It's the "It's with the testers..." update...

Sorry, I know I said I'd be quiet for a bit but even I didn't think it would be this long. The main reason for the delay is I managed to kill the game stone dead. Like, totally.

Oh, it played fine. Worked perfectly in fact. Ran smoother than a new Rolls. It just had the slight problem of once you were past a certain point...saves no longer worked. Which isn't exactly a bonus feature.

How? I still don't -know- exactly. Something to do with the call handling for routines in the Python code interfering with the save code but damned if I know for sure. In the end I had to strip out the Python code and replace it with Renpy code.* The irony is I'd wrote the routines in Python to make it more stable as I use so many of them in this chapter.

Why didn't I spot it before? Good question. I test the game by using the developer module feature in Renpy and so just jump from section of the game to section of the game by typing where I want to go, amending switches etc and playing it that way. No grey screen of death, no odd behaviour, the game itself ran just as it should. But this once I was getting fed up of having to type in a pile of variables and used the save feature - only to find it reloaded scenes away from where I was. Anyway, crisis over, although I hope to hell never to have the sheer tedium of just re-writing stacks of code ever again. 

So we'll see what the path testers make of it. This is the version of the game that I think is ready for release and so they are looking at things such as do all the various path switches work, checking that black MC's suddenly don't get a white sister and all the NPC's react as you'd expect based on the decisions you've made. They also have an eye out for any graphical boo-boos (so "clipping" etc) that I might have missed. I think it should be pretty solid in all those respects. The only "heart in my mouth" moment I have is what they will make of the lewd scene with Trisha and the mechanics for that scene. This is the first proper NPC lewd scene and the basis for them all going forward so I have some nerves over it to be honest especially with it being thousands of renders of animations. I mean I like it, but the question is will (as the proxies for you) they? We'll see.

Still a few things to do, with the biggest being file compression. After using my usual methods, i.e. the way I've done the earlier chapters, the file stands at over 7GB. Compressed. (as a guide the previous last three chapters together came to just over 3GB). Well, I did say it was a large update no? But I have a variety of different ways to handle this and I did set the file structure up in such a way that just a chapter Four download should be theoretically possible if I get my head around the coding.

I'll do a further update in a couple of days, meanwhile I'll start attacking and clearing my message pile.

Once again, my apologies for the delay. A few piccie previews behind the $1 paywall.

Notty

* For those wondering what the devil I'm blathering on about, a simple analogy would be that Renpy is to Windows what Python is to MS-DOS. So Renpy sits on top of a Python code. Due to the sheer number of call routines in this one, I'd coded in Python to ensure it didn't fall over...