Experimental Changes and September release

I made massive changes to the game's fundamental structure during September. All of them are potentially game-breaking and took this entire month to implement.

Preparation for the new image generation engine

In the meantime, the cloud services for the image generation engine are already up and running, but the game is not yet connected to them. The first tests with the image generation engine worked surprisingly splendidly, too. These cloud services allow the game to request images, which powerful machines will create in the cloud. The computing resources required for generating images are immense; thus, I cannot offer these services to free members. You will need to connect your Patreon/Subscribestar account to the game.

I have made the first few tests with the verification system, and this system seems to be working splendidly. Well, at least it did, until I tried splitting my deployment into a development and into a production environment so that I do not mess with your data while programming.

Here are other notable changes made:

• Update to the newest version of Ren'Py: This changes, e.g., how divisions are evaluated within the game's code. I reviewed every division statement in the entire code base to ensure it still works as expected. That's a massive amount of statements! Chances are that I missed some, but considering the time I spent testing, I should have been able to spot the vast majority of issues.

• The game now parses the majority of the code right when it starts. This should slightly increase performance while playing, but most importantly, it reduces the number of errors during development.

• Several bug fixes have been made, including the pong game you play with Jane about pizza. Initially, it broke the saving system. Now, saving should work even during the game.

Until lunchtime, I was aiming to release this version for this month, even though it only included technical improvements. The reason is that I urgently need feedback on these major changes. However, as mentioned, I messed up with the deployment of the new verification platform. Thus, there will not be a version in September. Instead, I will release those technical improvements in October. Regardless, due to those necessary steps, there has not been any new content for the game that would have been released anyway.

I apologize for these circumstances. Please rest assured that I am trying my best to sort these issues out, and release a new version as soon as possible in October.