Season 1 - Update

Hello,

First, I apologize for not making a Dev Log in a while. Those on my Discord are a little more up-to-date.

There are reasons for it, none of which I will get into today because... Well, let me deal with it emotionally first.

I will address it after the release of Season 1. But right now, I can't deal with it. I need my head in the right space. A lot happened behind the scenes.

Season 1 has been in the Steam Review queue for a few days, and I'm still awaiting their reply. Maybe I have to fix something, etc.

In the meantime, I'm working on S2 & WiAB's next update. I've also contacted new music artists for Season 2 and it looks like I'm about to sign 16 new songs for S2.

Oh right! SG is now also available for wishlisting on Epic: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/summers-gone-c1ec51

I've also contacted GOG for a developer account, and I'm waiting for a reply.

SG Season 1 is rated as a Pegi 16+ game on Steam and Epic. This could change after the review.

In one of the last Logs, I mentioned that I was under a lot of stress from the rework, etc., and if you followed Discord, you know it got even worse for multiple external reasons.

An hour before I wanted to upload to Steam, my PC bluescreened, and the boot SSD died. The timing couldn't have been any worse. It took me a few hours to figure out what went wrong.

After I checked my backups and saw that Backblaze forgot about 30% of the files, I can tell you... I almost pulled an SG MC after he had too much contact with some girls.

Then I checked sync and saw that sync doesn't update by date, but by name. Thanks for nothing, sync.

I managed to fix it and get the PC running again in less than two days, but my PC is feeling slower now. Daz especially feels like it got hit on the head. But it still worked, and it was enough to finish the bar scene.

After Steam, I will get the new Workstation I've talked about for a while. I saw that some people thought I already had it. No. I got two A6000 Ada and replaced the cards in my current workstation.

Now that this PC feels like it had a stroke, I will indeed upgrade to a new workstation and make this one another slave PC for animation rendering.

Thankfully, I do already have the Adas. This means that the workstation will be cheaper now. ~ 15k€

Steam testing took longer than expected for one reason. The Steam Deck.

I don't have one, but I asked the Valve Dev Distribution team for one. But it will take months until I get one, and the only testing we could do was through a member of my testing team, who had a Deck.

It works... But the damn trackpad isn't recognized, and I tried everything to fix it. Sadly, googling for specific Renpy-Steam-related issues is hopeless.

I still need to finish the German version/translation.

The Light

As stressful as the past weeks have been, something gave me so much energy—something I've been waiting to say for a very long time.

The rework is done.

While I "suffered" under the rework, I know you guys did too.

I seriously want to thank you guys for going through this with me. It was brutal. You guys had to muster up a lot of patience, and I know exactly how it feels when a game you like spends a significant amount of time on a rework. (Some even get stuck in limbo.)

But it's finally done, and while it asked a lot from us, I say it was absolutely worth it. The render quality is night and day. The adjustments to the dialogue also make everything flow better, especially in Chapters 1 and 2.

A big thanks for going through this with me. Seriously guys.

Lightroom says I did postwork on 2309 renders for the Full.

Around 1900 are new renders, and the rest are renders I adjusted.

Examples of what I adjusted:

• I changed Amber's blouse transparency in Chapter 3. It was cringe that you could see her nipples and everything, and it undermined the storylines I have for her. It was too early, and SG still followed lewd logic back then.

• I added bubbles to the Jacuzzi scene in Chapter 4. The scene now looks much better. Less tiddies tho. Still some flashes here and there, but it adds some mystery to it and hides the shitty flat water texture.

• I adjusted the Nami Lake scene only for the Steam/Epic/GoG version. She's not topless in that version.

• A lot of little things were adjusted to prevent license issues in the future.

Here are some previews of some other scenes I redid too: (4K attached at the bottom.)

Old Parking space scene (I changed Ayua's car.)

New

Old Chapter 3 - Pre-class meetup

New

I also reworked the shower scenes for Mila, Nami/Nia & Bella.

This one was posted on Discord before.

Old Bar scene

New

I have built a new bar environment in preparation for Season 2. The bar opening was a significant event, and I didn't have another bar asset back then.

For some reason, the bar also doubled in render count. Previously, it had around 65 renders, and now it's close to 130.

I added something new to the bar scene and adjusted the dialogue. In addition to the group previously at the bar, there's a second group now.

I will make another post after the game is through Steam's review process and I have a release date.

For bibi info, follow Discord. There's a channel called Bibi-News where I sometimes post news that is not big enough for an entire Dev log.

The rework is finally done, and I still can't believe it. I was so busy that I didn't notice it for a few days until someone mentioned it.

It's done, man... Dobby is free.

After the S1 release, I will showcase the new UI for Season 2... And boy, does it look amazing.

I will also talk about the next focus in terms of quality improvements.

In Season 2, 'Sounddesign' will play a significant role.

Dev Logs will return to their usual Bi-weekly cycle after the release, and yeah... Let's hope Steam/Epic/GoG takes away some of the uncertainty and dread I felt in the past weeks.

• Ocean