YOU are #1! featuring Luana! (Dev Talk and Thank You)

What's up everyone?

Soooo... We hit our first goal, huh?

I really don't know what to say besides... Thank you! Yeah, you! Even if you're not a patron yet, you are responsible for The Inn's success!

After a rather troubled start and first update, I was able to pick up the pace and every update has been well received and the project has been growing steadly since then!

A huge thank you to all patrons that supported the project so far and helped it grow more and more, and another huge thank you to everyone that follows the project, patron or not.

Really, a big thank you to everyone, YOU are the ones that make this possible!

Now... On to the serious stuff...

Okay, not so serious... It's me, after all!

Anyway, ever since I started The Inn, some of my design choices have changed and you guys might have noticed it on the last two updates. My skills in posing and scene creation got considerably better (but there's still a lot to improve). At the same time, I started to spend more time building the scenes and post processing them afterwards so they could be at least worthy of your waiting!

Also, my skills in programming got a lot better since I started out, and I mean it! Back when I started this project I was as a complete noob in Python and image creation/editing.

The technincal vision I had at the begining wasn't the same I have now, and I've been noticing some things that I can improve in order to streamline my work and speed up the creative process. As it stands now, I build an entire scene for everything, even if it's a short scene where the characters are just making small talk (think about the kitchen talk at the start of day 7 and the talk with Luana at the living room in day 8).

Needless to say, this is very time consuming, stressing and sometimes even not worthy hours of work on a scene that won't last even 3 minutes at best.

As I said, when I started out, I didn't knew about all the built-in features Ren'py has nor the endless possibilities of object oriented programming (to be honest, I was kinda affraid of them). And this brings us to the next part of this post...

What needs to be done.

[HEAVY BREATHING INTENSIFIES]

So yeah... This part may sound kind of too technical for some as I'll talk about mechanics and programming related stuff regarding The Inn. So, here goes...

As I said, my knowledge in programming got a lot better lately and I noticed I screwed up hard at the starting of The Inn's code...

In what aspect you ask? Well... Everything...

For starters, I should have used objected oriented programming to manage the girls' relationships and mechanics in the game, and it became even more evident to me during the development of v0.4 and the Halloween Special.

As more girls are introduced into the story and, with that, more variables created to deal with them, it becomes kind of chaotic in the way it is now.

Also, once I start introducing some mechanics I have planed for the game (the hotel management simulator, Gyna's virtual reality stuff, etc) I will need a centralized system to avoid headaches and hours wasted on stuff that shouldn't take that long to be done.

With this new system, I'll also start working with sprites for most of the small conversations in the game. Remember I said that, right now, I have to build an entire scene, set up lights, deal with clothing and posing even for small talk scenes? Yeah... That's time wasted.

This will kind of change the playing experience for the game, making it feel more like a visual novel than a kinectic novel (what it is now).

This will open up a lot of new possibilities though, creating a free roam mode will be easier, the sprites will be able to get animated (eyes and mouth movement) and one other thing that I've been planing for some time now...

You remember how back in v0.3 I introduced a system where the girls' (Linda Mae at the time) clothes would change depending on the points you accumulated with them? Yeah, that ended up growing into something a lot bigger...

I've been meaning to introduce a wardrobe system for The Inn, in which players will be able to choose (and unlock) which clothes the girls will use dynamically! And the recent versions of Ren'py added a feature called Layered Image that will make this way easier to manage. 

This is one of the main reasons I'll start working with character sprites as it will make things a lot easier and more dynamic (the sheer amount of images it would generate otherwise would be ridiculous).

So yeah... The game is getting a technical reworking for the next update and the code will have to be rebuilt from the ground up... Don't worry though, the story won't change, it's just technical stuff. BUUUUUT... With that, older saves won't be compatible... I'm really sorry about that. 

I know some of you guys won't like it, as it will delay the next release a bit and you'll have to start it all over again, but it's something that MUST be done now as it's inevitable and will only lead to more headaches if left to be done later on.

Before being a developer, I'm also a fellow player and I know how frustrating this can be, waiting for updates that take too long and then all of a sudden hearing that everything is going to be redone. That's why I'm deeply sorry to tell you guys this...

But don't worry, the next update will also have new content. I aim to have all the Day 9 content done for it (maybe a little more, beach content maybe?).

So... Wew... That was a big wall of text!

All in all, that's it for now...

I hope you guys aren't lighting the torches already!