News about January 2024’s Update for Sylvia.

Dear Patonnettes and Patrons,

Here is some news about January 2024’s Update for Sylvia.

Code

First of all, let's talk about some technical aspects.

I spent the whole month of December porting Sylvia's code to Re'Py 8 to benefit from its improvement. Now it's almost done. I'm happy with the result, even if some glitches remain to fix while writing these lines.

I admire the work done by the Ren'Py dev team on Ren'Py 8

Having said that, I had to decide about porting the boat sequence. I coded it using a custom pseudo-3D, which needs some work to port correctly. As this sequence is now narrative, its original interactive design is no longer relevant.
Should I port my custom solution, deal with its limitations, and maintain it? Or should I use Ren'Py's new built-in camera3D functions?

Both options take a significant amount of time, so investing this time in using the Ren'Py camera3D is the better decision.

The visible benefit for Sylvia is using high-resolution art instead of being limited to 128-pixel tiles.

Here is the old boat interactive sequence using pseudo-3D:
And here are images from current tests of the new narrative boat sequence using camera 3D:

The boat sequence might be skipped for January's update and added in subsequent releases.
I'm sure you prefer seeing Léa wearing an enticing swimsuit now rather than her in a boat ;)

Artwork

BBCChan and LaLaBun continue to work on branches from the 5th Chapter.

Valérie's branch artwork is 100% complete.
Léa's branch artwork is 100% complete.
Sylvia's branch got it’s last scene lineart completed.

If you haven't seen them yet, please check my previous posts on it (Patron only for obvious reasons):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/anticipation-to-95979652
https://www.patreon.com/posts/team-pleasure-2-94714554
https://www.patreon.com/posts/valerie-made-90951085
https://www.patreon.com/posts/valeries-outfit-90037650
https://www.patreon.com/posts/sylvia-lea-at-86437801
https://www.patreon.com/posts/valerie-new-87900028

Next in the line is artwork for Léa's branch Alternate path and other alternate paths I can't disclose yet.

Voice Acting

All lines for improved scenes in chapters 2 and 3 are recorded. I expect new lines for Chapter 4 to be delivered in a couple of weeks. It will take a few days to implement them in the game.

Talking about lines, here is a brief explanation of how this works.

Everything in Ren'Py all starts with some script. Ren'Py attributes a unique identifier to every line of dialogue.

The game plays an audio file with the same identifier so you can hear the spoken line. I maintain a database to ensure I can find what dialog a file is referring to.

Thanks to this, I can generate dialog scripts for Voice Actresses and split their recordings accordingly to generate the audio files.

It's a long but worthwhile process; hearing our character's voices brings lots of life to the game.

Please tell me in the comments if you want to know more about how voice acting works for Sylvia, and feel free to suggest other behind-the-scenes subjects you would like us to explain.

Thank you for your patience and support.
With Love,
- Manor