Hi everyone!

Happy May day!

Here’s just a little status update on the project and some stuff that’ll be happening this month.

First and foremost, as you can probably see there is no new Unity build out. We hit a fork in the development road where a big decision came up: We could either make a temporary mockup of our combat system with a placeholder AI system so that Chapter 15 could work and we could pretty quickly publish the Unity Rebuild, but then have to go back and re-fix everything later.

Or we could just bite the bullet and get everything made correctly right now, so that our backend systems will be fully futureproofed for upcoming content and so that we won’t have to spend twice as much time trying to rebuild systems for a second time later on down the road.

So, the call came down to me and I went with the latter option. This does mean the Rebuild will be delayed a few weeks (Snow is out next week and then we have to get preliminary dev testing done before we put it out to patrons for wider rounds of testing) which I’m sure is understandably disappointing, but it’s all for a good cause. We’re taking the pain now instead of dragging this crap out any longer than it has to and once we’re done with it, we’ll be much lighter on technical debt than we otherwise would be.

The good news is of course, everything will work better and consistently when it’s finally out. Plus for the most part, my role in making the rebuild has lightened up significantly so I’m back to actively developing and writing new content. If you’ve been on the Discord server, you’ve probably already noticed how much new music and new characters have been previewed for Ch22 and beyond. I know I sound like a broken record here, but there’s going to be an absolute assload of new content waiting for you guys as soon as the Rebuild is finished.

Just to put that in perspective, the Prologue currently is the longest single segment in v1.27 at about 1000 clicks to get through. Ch20 is about 1000 clicks with a little less than double the word count and Ch21 is 1500 clicks with far over double the word count. Together those two chapters have just under 1400 new renders. And both of those chapters are ready and waiting for you guys as soon as the Rebuild is up, so I’m not even counting the things I’m currently making.

Anyway, since I’ve been completely and utterly wrong about launch dates for the Rebuild so far, all I’ll say for when it’ll be is hopefully by the end of May. Patrons with testing benefits will have access to a test build before that. In the meanwhile, I’m full steam ahead on Ch22 which could easily end up as long as Ch20+Ch21 combined due to it’s end-of-arc status (Like Ch15 was), so there’s plenty to look forward to in the next month or two.

Oh and just to make it up to you guys, I'll be doing TWO gravure sets this month. I think I'll just enable multi-voting on the next poll and do a set for 1st and 2nd place.

 And of course, if you have requests to use don't hesitate to ask! I *like* doing requests for you guys, it's a very refreshing change of pace and a lot of the ideas you guys come up with are funny as hell. You aren't bothering me, so don't worry!

As always, thanks for sticking with this wacky project. You guys are why I can do this so many hours a day after working my IRL job.

Sincerely,

Story Anon