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Update - Mika shows you what she wants
🕑 Added 2021-10-03 22:00:03 +0000 UTCtl;dr - Surprise! Early release this month! I've put in a scene gallery.
This week's image
I've shown this one before (I'm including the upscaled one again for reference) but I just included this one here because this alternative version is the only "new" image in the latest release - the difference being that she's written on the mirror with her finger. It's not the worst picture to see again, right?
I had this version before I released this scene originally, but I just didn't quite see a place for it in the scene when I made it. I took another look and found it wasn't difficult, so I've included it now because I think it's fun.
If you're wondering how I achieved this effect, it's actually quite simple. I rendered the mirror twice; once with the steam texture effect on it and once without. Then I put both those versions into Photoshop, with the steamy version on top, and simply "wrote" the words with the eraser tool.
Surprise premature release!
I know last week I said I still didn't even know what I'd be putting in the October release and then suddenly it's out a matter of days later - well, that's because the release just came together very quickly this time. v0.33 focuses on features that are almost entirely on the title screen: a change log you can view by clicking on the version number in the bottom right, and more importantly a scene gallery!
A big part of the reason this came together quickly was that I'd been thinking for a while about how I would implement it and already had it basically figured out; I just knew that it would take a couple of days' programming work to implement it. That, and while I wasn't really sure it would work, it turns out it did right away, so I didn't need to do loads of testing and re-testing. Oh, and I had already set up the victory suite gallery, of course, so I was able to use that as the template when setting up the scene gallery, which saved me some time too.
I've learned the hard way that players tend not to appreciate an update based on how much work you put into it, but rather on how it directly affects their experience of the game. Even though this release doesn't include any new content, I think the addition of such a requested feature as the scene gallery will probably work well enough to be the core of a release.
People do seem to read those change logs, too, I've learned, so I figured I might as well make my own version more accessible to everyone. I'll try to remember to keep it updated with every release.
This month's early release also means I'm able to get v0.33 out right at the start of the month, only a couple of weeks since v0.32, and seize back some time on my schedule! That's good, because I've been trying to claw back the time and return to early-month releases, and this will give me more time to work on v0.34, as well as on other projects like the PAL comic and obviously Lord Goblin without getting stressed and crunched.
Scene gallery
The main thing is I've made a scene gallery, so you can go back to (many, not all) of the scenes in the game that you've unlocked. At the moment this is mostly the flashbacks and the sex scenes that are large enough to require their own loading screen. (Which is quite a lot of content.)
One problem is that the game wasn't set up to use persistent data to track all of these scenes, so the game may not remember that you've seen them just yet. You might need to go back in and play the game again to re-unlock some stuff. I've used a few benchmarks, though, so that if you've unlocked Nobuko or Emi's endings you'll automatically get their earlier scenes too, and since Shizu doesn't have an ending hers are unlocked from her sex scene collector card. There's a few other benchmarks in there, too.
Hirai fans will have to be content with the scene gallery only currently including the flashbacks and DP scenes, as these are the only separately-loaded scenes with him in them. The text messages are a bit more of a hassle to include and will take more time to implement, although I'd like to include them in there somehow eventually. Also, none of these scenes were tracked in persistent data, so they'll all need to be unlocked again.
Shizu's videos are also not included just yet - that scene is built around only showing you the scenes that you've currently got unlocked in the game, so it will require some extra coding to get that to work in a way that makes sense for the scene gallery.
So what do you think? Is a scene gallery a good enough monthly update for October? Let me know in the comments below!
