Alpha Preview Update (June)

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Bug Reports

Incomplete Routes

Shepherds of Haven Development Log

Content Added: 

• 28,000 words of new content

• Ascendancy Festival - Trouble route only

• Trouble’s confession

• Chandry’s (horrible) play

• All of Chapter 9 ported and complete

Continuity Fixes

• The ending of Chapter 5 is more complete and polished if you’re possessed.

• There’s a new beginning to Chapter 8 if you’re possessed (no longer ends in “Incomplete Route” screen).

• Not being offered the position of Commander in Chapter 8 no longer ends in an “Incomplete Route” screen and has a new transition scene.

• Fixed various references if you’re possessed. 

• Halek’s relationship changes to you if you’re possessed. In general, more of a throughline throughout the story if you’re possessed.

Changelog:

Critical Fixes

• Hopefully resolved the significant lag issue affecting some users on Google Chrome. The programmer I hired to audit the project confirmed that implementing this fix completely resolved any lag on his end, but I couldn’t test this myself, as I wasn't experiencing lag to begin with. Fingers crossed this improves gameplay for everyone!

• Fixed a bug affecting Samsung mobile devices that was locking the UI to landscape mode, even when players attempted to play vertically.

• Hopefully corrected an issue with the interactive map consuming more than one time interval when selecting certain activities. We suspect this was caused by rapid or repeated taps being interpreted as multiple clicks, particularly on mobile. While I couldn’t replicate this issue on my end, some adjustments were made in the backend that may solve the problem—please let me know if it continues!

• I forgot that Commanders are supposed to get a pay raise and get paid 200 deucalions instead of 100 every month (starting with the end of Chapter 8); that should be fixed now.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue in Chapter 7 following the bandit pyre scene—players were getting stuck on the line “Above, the embers of the pyre mingle with the cold light of the stars,” and unable to proceed.

• In Chapter 5, corrected a logic error during the wyvern fight with Briony, where flinging rocks repeatedly resulted in some buggy behavior.

• Fixed an issue in Chapter 7 where some players couldn’t progress after the Changelings are invited to join the Order.

• Fixed a missing passage in the Chase warehouse scene where “demanding to know what’s going on” resulted in an inability to proceed. 

• Fixed an issue where players who defeated both Nathe and Briony couldn’t receive the upgraded clothing at the arena shop before dinner.
  In Chapter 8, fixed a missing link in the flirt option with Shery after the labyrinth, where affirming her desire to write a book about Senua previously led to a dead end.

• Fixed a bug where one of Trouble’s day off interludes wasn’t accessible through the interactive map. 

• Fixed a bug involving Prihine’s entrance at the Sun Court. 

To Do: 

• I haven’t yet implemented a way to see any of the prizes or items that MC collects at the festival in their room yet! That will come later!

Notes: 

Phew, this one was a doozy!!! Not only was I out of the country for the whole first week of the month, but I also then proceeded to battle the worst jetlag of my life upon my return–it took us like ten days to recover! We got off of a 16+ hour plane ride where we didn’t sleep at all, fell down into bed at 9 AM, slept until 6 PM, then again at 10 PM to 5 AM, and it was all over from there… For weeks I was falling asleep at 4-5 PM and waking up anywhere from 3 AM to 5 AM… It was horrible!

All of this to say is that it took me a dratted long time to get back into the work groove, and that’s not counting all of the stuff that we booked to handle for the wedding on our return, trying to get  back to my novel, handling all of these waiting emails and appointments and messages… So that’s why I’m immensely shocked by how much work I was still able to get done! Not only did I manage to churn through the last of Chapter 9–converting something like 85,000 words–but then I cranked out 25,000 more words for all of this fresh content. 

It’s all there, folks. You get the Ascendancy Festival (choosing Trouble as your companion only). You get Chandry’s absolutely horrid play. (I’ve said this before, but the only thing harder than writing Shakespearan-style prose is writing bad Shakespearan-style prose that doesn’t even know it’s bad and thinks it’s good). I did amuse myself with Trouble and MC’s reactions, as well as thinking through the many layers of meta where we’re all horrified to learn this play has been going on for a while, and to hear all of the hype about it, only for the context clues to kind of imply that it’s little better than a very amateur, community-level production, not the next greatest thing to hit Broadway, and it’s only the delusional, insular acting world that believes otherwise… 

And, of course, for the Troublemancers, there’s finally a long-awaited milestone in his and MC’s relationship in this update. I hope the wait was worth it! Keep in mind that there are several conditions to get Trouble to confess, including being up-to-date on all of his current day off interludes! It will not trigger if you haven’t done them all, even if you have a high romance flag count with him.

Also, please remember that the Ascendancy Festival takes place in Chapter 8, after the party returns from Wallmire but before Riel, Shery, Mimir, and the clown get knocked into the labyrinth with MC. So you’ll have to reload an earlier save or play through to Chapter 8 to access it. Don’t forget to hard refresh if you’re not seeing new content pop up! 

(Also, I made some little housekeeping tweaks for the itch.io page. Turns out itch.io’s pages and wrappers are a lot more finicky than I thought, so hopefully that doesn’t impact the game itself!)

What’s Next:

More Ascendancy Festival interludes, and possibly even the start of Chapter 10 if I’m in the mood for it! Thankfully, we’re pretty much all done with converting things over from ChoiceScript (except the quests), so I’ve massively freed my schedule up again! 🙌 Hopefully that means less stress and multitasking and more time to write my manuscript, work on Shepherds content, and get back to making things like the Patreon Q&A and short story more regular again!

Speaking of, we’ll be doing a Q&A next month (in the middle of the month, as usual) as well as posting the public demo for everyone to play on 7/7! We’re also awaiting Shery’s room art–it’s already looking so cute! 🐰

That’s all from me for now; cheers, and I very much hope you enjoy this! 🙏

Estimated total wordcount: 1,306,000 words