Development Update! (AFTE)

What's up boys and girls?

It's me, your pal Lykanz!

This time I bring you a AFTE Development Update!

"But Lykanzzzzz, what's AFTE???" - You may be asking...

Well, young Padawanus, AFTE stands for About Fucking Time Edition...

...

Yeah, it's a very bad joke, I know, all right?

Aaaaaanyway, with that out of the way, let's get on to business, shall we?

Here's what I have done on The Inn since Beta 4 came out, buckle up because that's gonna be a wild ride!

1 - NAME REVERTED BACK TO "THE INN"

That's a pretty small thing, but one that should be said. As the proper rework proccess ended with Beta 4, the project's name will go back to "The Inn", that's just to avoid confusion.

2 - PROGRESSION WITH DAY 9 CONTENT

The new content of Day 9 is being created as we speak, so far I was able to finish 3 events of the 12... ish(?) (give or take some) that will be present in the release.

As I was focused on creating the other stuff on this list, I didn't really worked as much as I would like on the actual content, that shouldn't be the case from now on, as all the new features I had planned for this update are finished.

Here's some previews of the upcoming content:

That's as much as I can show without spoiling too much!

3 - NEW STUFF ON THE PREFFERENCES SCREEN

• 3.1 - LANGUAGE SELECTION BUTTONS: One of the new additions to the prefferences screen is the Language Selection buttons. This means players will now be able to change the game's language at any given time, even during gameplay, as opposed to only from the main menu as it was before.
• 3.2 - TOOLTIPS: Another new addition for this update are the new tooltips for the Prefferences Screen. They'll provide a quick rundown of every option present on the screen and what they'll change in the actuall game.

4 - ANDROID VARIANTS FOR A LOT (AND I MEAN A LOT) OF THE GAME SCREENS

Everyone knows stuff plays differently on android devices, touchscreen commands aren't the same as mouse/keyboard. So, with that in mind, I adapted most of the screens on the game to have a different look on android devices.

The changes range from bigger buttons, better element placement, easier to use scrollbars, etc.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

• 4.1 - BIGGER BUTTONS: If you have chubby fingers like yours trully, you'll know how much of a hassle it is to press small buttons, especially on a phone screen. So  yeah, in this case, size DOES matter.
• 4.2 - IMPROVED SCROLLBARS: The scrolling on a grid works fine on keyboard/mouse environments but not so much on touchscreens. The new scrollbar is bigger, thiccer and juicier, enjoy!

5 - MODIFIED HELP SCREEN TO USE GRAPHICAL ELEMENTS INSTEAD OF PURE TEXT

A small change that has a big impact on the overall look of the screen, now it's much easier to tell what button does what.

Here's an example:

6 - REWORKED THE NAVIGATION SYSTEM

A huge change that most players (if any) will notice.

I switched the navigation system to use buttons instead of imagemaps. While the imagemap system is simple and straightforward, it's also clunky and a hassle to maintain.

It's one of those "under the hood" improvements.

7 - ADDED "SH*IT WRITER SAYS" ON THE MAIN MENU (POSSIBLE FUTURE PATRON REWARD)

This is something I started doing for fun and to test some coding practices and it ended up growing into a full fledged feature.

Y'know that small Writer dancing at the corner of the main menu screen?

A new pledge tier will be introduced in the near future where patrons will be able to have a message added to a list of messages the Writer will randomly say.

Here's how it'll look:

The way it works is that, at startup, the game will look for a list at my web domain and display whatever is on that list.

As this updates the list at every startup, you won't need to way for the next update to be released to see your message there. Your message will be added to the poll of messages as soon as you tell me what you want it to be!

It goes without saying that there'll be some reservations to what can be put in there, but I trust you guys have common sense... You guys do, right?

8 - WEB UPDATER

Another big feature for this update is the introduction of a Web Updater for the game.

From v0.05 onwards, all updates and fixes for the game will be available through an in-game updater that will uhhh... Update the game at the player's request.

Here's some screens of it in action:

Don't worry though, the full game will still be available for download the old fashioned way.

The Web Updater also works with patreon tiers and you'll be able to update your game if it's on early release for a specific patreon tier only if you belong to that tier. If you don't, this message will be shown:

After the early release period is over and the game goes public, everyone will be able to update their games using the Web Updater.

The list used for the web updater is updated on a daily basis though, that means you may have to wait a bit to be able to use the Web Updater after you pledge (shouldn't be longer than 24 hours though).

9 - IN-GAME PATREON STATUS

To go with the Web Updater, there'll also be a Patreon Verification feature where you'll be asked to input your patreon registered e-mail, the screen looks like this:

Once you input your e-mail and click on the Patreon logo, the game will check if your e-mail is present on an encrypted list at my web domain and "unlock" the game for you.

The game will remain "unlocked" untill the end of the current month, when you'll need to redo the patreon check.

Also, to make it easier to tell when your game is "unlocked" or not, a visual element will pop-up on the main menu screen once you verify your e-mail:

"But Lykanzzzzz... You keep saying the game will be "unlocked", what you mean by that? Are you locking features behind a paywall???"

Well, I'm glad you asked, young Padawanus! The thing is, NOTHING will be locked behind a patreon check... Well... Except for the web updater feature during early releases and one other thing that I'll explain now. No, don't worry, it's NOT the save feature...

10 - NSFW PIN-UP CHANGES

This will come for some as a controversial feature, but bear with me while I try to explain the reasoning behind it.

The weekly pin-ups were always meant to have two variations. One SFW open for the public and one NSFW exclusive for patrons.

After some time, I decided to implement the pin-ups into the game as a gallery of sorts, where people would be able to see them at their leisure.

The thing is, at the time I didn't had the means nor the knowledge to implement them in a good way and I ended up deciding to pack even the NSFW versions with the game.

Over time I started getting messages from patrons saying they were disappointed about it and that I wasn't being honest with them when I said the NSFW pin-ups were exclusive to patrons, as, sooner or later, everyone would be able to enjoy them in the game.

To be honest, it's a fair point and they are in their right to complain about it.

So I went on, did some research on python code and stuff like that and came up with a solution.

Taking inspiration from the Web Updater, I developed a pin-up downloader for the game.

From now on the game will be packed with only the SFW versions of the pin-ups and patrons will be able to download the NSFW directly into the game once they verify their Patreon e-mail.

The downloading process looks like this:

• 10.1 - PIN-UP GRID: This is the good ol' pin-up grid, out of the box everyone will be able to see the SFW versions of the pin-ups.
• 10.2 - NSFW PIN-UP DOWNLOADER: This here is where it's at, after verifying your Patreon e-mail, you'll be able to download all the NSFW pin-ups to your game and they'll be available for visualization after you relaunch the game!

Again, you'll just need to verify your Patreon e-mail, go into the pin-ups gallery and click on this text at the bottom of the screen to start downloading all the NSFW pin-ups:

The process runs on the background and will only be stopped once you either close your game or it finished downloading all the pin-ups. That means you'll be able to leave the gallery screen, load a save game and start playing as it downloads everything.

Again, I know this will be a controversial change and not many people will enjoy it, but it was requested by a good amount of patrons, so I had to respect them and do it.

11 - FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Well, I guess that's it for this development update! I hope you guys enjoyed it!

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me here on Patreon or at our Discord Server!

Constructive criticism is always appreciated too, so feel free to hit me with it, I'm a big guy and I can take it. ;)

See you all around!