Date Ariane 2 Alpha version 0.6, House pics done!

The past couple of months I've struggled making pictures for the game, mostly because I was getting cataract removal eye surgery, which led to a lot of anxiety that kept me from working.

Last summer, I redid all of Ariane in Paradise, and while it is a shorter game with fewer pics, I'd like to be on that pace again.

But I did manage to get version 0.6 done. If you have already downloaded an earlier version, you can get the new version at https://arianeb.itch.io/date-ariane-2

If you haven't downloaded before, go to https://arianeb.itch.io/date-ariane-2/patreon-access to verify your eligibility.

Some people had problems last month with itchio, and the fix is to have two links.

New feature 1!

As a bonus, I added background music. A couple of months ago, I had a short convo on Bluesky with a "starving" composer. Took a listen to his music and found it pretty high quality, so I bought the rights to use it in the game.

The pack had 20 moody musical loops, so I picked 11 fun or relaxing tracks that I believe enhance the game. These are controlled in Preferences with a new "background music" volume control.

Loop music tracks are designed so that the end of the track fades into the beginning, with no break. I set the music to change every so often on a rotational basis through the game. On the positive side, this keeps the tracks from feeling too repetitive, on the negative, the music might not fit the tone of the scene you are in.

New feature 2!

The success or failure of dates is due to two subroutines called "sleepover" and "intimate". These are stats not available in the on screen display, but people like hints as to why a date didn't go as expected, so I created a routine to explain it after the failed date ends.

Some dates end with an explanation already obvious, this routine just displays when it's vague. In this example I was testing dates inside the house. Even a simple walk to the park could have made a difference.

Coming Soon!

Now I get to focus on the out of the house pics, starting with the park and convenience store, because I have those sets built. The biggest slow down is set building or set converting to Daz.