2020 Girl of the Year Special and January Devlog

pics(4k): Let's burn that 2020 and let's eat 2021!

 In the past 25 days I'm being having a little adventure becoming a better coder, Need Calls. Was unexpected and has delayed 2 weeks the release of 0.19, but is finishing now.

Summary:

-0.19 almost ready
-0.20 scenes keeps been rendered!
-Lots of important fixes to performance and playability done (Vram fixes and Videos)

In-depth:

1. All the technical work is finished for 0.19

2. All crashes or black screens going between Hartlepool and Pirate Cove dissapears on low end graphics cards:

-The Pirate Cove has an 80% Vram consumption reduction, Meanwhile scenes 90% and Hartlepool just maybe 20%. I'll call it a day for fixing many problems users had with the size the game had by 0.15. Hartlepool still needs trimming but see 3.

3. Vram fixes will continue as I focus only on 0.20

In the way to make 0.20 I'll keep trimming that vram consumption; I don't want to postpone more 0.19 specially because is a little release. As probably said before, goal is to make all the game run better (or run) in old computers.

4. Other Engine Changes:

-I started putting the animations in the game in Video format (I'm not yet an specialist on After Effects but I'm working on it). Quality wise doesn't change anything in the game; Just changes my workflow, but most importantly a very lower consumption on Vram via animations. (also will start making the game less hard drive consuming. Video ups CPU usage but was low to start with.

-Not only I learned to use Addressables (a system that is also used for making DLC in order to cut the game in more halves (that now only works internally to load and unload textures from Vram), but that will be useful too if I want to release additional pieces of optional content.

-The conversion from Unity Animated animatios to Video will be a very long travel, as I put all new animations in video and I convert previous long animations to video. That means some of the worst previous animations will have a nice remake with audio included.

-As you know I'm starting to make the final looks of all the UI.
0.19 will show the general new workflow but All the Vram fixing haven't let me time to incorporate things I wanted (the working Camp system and a sneak peak on the new Romance Menu)

5. Other Good News:

-I've been informed that next update of the engine I use to save/load games, will load games faster (but will be still more slow for those with low graphic cards until I fix most of the Vram issues). This is an important change on the engine so I've been told is Beta Tested profusely.

6. Some days to code the rest of 0.19 scenes while I keep working on 0.20:

-Same as happened with the 0.13x small release half year ago, this is a very small release and most work has been technical, but a very needed one; Testing will be extensive -or intensive, depends on the testers ;)- before is released to public.

-During the periods that I could afford it (Learning After Effects and coding the vram fixes) I've been rendering more scenes for 0.20 and I'll have a good headstart. Work doesn't stop!

I cannot wait to release this one, any problem detected and solved, and be full-time rendering that big release (As comprises Penketh, Kaelkirk, and Gypsy Camp, and has quite a lot of content, maybe I'll divided it in two, I'll see...)

Very excited to put all my time on it. Next releases will automatically include the vram fixes so we're starting right this time.

So keep tuned in for soonish updates ;)