Progress Report

Hey y'all, sorry for the radio silence as of late! It's been one thing after another on my end. We've been making progress, just perhaps not in all the ways we'd hoped.

On the topic of iOS, the only way to avoid my full legal name being embedded in every build we produce was to register for the Apple Developer Program as a company. Sigh. A lot of hassle to not be doxxed, huh? So that's done. After that, Apple decided that my business credentials and identification here in NZ weren't good enough and required us to reach out to an American business analytics firm (...dafuq) to acquire new identification from them... to put all this in perspective, to produce an Android build right now, it would take a few clicks and around thirty seconds... and it wouldn't even dox me in the process! And we haven't even begun the process of getting Sileo on the App Store, this is all solely for the privilege of assembling builds. Something that already required us to spend over a thousand (NZ) dollars on one of their computers, not to mention buying one of their phones to enable real-world testing... 

That's where we're up to with that at the moment anyway. It's taking some time for this firm to come back to us, so until that happens, all we can really do is wait. I really have to hand it to Apple. They can make what should be a simple process unfathomably complex, expensive, and downright hostile better than anyone. But with all the money burned thus far, the sunk cost fallacy (also known as late-stage ligma) at least ensures I'll try and see it through...

In terms of our non-ligma-related activities, I apologize for our slower progress this month. While said ligma has certainly chewed up a disproportionate chunk of time and effort, I've also transitioned to a new medication which has resulted in some degree of withdrawal and the unfortunate reality that the new medication isn't the silver bullet I'd have liked. Of course, I hadn't expected it to be, but a small part of me at least hoped. That aside, I've had some real-world things to deal with, and all of that has resulted in me spending less time than I'd have liked on preparing this next content update. 

With that said, tonight I'm hoping to have 20x1 complete, or at least playable from start to finish pending some editing and polish. Currently, it's about halfway done with a rather unusual and unexpected opening sequence which hopefully you'll like. Realistically it's not the kind of sequence that can wind up being too long. The remaining necessary plot beats can be summarized in a sentence or two, so it's all a matter of delivering those in the most entertaining way possible before moving along to 20x2. 

The new artwork for this sequence includes a background, an illustration using that same background, and a sprite variation. The first two are done and look fantastic, I know CurryCatz is very proud of these so hopefully you'll really like them too! As for the sprite, CurryCatz is working on this as we speak and expects to have it done in an hour or so. I'd love to show you some of this new artwork, but there are spoilers throughout, so please just take my word for it for now!

Alas, 20x1 alone will not be substantial enough to justify a release, so please be patient with us! 20x2 shouldn't be a dramatic undertaking and can feasibly require no new artwork, so once 20x1 is done, we'll aim to have 20x2 done and dusted fairly quickly after which we'll gear up for release. 

As things stand, I wouldn't expect the iOS build to be ready in time for the next update, and as this build will require sideloading, something that is technically possible on iOS but about as easy and fun as pulling teeth, it's hard to say if such a release will even be viable. If not, a likely heavily-censored App Store release may be the only way forward and I would not expect that any time soon. If sideloading is sufficiently viable however, I expect to release this build here on Patreon first in beta form. More news on that as things progress. The positive news is however that the testing I've done so far on my dev device (A 2020 iPhone SE) has gone exceptionally well - I've encountered zero issues and performance is excellent, even in typically problematic sequences such as the sex scene on Day 11 of Tai's Route. So as far as I can tell, Sileo itself is ready for iOS... now, we just have to wait for Apple to catch up.

As a small interjection, remember that no matter what happens with Apple, Sileo is playable on iOS via web browser. It's not perfect by any means, it stutters like mad when buttons are pressed, and some devices can't seem to get any audio, but for most iOS devices, it at least works. These issues are out of our control to fix and relate to how Ren'PyWeb functions in WebKit, the browser framework Apple requires all browsers on iOS to use. Ren'PyWeb explicitly does not support WebKit due to these limitations, however the impression we were given early on is that Ren'PyWeb wouldn't run on WebKit full stop, and clearly, it does. Ren'PyWeb is also being rebuilt for Ren'Py 8 and Python 3, so there's a chance that the new version will rectify these issues and work better on WebKit once released. As yet, I'm not aware of any release date for this new version of Ren'PyWeb, but all going well, it won't be too far away. 

Anyway, that's about all I have for you for now! I'm going to get stuck into 20x1 and see if I can wrap this thing up today. Wish me luck!