Dev Update #29

Hello Everyone!

I hope you're all doing well. I wanted to update everyone on what's been going on with Ripples and the work I've been doing the past couple of weeks.  So after thinking about it for the last couple of updates, I've finally decided it needs to be done before I get too far into the story. What am I talking about exactly? I need to rework Episode 1. I know returning players are not going to want to hear that but I want to do it before I go any further. It's important to build this foundation now before I get too far.  Also because I think it might break saves. *Sadge* When I started creating episode 1, I only worked with Honey Select and Renpy for less than a month. I jumped right in head first and learned as I went along. Probably not the best idea. Lmao! Doing this won't take as long as a normal update would. For one, I don't have to do all the coding, writing, sound, and music for the update. And two, the scenes in Neo are already set up and all I have to do is load them up and fix the lighting and put my current presets on them and do some poses. In fact, I've finished 5 out of 12 scenes (most of this done in the past two weeks) already and have almost 400 images already done. So I'm hoping I can do all this in a reasonable timeframe and get back to creating Episode 5. I don't have an ETA of how long this will take but I'll be updating you guys.

In episode 1, the images are not of the best quality, the coding is simple, the writing wasn't the best, and the game is lacking important features. The writing is fine for the most part, but there is just a couple of parts I want to touch up but nothing major. The story is not going to change, just fixing a couple of parts. I might even extend some scenes so returning players have something to look forward to.  Most of the time will be spent remastering the images and capturing them in 4k and compressing them down to 1080x1920. Something I didn't start doing until Episode 2.
I will show some examples down below of the improvement in image quality.  

Another thing that I want to add is more features. Some of these features have been requested for a long time. Things like character bio, information about points and routes, and recaps. I'm not the best at Renpy when it comes to custom screens and all that but with some help, this should be a problem. I've already got a start on what I want to do. Since cell phones are a big part of Ripples, I want to have an option to be able to click on a cell phone symbol at the top corner of the screen and it will bring up some of these features.

For example:

Next, I will show some new remastered images. I think this will be the biggest improvement for the update and will set a better tone for the start of the game.

Here are some examples.


Original:

New:

Original:

New:

Original:

New:

Original:

New:

Original:

New:

Okay, that's probably enough examples. The comparisons don't seem too drastic when the images are smaller so I will attach the images before if you want to take a closer look.
Anyways, those are some of the things I have done so far and some of the things I have planned.  If you guys have ideas of features you want to see in Ripples or any improvements, list them below.

I hope you are all having a great day so far. I will update you guys again soon.
-Jestur