Stawer
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Progress Sneak Peek - August 9
🕑 Added 2021-08-10 00:40:11 +0000 UTCHello everyone and welcome to a new sneak peek of Lucky Paradox!
This week will be a longer post than usual, as a lot of things have been happening, so I would like to separate everything in three parts.
First, you may have noticed that last week I didn't post the weekly report about the game development, the reason behind this is that I was working for many hours to have the update finished before the end of the month, with very few hours of sleep in between, so I didn't have the strength to write the weekly post, so I think you deserve my apologies.
And now let's go with the news!
1.- Progress of the Next Update
This week has started the development of the second part of version 0.7, which will include Gia's side story and new interactions and content for Layla. Most of the content will be focused on the Miss Pumpkin, giving more plot depth to this place and the Gallagher sisters.
But before I start adding content, I like to first get everything ready to work on a solid base on which everything will be added. The first thing has been to create the missing areas of the Miss Pumpkin, which are: The kitchen, Gia's room and the abandoned room. These places have been created from scratch, so they have taken a little longer than necessary to complete, but I’m done with them.
Gia's room:
Miss Pumpkin has also been added as a new location that you can visit during the night. This way we can interact with Layla during these hours and make room for future content. All the Miss Pumpkin locations have received their respective night variations, and they are now working in the game. The coding part has been faster than before, thanks to the advances implemented in the last update.
Night variations have been added to other locations, so we will also be able to visit the pier and the different beaches during the night. With this, all the new night locations that will be available during version 0.7 have been completed. So, for now, only one location remains to be finished: Iris Barrie's farm, but this will be added during the last part of the development of version 0.7.
I have worked a bit on what will be the script of the new content with Gia, as it will have a great importance during this update. But for now, I don't want to give any more details, as I want to leave the surprise for next week.
Dozens of interfaces, visual, sound and game story consistency bugs have also been fixed. Thanks to the help of MasterWizard, we have done an important sweep of what are bugs with hours of testing, so now the game feels much more polished than ever.
2.- Performance Issues
With the Enhanced Edition, many people have experienced performance issues or crashes during their play time, so I've been doing a lot of research to provide a solution to this.
Apparently the problem is caused by the new image rendering that the engine Lucky Paradox is made on, called renpy, uses. During the development of the Enhanced Edition, all the tests were done in renpy 7.3 and the resource consumption of the game was halved, so the game consumes much less RAM than in the old version. It was during this process that I decided to use the latest version of the graphics engine, renpy 7.4, as I thought that I like to always think ahead and be proactive in terms of development.
Many will say that it's never a good idea to upgrade a game engine in the middle of a development, and I was an idiot, but it's done and now I must find a solution.
Timmy: But Mr. Stawer... Why don't you just go back to renpy 7.3?
Sirxtias: Fk… Whisper* I forgot about Timmy.
Stawer: Screams like a little girl*… Wait, you’re dead, aren’t you?
Timmy: It's thanks to Miss Luna who helped me communicate with this side just to ask that question... Seeee youuuuuuuu ....
Stawer: I see, well, what Timmy says is fine, there is the possibility to work with renpy 7.3 again, but in exchange for that, the progress made with the saves in the Enhanced Edition would be lost again, and I don't want that, and neither do you, I guess...
So here is the dilemma...
What can I do?
Do I go back to renpy 7.3 and progress is lost again, or do I keep working with renpy 7.4 despite the performance issues?
The answer I have found is... Both....
From now on I will make two alternatives to play Lucky Paradox, one compiled with version 7.4, since most have no performance problems, and I don't want to destroy their progress in the game. And a new Lucky Paradox compiled in renpy 7.3, so that people with performance problems can play without problems. So, there are both options and it's up to you to choose which one is more comfortable.
Timmy: And doesn't that mean double the work?
Stawer: Oh, please Timmy, would you stop please?
Of course, it means double the work for me, and it will also take me twice as long to upload each version for you to download, but it's still fair, it was a bad decision on my part and you don't deserve to bear the burden of that mistake.
3.- Patreon's Updates of Lucky Paradox
Since I have started with the development of Lucky Paradox, I have never found a way to announce each update without it being confusing or strange.
In the beginning, they were released just like that without any special name, so it was hard to keep up with each new update.
The second attempt was to split each release into parts: A, B, C and D, but this was also confusing, and I felt it didn't reward enough the people who donate to support the development of the game.
I finally decided to go with a more traditional Alpha, Beta and Final format. However, I also want to release a month-to-month update with new content for people of higher tiers. This was impossible to do during the Enhanced Edition, but now that new content is starting to come out, I can go at a faster pace.
My idea now is to divide each major update into three parts:
- Alpha 1: In this one the first part of the story will be playable; it will be available to every Alter and Nova.
- Beta 1: Has the same content as Alpha 1, with some minor additions and bug fixes, it will be available for every Candidate. (Should be available approximately two weeks after Alpha 1).
- Alpha 2: In this one will be playable the second part of the story (Included above), it will be available for every Alter and Nova. (Should be available approximately two weeks after Beta 1)
- Beta 2: Has the same content as Alpha 2, with some minor additions and bug fixes, will be available for every Candidate. (Should be available approximately two weeks after Alpha 2)
- Final: In this one will be playable the third part of the story (Includes previous) and will be available one week for Alters and Novas, that way there is time to fix problems and bugs. Then it will be available for Candidates and Citizens, then Friends and Tourists until it is finally released to the public. (This is going to work with the same times explained in the tier description.)
This is keeping in mind that updates will now go public faster than before, with development cycles between 2 to 3 months.
I am also thinking of adding voting so that Patrons can decide what new content will come in the secondary girl updates. But I still must figure it out how to cover this xD
What do you guys think?
Is it still too confusing?
If you have a better idea to improve this section, I'm willing to listen to all kinds of suggestions.
Finally, I say goodbye and wish you all a beautiful week!
See you soon with more news <3
Comments
And as a follow up, as for the doubling up on work... That's entirely your choice, but we'd hate to see you burn yourself out doing all kinds of extra work.
Yes! I'm actually kinda excited to see Gia's story, I had almost forgotten about her after the first few interactions.
MasterWizard
Always my pleasure to help you guys out! Love Gia’s room and can’t wait to see more for her. You are the best Stawer
Kieran
Was looking at my phone bored in a restaurant soooo xD But the new release systems seems like a good compromise of speed and reliability
Stawer
omg thats fast reading xDD
Kieran
Sounds good to me buddy. Questionable on the double compiling but thats up to you. Can't wait for more Shizuka 😉
