Thanks for holding out. That especially goes for anyone at this tier. This kind of support goes a long way in keeping the game going. And after waiting this long, I wish there was more too. But as said already, changes are coming to prevent this kind of wait again.
There's lot of thing I've played around with this in update. Much of it being AI. Not to take over the game or its animations, or writing. But as a tool. Stuff that can take simple still renders and give them a little motion. The only scene that seriously made use of AI animations was certain scene later on. Most should be able to pick it out rather quickly. Like I said, it's simply to give a little extra life to certain renders. Largely in the closer/transition scenes. AI music is affordable, and far less tedious to find quality in. Yeah, some of the lyrics might be eh, and it might be a little formulaic. But it beats spending hours sifting through mediocre work to find something that halfway works, and that's for those that choose to listen to the game's audio. Which I don't think there's many of.
Since I've had someone bring it up already, I know there's not a lot of lewds, and only a couple scenes in this one isn't adding too much to that. Just keep around until Season 2 and on. You'll be rewarded for the wait, I want the world and characters/dynamics to be built before I dive too far into the lewd content. Episode 4 is about as dialogue heavy as Episode 3 was, and while MC keeps the same energy as his usual self, this episode goes a little deeper into the protagonist as well as both levels of his past. Continuing from before he met Laura and him in court. The events that started to shape who and what he is now. All while multiple forms of danger get closer and closer to himself and the people cares about. Episode 4, and some of Episode 5 are going to feature a lot of foreshadowing and some hints. Stuff that might not make sense now is going to later.
In this update, I put a lot of emphasis on getting the spelling/grammar/double words/etc. out. As much as a human and a bit of Claude can do, and trying some new things. I know my animations aren't really on par with the rest of the visual fidelity, and it's something I want to work on, but one of the harder things to wrap my head around for some reason. Me and keyframes are like dogs and cats sometimes. Anyways, onto what everyone's here for:
Changelog:
1,943 renders. Was closer to 1,970, but there were some duds that I didn't really like or had some major stuff wrong with them. Brings us to a total of 6,100 renders.
11 Daz-made animations
18 AI-Generated animations, 1 of which is a longer one (multiple minutes) that was mentioned above
124 new songs (typically 3 per scene, but longer and shorter will get more/less.), 37 SFX Tracks, most are AI or partially AI generated
Removed glossary button on top-left. Was a bitch to manage. It's far easier to just add the def tag per-word in dialogue/exposition.
This did result in a small error where lifting scene hint/tip is hidden in the upper left by letterboxing during flashbacks/or those who have letterboxing on. It should be there at beginning of most scenes and it peaks through. If I do a 4.5, I'll fix that. Otherwise it's a small enough issue to fix with episode 5.
Added a "Previously" section/choice at the beginning. In all honesty, it's pretty shitty. I may fix it to be a bit more depth. but there was a lot of content to fit in there and was struggling to fit a enough but not too much. So, I just handed it to Claude who did an equally bad job.
There's a couple of the AI animations I'd like to fix as the lack of looping is quite noticeable, but mostly an under the hood issue that'll be doing.
Thorough spell/grammar/etc. check for all previous episodes. Will be doing a massive code/bug/consistency clean-up at the end of Season 1 following the final episode of to ensure a clean as possible save carryover from Season 1 to Season 2. More on that soon.
Added a translation button in settings, preparing for future translations. AI, human, volunteer, or otherwise.
Hope to implement a correction system for this, as well.
I know AI isn't especially ideal for some when it comes to translations, but average/good translations from AI are better than no translations. Human translation just isn't affordable for the amount of content in-game right now.
Think that about cover the changelog, at least off the top of my head. Will add if I think of anything.