Getting hotter.

What's up, my neighbors? I feel like we're all close enough that I can start using the hard R, right? On the same topic, there's another hard R I'm thinking of, and I think you know which one I'm talking about. Why don't we say it together?

Release of 4.1!

About four or five days ago, I pulled an excruciating all-nighter as I was so hyped to finish up with this update's posing. I got sixty-something renders done in roughly 28-30 hours, which got me well ahead in my to-do list for the next update, and officially concluded the posing phase. I tend to get very motivated once I reach the final steps of posing and animating. It's easier to get in the zone, you know? It's the most mechanical and time-consuming part of development, and it's always satisfying to be done with it and move on.

I'm currently doing rendering and finishing up the "Extras" menu. I have about 100 renders already done, and the "Bonus Chapters" section is visually and functionally adequate. Since the artwork gallery and scene replays rely roughly on the same logic as the Bonus Chapters section, it's safe to say I have 70% of the leg work done on the whole Extras menu. Since releasing Chapter 4, I've had a lot of time to think about the inner workings of the system, and the idea is pretty well fleshed out and shouldn't need any reworking later on.

The release date, as always, is information not even I possess. I'll only know for sure once it's all done, and even then, I'll triple-test it to make sure it all works. It's all coming along fine and shouldn't take much longer, as I'm not having to deal with any extreme adverse conditions or cutting any scenes.

The final render count is 521, not counting animations (about four of them, though). Not bad for 8 months, as the complexity of some of these easily make them worth three "meh" renders. We can round the total count to 641 if we want, but I'd like to deal in more concrete numbers.

Steam wishlist campaign.

I'm going to say more on it very soon. I'll likely make a big post dedicated only to this topic, as it concerns the most crucial development phase of MW. In other words, the most important post I've ever made since launching the game back in July 2020.

Fixes.

While working on Chapter 4, I discovered that Ren'Py will read all information in any .rpy document in the main directory, which I didn't know when I first started. My MW code should look and work much better in the future. With that information, I moved every animation data from the main script file to a special "atl.rpy" document. Having done so, however, poses a high risk, as there's a small chance I might have lost one or two animations. If you guys see any animation data missing in 4.1, please let me know. "But Capella, how would I be able to tell if certain animation data is missing?" -- you'd know, trust me.

Based on this maneuver, I'll also implement better animation management by loading more animations into memory, as I don't think Ren'Py comes with this functionality by default (I could be wrong). Preferably, I want to do it so it loads animations before the game starts. I'll play a little bit with it, however, because I thoroughly dislike when Ren'Py games take more than ten seconds to boot up. This, among other fixes I'm working on, could make every performance issue disappear and make the game a little bit more playable on Android.  I'll also be bringing another huge polish in dialogue, and a collection of reworks and QOL fixes thanks to the amazing feedback I got from you guys on Discord.

All in all, this update has met no major hiccups. I'm way past the development honeymoon phase, and not even the creative fatigue 4.0.0 caused me has hindered me in any way. I'll see you guys soon with more news, or possibly a notification that 4.1.0 is released. One can hope, right?