Happy New Year! Big'ol Status Update, and Plans for the Year..

Happy new year peeps! Sorry I went quiet again, but if you've been following the dev feed on the discord you'll see development hasn't stopped even over the holidays. 

But I wanted to wait and bring good news for once, but I also have some bad news. 

Let's not waste time and knock out the bad news first. 

Android 64-Bit Release Requirement Issue

So, for some time I've been aware certain recent android devices (namely pixel devices) only allow 64-bit android builds. Now I kind of assumed android builds were already 64-bit but that was wrong.

I looked into it and finally figured out the problem, turns out I need to change the scripting back end of the builds I make. Now initially I had this setting enabled (IL2CPP builds), but there was a horrible bug and probably in the process of fixing that bug I disabled this setting (Setting it to Mono).

Turns out IL2CPP is mandatory, and version 0.3.1 was before I made the fixes that stopped the problems we were having. Originally, I planned on making an android release around Christmas since I've been taking so long. But unfortunately, I can't. 0.3.1 is too broken when using this build setting.

But also, changing this setting has impacts on PC too. Basically, every build needs to be IL2CPP on every platform. Really, this is the way things should have been in the first place.

But because of this, some things have broken, and more things may break as we experiment. But it works MUCH better currently than 0.3.1 did. So, the fixes we implemented (which was improper handling of coroutines) worked. But more things will need to be addressed. It's often a bunch of weird problems that only happen in build.

In good news though, I noted the game ran faster, and assets loaded quicker as well. So, this doesn't just benefit the subset of android users.

So android builds WILL come, I know it's been way too long since the last build, but unfortunately, it's simply out of reach for now. 

So that's it for the bad news. 

Current Status

So currently the game loop with story dialogue is working well. But the implementation is still incomplete, the goal is by mid-January you could "functionally" play through all current story dialogue with the active game loop. After that would be general game balancing and progression functions that activate story events, and of course addressing the animations, poses, and such needed for visual presentation.

(SSGI testing)

That means soon it might be viable to release builds for high tier supporters with some debug tools active (cause I really need to make more of those too). And once that happens, you'll know broader release is on the way which is the primary goal.

Right now, I'm doing the most barebones setup myself, then my writer(s) will likely take over while I address the game progression and cinematic stuff. Hopefully mostly the cinematic stuff (and character design now that I think about it) as I do have someone working on some game progression aspects, but they may be leaving after January.

Overall, I'm feeling much more confident, things are functioning well in game. 

As a side note I did some test builds (mostly for testing the IL2CPP thing) and the new 3D locations have caused the game to bump up to 5-6GB :P. Initially releases may be that large, but over time it will reduce as this is without texture optimization. Our Apartment has been that large before it was around 4GB and I optimized it down to between 500MB-1GB depending on build. Thats another reason why certain kinds of content can take time.

I dunno if long term I will keep the texture optimization in some areas though, in my testing of an alpha build of unity to try HDR display, Naomi looked... crusty...

I may relax the degree of compression on "hero" textures by the time the steam release occurs. And doing so would make the game larger...

Also, as a side note, pose mode has some new features like adding effects and frames and such. I have the work done but I haven't tested it yet. But it's coming.

The Future

Now for some musings on the future of Our Apartment. Most of this only applies to after the steam release so please keep that in mind. 

Unity Improvements

Much of what OA has comes down to engine capabilities, right now Our Apartment is built on URP which is a rendering mode designed to work on a wide platform range from android to PC. As such a lot of visual features, modern features have been missing. Even ones I consider very valuable for games I buy and play like HDR display support.

To get a lot of those modern features I would have to switch to the HDRP renderer, which has these fidelity options but would prevent me from easily making android builds. This is not acceptable. 

But things are changing, for one Unity 2023 is finally bringing display HDR support, and while that's nice that's not the biggest news. The biggest news is what Unity calls "Coexistence" where a single project can have HDRP and URP in the same project. This means I can have HDRP for the PC release and URP for the android release without a massive added workload. URP may also still be accessible for low end PC, not sure on that yet.

Point is it appears the door for the visual fidelity I seek has been opened, eventually Unity 2023.3 LTS is a year off alone. 

So more than likely specifically after the steam release, this switch to HDRP will happen. Which will open Our Apartment to support things like Raytracing, HDR, DLSS, SSGI, higher quality shadows and many other benefits. It will still keep its overall visual style, but with higher fidelity features that allow more visual consistency that's otherwise challenging.

After the steam release, expect the game to start to look a lot better. And hopefully become one of the standards in 3D adult game visuals.

Minigames

Additionally, coming soon we'll talk about a potential minigame that's being planned. This minigame will be a semi-optional aspect of Our Apartment that will let players gain more income in the game. The general concept is you play the mini-game, and your "score" helps set your income. Progress the game more, unlock things, then play the game again to get a higher score and thus more income called "spare cash". If you're happy with your income you can choose to never play the mini-game again. Thats what I mean by semi-optional.

For those unaware "Spare Cash" will be used in future versions to unlock outfit item bundles. Obviously for progression some items may be very expensive. But you get a steady income, and the structure of the game lets you take your time and gain money. It's really just another aspect to experiment with.

Conclusion: Happy New Year!

I'd like to thank everyone who's supported the game on every site for making this year great. I've had a lot less money troubles which has just let me focus on work but also take breaks if I need to. It's also let me hire people I can actually keep around, which has been a tremendous help during some of the very troublesome periods of dev this year.

I hope you guys (even people just waiting for the steam release) understand how valuable you all are, and how grateful I am you've been patient with me. It's the sort of thing that makes me desperately want to make sure the story delivers since it's taken so much time. I don't think I can relax on the matter until I can have people actually play it. 

I hope the release next year shows a bright future ahead for this project and future ambitions.

Thanks for your support and patience.

~sacb0y