The marketing lecture, part of the business course, is now available in the beta branch.
Changes to the in-game smartphone
One question I often see on various platforms is why the smartphone is not always accessible.
I have overhauled the smartphone interface to make it available during almost the whole game. There will still be times when the smartphone is disabled, such as when Kimberley takes the player's phone during the pool event.
Outside of the usual areas where you could access the phone, the bedroom freeroam, the location choice screen, several smartphone features will be read-only. This means the player can check relationship stats, photos, tasks, etc., but not change anything, including the home screen picture.
Other characters can see your choice of the home screen picture, and you can't change it at the last minute before someone sees it.
The Settings app will mostly work the same, with minor differences, including a toggle to always display or hide the mini-phone icon.
A new smartphone feature, which conversely only works outside the original areas, is a favorite app, shown with a camera icon.
This allows you to save almost any image in the game to a favorite gallery. Since this is part of the smartphone, certain images can't be captured, and some images aren't compatible.
These favorite images won't be available to use on the smartphone, as there's additional information on the home screen to identify which characters and what type of image it is. Hence, the home screen is still limited to the 'look closer' images.
The Favorite gallery is a separate option on the main menu, independent of playthrough or save files. You can't add an image more than once, and to remove it, hover in the top right and look for the trash icon.
Animations can be added, although too many could impact the performance of the favorite gallery. Your feedback is important to shaping how this feature evolves.
I have been working on several smaller animations to give a little more life to the characters. I'm not entirely happy with the results and will need to spend more time to bring these to a higher standard. Not wanting to delay the update further, these have been pushed to the side for now.
However, I have included one of these animations for your feedback. It's in the early part of the game when you're first introduced to Catherine. The animation plays after you look closer if you choose that option.