Hey everyone!

Another development log for you all incoming. Sit down, relax, and have a great time!

In the past two weeks I managed to reach the 1150 render mark! I'm working on the final large scene before I go back to a previous one and add another small part there. Overall I'm quite liking the current scene and I'm confident that the scene will be done by the end of the month (it's quite heavy on animations). That might be a bit in good faith, but I hope I'll like every animation in the first round and won't have to adjust much at all.

As you might have noticed (or probably not), the audio & code section got reduced by a bit. I could've just kept it like it was before, but I wanted to visualize that I'm adding more and more programming stuff to the new version, which might be quite helpful in the end (on my and your end)!

Regarding programming stuff, I had an idea today - because I've gotten the question a couple of times already - to create unique keys to restore a save without relying on the actual save files. Some people might want to start at Chapter 4 without having to replay the previous chapters, but I don't want to add a quintillion choice menus asking players if they chose option A or B during scene X, Y, and Z. That would require a lot of unnecessary translation, and usually people keep their save games secured somewhere anyway. This will also be the main critique point for the new system: if it's worth the time and effort to create. (I probably won't create it for version 0.4 anyway, so don't worry about that.) Basically, the new system would store choices in a key, and you'd have to enter the key in the game, it would automatically set those choices in the end. Since it would take effort to create and maintain, I might release it only for supporters (the lowest amount). But overall I'm not sure if that's worth it at all, since that's time I could spend resting from creating version 0.4 or already planning and writing version 0.5. So I'm very curious what you guys think about this, would it be beneficial for you specifically or not? Drop a comment! <3

I applied for one week off at my day job, the last week of February to be specific, so I can invest some more time into the game development. I didn't really think it would take me one whole year to finish this, but all the small things - updating character shaders, updating the map lighting, doing way more in terms of expressions, and everything that happened in my actual life - piled up quite a bit. Still, I'm working full time beside it, so I'm actually quite proud that I got this far with everything! :)

That's it for today, guys. I hope you understand why this takes basically ages and I'm very grateful that you all stick with me and support me during this time :)! Have a great week ahead and stay healthy and happy!

Your Panda