Build 0.4: "Horse Humour"

FINALLY.

Very glad to get this out, for many reasons. The main one is that it's been promised to you guys for like a year, and you deserve some more Flax in your lives.

It's also been something of an albatross around my neck since I first had to start delaying things last year. Not that anyone said it that I know of, but I hated the idea that I might seem to be one of those devs who fades on a project when things get tough. I'm so into this thing I can't even tell you, and that's never gonna change.

So for all that and more, I'm very happy to get it in your life. A few minor things to note: I removed the in-game music that I added in the previous build; it's kinda "eh" and I'd rather stick with silence for now while I figure out how to handle it. I left it on the menu screen since that fits. I also got into the DALL-E beta literally two days ago, so I used it for some of the BGs and have been *very* happy with the results. Ultimately I want bespoke backgrounds, but for now it's a huge step up from stock images. I intend to revisit some of the existing BGs and make them more fitting, plus it means I can provide more targeted BGs for scenes to bring it to life a little more. Fun!

I'll be taking a short break to recover after the huge effort of editing this build, and then get started on 0.5. Along with that, I'll be implementing a new dialogue tag system to allow me to express narration alongside dialogue, instead of having to have it in standalone lines. This will give me some great flexibility in expressing character emotions and such, so looking forward to that :)

Finally, a note on old saves: while testing, I ran into some issues with variables in v0.3 saves having been marked as deleted in the Ren'Py state. This isn't supposed to happen, so my best guess is an incompatibility after I upgraded the engine from the version I was using last November to the latest one. You can give your old saves a shot, but they may crash; if they do, unfortunately you'll likely have to start a new game. You can send me screenshots of the errors on Discord if you'd like me to confirm (there's always a chance it's a normal, fixable bug, despite my testing). Apologies, but that's how it goes sometimes with beta builds.

Thanks,
Zaggy

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v0.4 CHANGELOG

• Finished entire second day. New words: ~60,000.
• Improvements to ugazi introduction to better explain what the impact is.
• Added encounter with Ta'kom.
• Added introduction/encounter with Werner.
• Added Babbelas route & sex scene.
• Name change: Banga -> Rhangani.
• Finished Rhangani introduction.
• Added Jags route.
• Finished Zef route & sex scene.
• Added Nabo introduction.
• Added Dalarius introduction.
• Spelling corrections across the game.