End of week report

Hey guys!  Sorry my reporting has been infrequent recently – it's because of the new way we're working.  The whole team (including some new freelancers, who the game's awesome Patrons have paid for) is engaged on the project in a way that I can't remember ever seeing before; it's awesome to be a part of.  :-)

But it means that we're advancing on several taskings at once, rather than in big chunks on one single tasking, so it feels like there's less to report on at the end of any given day.

But, this week we:

• Fixed access problems to the website, and also fixed a DNS configuration problem with the image server that was making it run slowly (which should speed up the game for everyone)
• Worked on writing; we streamlined some existing scenes* (in line with the MFAGA plan), and also did preliminary work on the new improved Bangkok! 😮  
• Fully documented the basic game mechanics, so coders and writers will be able to work directly on scenes without needing to ask me questions about how experience points or skills actually work
• Based on this documentation, designed a new, cleaner system of "variables" that will make the code faster to work with in future
• Redesigned the UI menu so it's more user friendly and has everything we need
• Did something really cool with dice rolls (which we use a lot in sex and action scenes), which makes them both faster to code and more engaging for the player
• Created and tested a cool new technical feature that makes the avatar load blazingly fast.  This is the kind of feature nobody asks for – including me, it was cooked up between Lara and Mihail – but experiencing the game with no avatar lag makes you wonder how you lived without it.
• Plus a bunch of other little things, including our lovely illustrator Victoria taking a few days off to work on her suntan 👙

What's next
You'll notice that a lot of the things we've been working on this last fortnight are design- and tech-related; we're focused on these things right now because they're the foundations of the next stage, which is rapidly creating content.

We still need to finish some more design/tech things first – I expect that will be our focus next week (and maybe also the following week – it's complex).  I'll let you know when I've got a clear picture of the next release date.

Okay!  I'm going to have a light weekend (except for some project admin, which I actually find relaxing).  Hit me up on Discord if you have any questions over the weekend, and I'll post another status report early next week.  

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* One reason for streamlining the existing scenes is to give you fewer, but more meaningful decision points, which we can then use to shape the narrative of the whole game.  Just today we worked on a new decision point we're adding to the LIONESS sequence, about which esclavage said: "I think this is really interesting & very important to the story in terms of writing.  I can't think of a bigger choice so far in the game than this."  

I'm so excited about what we're working on and I can't wait to share it with you guys 😊