Progress Report #7.5 - (0.04 Extra information)

Hey hey! I thought I wouldn't have to make this post a "Progress Report", but since 0.04 had some problems and needed to be delayed, here we go.

First of all I want to apologize for everyone for the delay, and I will now address the problems this version had/is having, but a bit of context is needed:

I will be using 0.02 to 0.03 as an example of the way I usually worked on new updates:

Jump between developing the game and drawing the content > Early Access > Hotfixes (If there is no bugs, I take a break for the remaining time of EA) > Public Version

After the Public Version is released, I would restart the cycle. But for 0.04, I wanted to try something new.

Instead of jumping between developing/drawing, I focused first on developing the game and then I went to properly draw the content.

(While I was still sketching things here and there, as you guys could see on the reports, I was mostly doing the sketches and then went back to development.

That was one of the reasons the bats/monsters on the Progress Report #7 were censored, they weren't finished drawings).

Now to the bad part:

When I made that report, I already considered COMPLETED the "development" part of the game, so then I focused on the "drawing" part. (Reason why Vaulty's rework was on the same report)

And that was a big mistake of my part, while at first glance the development was "completed", there was some game-breaking bugs, like:

• Bugged events that were BREAKING the player's progression, to a point that previous completed events were reset and locked the player to further progress. (Main problem)

• Saves getting corrupted due to wrong values of variables/broken switches. (caused by the first problem.)

• Random crashes when exploring/talking to some NPC's. (also caused by the first problem.)

It also caused other things to break but by fixing the first one, they would work again.

Again, I want to make it clear that this was my fault, I unfortunately overlooked these problems mostly for playing with debug tools, which allows me to freely change variables values to test out the events.

And yes, I did play it "normally" to test it out, and that was another problem, that annoying bug wasn't happening all the time, there was runs that it would break, and there was runs that it wouldn't.

As you probably figured out already, unfortunately I was "lucky" enough to not have it breaking when I was testing it out normally, which made me believe that everything was working and I could just finish the drawings.

When I made the announcement for the early access, I was just finishing a few more drawings and then the update would supposedly be done.

But two days before the release date, I found out that stupid bug when testing out the final build.

What I thought it would be simple to fix, it took me two weeks to fix, since I had to properly locate what was breaking the game and why, which I found out it was multiple events, meaning I would have to rewrite these events logic and stress-test them to make sure it would not bug out randomly again.

Unfortunately one part of the new content had to be postponed, Cammy's content. I've attempted to make a minigame for it (similar to Raven/Hu Tao minigames), but it also had some problems that I can't deal with without delaying the update even more, so I will move it for the next one as an extra.

I believe I finally fixed everything, so why the game is not out yet? Because now the Phone Menu is causing me trouble and is crashing the game.

(Similar (but not the same) to what happened with a few people previously, there's some examples at the #help/#bug-report channels on the Discord server).

I'm looking into it and will try to have it fixed as soon as possible, and after that, if nothing else happens, the update should be out.

I want to apologize again for all this trouble, it was my fault for not testing it out properly and I will make sure that the next update will be properly tested by multiple people and myself before making any release announcements.

Now, before the patch notes, I want to showcase just a bit more of what this update will have:

Following the addition of new bats (unlocked by crafting/quests), I wanted it to have a special menu, where the player could properly read their attributes and equip them, and this was the result:

(This gif was recorded with all the bats unlocked, but if the player don't have a certain bat unlocked, it will only show a silhouette of it and will be described as Locked)

A small update were also made to the Stats Tracker app on the Phone Menu! (Thanks for the suggestions!)

Now the player will be able to check their money and the current HP, MP and Level of both Dipper and Mabel (if unlocked)!

The visual of the bar on top of the screen were also updated to follow the new style of the menus.

• (You can check the rest on Progress Report #6 and Progress Report #7).

NEW CONTENT:

New Lusty events for Vaulty, Calli and Gura (Cammy's content postponed)

2 new characters (1 customizable)

8 new maps

Rework of Calli and Gura's questline (more info at the latest Spoiler Diary)

Rework on Vaulty's design (more info at Spoiler Diary #7)

6 new scenes:

• 3 statics (features small expressions variations)

• 2 animated

• 1 interactable (8 actions)

• (60+ new images in total)

New title menu visuals

New UI visuals

New sound effects/BGMs

COMBAT

New combat UI visuals

New bats and skills for Dipper

Mabel Magical Girl's skills reworked (focus on support)

Rework on consumable items

New combat maps

4 new enemies (1 new Boss fight)

Tweaks on the enemies damage and HP

Tweaks on the loot of defeated enemies

More enemies will now appear at the first areas of the forest after completing the Graveyard event

ADDITIONAL

Rework of the game's economy

Updated old plugins

Relocated some teleports (moving from one map to another)

Fixes to some grammatical errors

As always, thanks for the amazing support, the game kept growing even with all this trouble, and we already got past 1000 members on Patreon! (And also got our first Ancient One!)

After releasing 0.04, I will be making a special drawing for this milestone!

Thanks for reading, see you all again soon!