Hey everyone, Syon here! Not too long of a gap between Episode 3 and Episode 4 this time. We're getting better tat this, huh?
If you don't know by now and it wasn't obvious already, National Park Girls - Episode 4: Eternal Evergreen Part 1 has been released! Join Eve and Yosemite as they go on an adventure across the park to uncover long forgotten secrets about Yosemite's past. Meanwhile, Yellowstone and Zion play a very existential game of Uno.
I hope you enjoy this episode of NPG as much as the other episodes! Episode 5 might take us a little longer just because of how many new art assets there will be (hope you like new outfits), but I'm sure it will be worth it.
Speaking of Episode 5, you may notice that your saves are (once again) broken upon downloading Episode 4. We're really sorry about this and figured it wouldn't happen again. However, we had to overhaul our sprite engine in preparation for Episode 5, and as a result, things went kaplooie. Whoops. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it, as the engine overhaul was necessary for efficiency and optimization. Otherwise, NPG would run sluggishly on your hi-tech pro gamer PC.
To explain it in a little more detail, here's our programmer, Kari. Take it away, Kari!
***
Howdy campers, today is the release of National Park Girls Episode 4! Last night, we pushed out an update to make the game compatible with it, and prepare for Episode 5. The sprite engine NPG was originally based on was extremely heavy, inefficient, and mostly a holdover from old tech that was designed before this game was even planned. It's always been a problem that caused NPG to stutter at points, which for a visual novel, is pretty crazy.
Fixing this would have required remaking how the sprites work completely from scratch, and it always ended up being something we didn't have time for during the development of episodes 2 and 3 and pushed back. With episode 5 on the horizon, we knew we had to change it before it was too late. Episode 5 is by far the most ambitious one, there's a ton it adds, and if we used the old engine the workload would have doubled. There's a lot of technical and logistical reasons why, but this was the only way we'd be able to keep making episodes for the game without it exploding.
There is a downside to this, unfortunately. Retooling the game to have it do what we need it to for episodes 4 and 5 will break saves. We weren't really sure if it would before we pushed the update, but there was a chance of it. Between potentially breaking saves, and giving National Park Girls the finale it deserves, we chose the latter. Your gallery progress and achievements should be unaffected, but we know getting back to a specific place in the story can be annoying. We're continuing to look into a solution for it, and will keep you updated on progress.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and we're going to work as hard as we can to bring our ambitions to life, and make a grand finale worthy of National Park Girls.
Thank you for playing, reading, and understanding.
Happy Trails!
Kari
***
So there you have it! We deeply apologize for the trouble, but we promise that this is what's best for NPG and will make for a far more pleasant experience.
Enjoy Episode 4! We're in the home stretch now.
- Syon