[Rough] BIG'OL UPDATE POST! Our Apartment v0.2.6: Complete UI Revamp! Initial Localization! New free Camera! Other news...

Sorry for being so late with the release, but things are finally more or less stable. I started this month with an unfortunate realization and unfortunate news. 

As I probably said before this month or around this time the goal was getting the Steam release out, but reflecting on the state of the game it's simply not ready. Maybe if I could have gotten the UI work done when I originally planned it might feel more viable. But it's more than that.

As things are the game is functional, some content is there. But... there's no progression. Even if I finally implemented the story stuff it would just be what it is. A VN with some isolated sim elements, a lot of external stuff won't matter to individual things. And that's all besides the fact saving isn't really in.

Now to be fair this was always a temporary concept, as time went on I wanted to assess having more global sim/trainer elements. But when it comes to the steam release and what people expect based on how the game is presented. It's likely as it is, it may disappoint people. Not exactly for content, not exactly for quality, but simply not being what they expected the game to be. And not being what they expected on top of lacking the full intro to the game is just not acceptable. Yes, even for early access.

So all that said the steam release is delayed until I can meet those expectations. I know a lot of people have been waiting, and I've been needing it to happen to working towards this for years ESPEICIALLY over the last few months. But if I release it as is, and it gets hammered in reviews, that would hurt the game in the long term and it might never be what I intended. 

I'm dreading posting the bad news on steam considering it's already been delayed so much as it is. 

So what's all this mean?

So for one steam release probably isn't until next year. 

Secondly, while Our Apartment has long had hidden trainer elements, I hesitated to bring that to the foreground cause it brings expectations of global game impact. Well now that global impact seems necessary bringing those things more to the foreground is a priority.

I don't exactly know how this will work or play out in the grand scheme. Expect more numbers and icons and things like that in the overall UI. That's about as much as I can say for now. A lot of it isn't as much adding new stuff as much as it is making it visible, and making more aspects of the game affected by it.

One concern is how making supporter releases is affecting development. The cycle goes like this:

• Feature/rewrite needed
• Features get worked on until functional 
• need for build release around corner 
• I make quick and temporary fixes to things to get things at least somewhat working
• Often those quick and temporary fixes need to be undone later for proper use
• rinse and repeat

In reality, things should get worked on until they're ready, then shown. But that could take time. Maybe this helps with momentum in a way, but I am concerned that doing these releases takes up so much time that could go to getting a more viable proper release. 

The project is no longer simply the scene viewer it was, and maybe the idea of doing monthly or even bi-monthly releases doesn't help. After all, worthwhile content likely won't be added per month anyway, best case scenario for that is outfits not anything else. Not new, full content. So maybe doing that isn't a good idea for the game or supporters. I'm aware some people are aware of this, and don't check the game for months at a time, so maybe maximizing that downtime is better. 

Cause think of it like this, the actual UI implementation was finished just before the month was over I could have done a build release then. But there was a lot of smaller bugs from various small changes. Things meaningless as far as development goes, but major if you're just trying to play it. So I spent the last actual week bug fixing, just to make this build release. 

And to give perspective how much work that is. 

We started implementing the new UI (Excluding simply placing the assets cause that was done the prior month I mean programming level here), around the middle of October, it took us two weeks to practically rewrite the whole game because of how UI driven it is. That's how much we're capable of doing in a very short time. And half of that potential time I just spent doing this build release and that's only for Windows. For mostly surface level work, making things presentable and playable. 

Now do understand I'm aware how long it's been since a proper stable release, so I'm not knocking that. Getting this out is an important milestone. But that milestone probably can't be monthly and I shouldn't promise that it will be monthly. And trying to make it monthly probably hurts more than helps.

So what to expect: Content Focus

Well I can say I probably won't be making any claims to a build per month even as we shift to a content focus, which as of this release we have shifted to content focus don't misunderstand. BUT if the state of the game dictates it because of some issue or another, some releases may take longer even if new content is there and implemented.

But that said WE ARE IN CONTENT FOCUS. So expect new outfits, new animations, and new environments in the coming months. But I may not be pushing as hard for builds as I might otherwise.

What may happen is the game may stay in it's current state for a little while allowing more builds, and content may be added, or based on needs that may not happen moving to certain changes like to support outfit saving. It just depends.

But do know I personally will be taking a break from any programming role and focusing on new content. Which involves some devs stuff, but that will be separate from game functions. I get to do my favorite things which is Animations, Outfits and new environment stuff (I know much of that has been sitting dormant).

About v0.2.6 on Android, OSX, and Linux!

Android, OSX, and Linux are not forgotten! There is a critical memory issue that needs to be resolved. Right now memory usage is around 50% more than what it's supposed to be due to an error in implementation that was caught only like a week ago.

Another problem for android is the camera script was rewritten and is no longer touch compatible until we reimplement those controls. 

Once that is fixed releases should be viable. But it might take a little bit of time. 

About v0.2.6

So now all of that is out of the way, a quick changelog...

• Features from 1.9 released earlier but more functional
• Complete UI revamp! New daily transitions, and UI elements everywhere! 
• The free camera has been rewritten! As a result it is currently not compatible with touch. But thanks to the reworked code and implementation with the new input system touch, and things like controller support are possible! you will note the controls have changed to something more familiar to people who have used illusion game camera controls.
• The game no longer loads the full game at the start, instead it loads at a might lighter title screen. This may be adjusted a bit more later but for now this is what it is.
• Initial Localization support for UI! In settings you can now change the language to a wide range of languages. Unfortunately Chinese and Japanese are iffy with characters processing incorrectly (the font asset is supposed to change but it doesn't!), we'll work to resolve this in the future. Do understand all of the UI is auto translated for now and only UI is translated for now, dialogue is not. We'll be welcoming more feedback on translation in the future for now it's just proof it works. 
• This version is largely stable in terms of function, some issues may occur, but they shouldn't be frequent.

And problems

• Volume control is largely busted due to reorganizing of assets, master volume may work
• Title screen does not play music yet, audio in general has largely been on the back burner
• Animation issues are still present, some animations may have oddities both in motion and poses. These will be fixed soon.
• Sorry but pets and holds still is still not returned/reimplemented, that has some dependencies that need to be figured out again.

Please tell your friends!

I don't usually shill here, but not releasing on steam is kind of a blow, and if I don't ask people might not consider doing it! A lot of things I wanted to wait until after the steam release so I could have the budget to push harder in some areas like assets and paying people for programming on a more dedicated level at least part-time.

I simply don't have the resources to do everything I want right now. 

So, feel free to send the game to friends and stuff and let them know that even supporting on itch helps which isn't monthly. A marketing person I hire even runs giveaways to make sharing the game beneficial. 

So please consider getting the word out.

Thanks for your support!

I know that was a long one, but I hope you guys understand things more. Other updates are on the way! There's a extra special side thing someone is putting in the works currently I'll talk about soon, that will give new ways to support the game involving Naomi! :D

But I won't talk about it until it's ready...

~sacb0y