Progress update 1!

Heyooo, time for another new set of progress reporting.

It's been 2 weeks since I've started work on the next update, which is the reworked 4.5. If you haven't seen info about it, I highly recommend to check my previous (and uhhh lengthy) post!

SO, last 2 weeks were productive. A bummer I got Covid with the rest of family, which made me stay in bed 3 days with bad fever, but besides that, was good. 

I managed to completely fix Episode 1 dialogue/script, and I am really satisfied with current result. Might be some more tweaks while I render, but I feel it's now much more focused and all loopholes have/should be removed. I've mentioned this on Discord before, but one of my main issues with Episode1/2 script was how easily avoidable some main characters were, which completely breaks building them as a character. Best example is Levy, as before, if you didn't trip the Thief>no conversation with her>can't talk to her in the park>short mandatory talk in police station (ep 2)>talk with her and Simon in Episode 3. So if you did that one single "bad" choice, you, completely lost any real interaction with her till ending of Episode 3. Which is terrible lol. The other less seen Love interests (Tina, Serena, Eiko) had similar issues, but Levy was the easiest to showcase. I "fixed" this by making it mandatory to trip the thief, as it's really not a big deal that player "must" have a choice in. There were a few more such "mandatory" choice changes, such as helping Simon in ep1 fight (I mean it made no sense for MC to not help him, they don't know each other much but he is still an good acquaintance). 

Besides such tweaks to choices/mandatory routing, I've also made some brand new additions/segments to fill some gaps in ep1. Now we have short extra appearance of Serena, Eiko and Valentina and all should tie up well into the story. There will be more of such "fixes" in ep2 script too.

Also all Covid talk has been removed (was a good idea back in 2020/21 but now it's starting to lose it's weight), I revamped slightly MC's intro (shorter, less jokey, but main point of his reasoning to leave still holds strong), and I removed some bad parts of "gangs" that is really no longer present in such a form in-game. 

That was the biggest chunk, then I got the Covid (ironic how I just removed it from in-game and I got it irl 🤣🤦‍♂️), and last 3 days I've been rendering all the new/redone bits. So far 130 renders done. The game will be pwetty 😍

Aaaand that's it for now! I most likely won't have a progress chart, because I already see "estimating" might be tricky. Will see in a few more weeks. I'll also try my best to keep track of my speed, as I already feel I'll have to cut out any Episode 3 changes if I wish to make it in 3 months as promised, as renders (if completely new) is almost impossible to make more than 50 per day, or 100 if reusing old scenes.

That's all for now, thanks for reading and stay safe and healthy!
And a big and warm thank you to T., for being an amazing inspiration, support, and friend. Your joy will be greatly missed, in our now slightly darker world 😢♥

Kat