of space to add buttons, if needed, and it'll make it easier to tackle translations later.

The buttons that open Memories, Other Perspective Memories, the album of cards for the new collectible, the Achievements, and a new button. This one opens the Inventory screen:

Harem Residence has a simple inventory system. When you acquire an item, let's say, the swimsuit you need to go to the beach, it's stored in there. Until now, you had no method of checking which items you've collected so far. This screen solves that. Nothing more, nothing else.

In the last post, I mentioned that there's a notification when a New Perspective event is unlocked. But I didn't show you how it looks like, so here:

Yeah, nothing fancy or different. But it's useful~

The rest of the functions and code that got rewritten, but can't be seen in-game are:

The logic that decides which girls visits you at night for cuddles/lewds, and their cooldowns. The previous code relied on a hard-to-break loop that could cause slowdowns and crashes in less powerful devices.

The logic that grants the passive income on Sundays, you know, the rent and house improvements. It'll be easier for me to add more house improvements bonuses in the future.

The logic that decides which girl appears in the splash art when a new day starts. The old one was messy.

The logic that decides how much stamina you have in the repeatable pool event. Now it doesn't rely on a ton of copy-paste code, and it has a cap, so it doesn't look like you have infinite stamina. The amount of grind or stats you need to 100% it is the same.

The logic that grants the income from Sakura's streams. No more copy-paste code in here, either. And the cap was removed, so no limit on how much money you can make with her. How it works in-game is the same, though. More popularity = More money per stream.

Plus a ton of reorganizing of the game's scripts.

Now, why burn time rewriting stuff that worked just fine? Well, doing this now has some advantages.

First. Removing a ton of checks, loops and bloat makes things run smoothly. Maybe some of you noticed, but with each update, the game takes longer to load. It's particularly worse in low-end/older devices.

Second. It's easier to maintain and expand. The bigger the game gets, the more complicated it becomes to add or tweak stuff. Removing the need of surfing though walls and walls of copy-paste code will make things faster for me, and reduces the odds of bugs occurring, translating as fewer headaches for me.

Third. Pride. I don't particularly like to half-ass stuff. When people asked for an Android build, I actually took time to figure out how to make it happen. And even gave Android players a different UI that's easier to use with touch screens. Even started to make use of image compression algorithms, so the Android builds aren't 8gb in size. That said, I take optimization seriously. As stated before in older posts, I'm not really a programmer, I learn as I go. And I differentiate "it works" from "it works somehow" and "it works, but poorly".

But basically, this is my attempt at improving the game's internal logic. Prevent slowdowns, crashes, and make it easier for future me to add stuff. There's no more to it, really.

Okay, leaving optimization and rewriting of old code aside, any new content since last post? Yeah, a bit~

Now you can do a Night Visit to Ayase and Hibiki:

Both girls have the usual options of cuddles and sleep, or two different lewd approaches, depending on your progress with them.

Ayase also got her Interactions and Night Bath events added to the game. Now you can head pat, hug, kiss, massage, dare, or attempt to find her in the bath at night.

Other than that, the quest of getting our boy Rick a girlfriend got more content:

It is my intention, now that I have time for it, to complete this extra quest for the next update. This quest won't be particularly big, but it'll serve well to those who want to hang out with him more.

And with that, I wrap up this post. Soon, I'll talk more about Town, the final and largest extra/filler content for Part 1 of Harem Residence.

As always, thank you a lot for your support.

Cheers, and stay safe.