Good evening!
This month's news will focus on the Dating of the Future Demo release, general updates being made to the game, and Mel's route.
Well, it's finally out!
Isn't that just brill? Yes, well I fucking hope it is because it was a PAIN IN THE NECK!
Jesus Christ, you will not fucking believe this.
For a start, Steam won't allow you to play the demo version of a game if you have access to the full release version. This makes sense for a consumer, I guess, but that means that I have basically no way to test DTF's demo within Steam's systems. This means that if there are problems for the end user that wouldn't affect me for some reason, I'll basically never notice them.
I'm not saying this is the sole reason, obviously I could've found this if I had checked extra hard, but the demo released with a showstopper crash that I didn't catch for hours.
... The fuck do you mean this is MY FAULT?! How could I have known??? Besides all the other ways.
Anyway, the demo build should probably be stable and work properly now. I have no idea. Again, no way of checking. All of my usual testers can't check either because they have access to the full release version, too.
Sigh.
Let me know if the game explodes the moment Minnie opens her mouth, or something.
(That was actually the trigger for the crash, by the way.)
The truth of the demo is that it's partly there for when the Steam October Next Fest rolls around. I need to put my best foot forward for this game, and I can only hope that this is it!
The game was planned to launch with a lot of features, and as development has progressed, I've been setting time aside to add them in.
The final plan was always to have four major extra features: a sound room, a replay gallery, a concept art gallery, and achievements. I'm happy to say that most of these features are implemented, if not complete.
The replay gallery and sound room are as complete as the game is. Anything left to add is simply a reflection of the game having more content to finish with r4 through r6.
Recently, I've been implementing achievements. Many of them are inaccessible since they revolve around planned and upcoming content, but the system has actually managed to work its way into the game relatively easily. Last thing left is the concept art gallery, I suppose!
Anyway, obviously many more subtle features are being added and implemented; not to mention made more efficient. Images and choice menus now appear with flashy animations, almost all buttons in the game now move slightly when hovered to give better visual feedback, et cetera.
There isn't really a deeper point to all this, or anything. Game progress is game progress.
Mel's route is going smoothly. No way of telling, but the writing is certainly going a lot quicker than it did for other routes. I suppose that's probably just because I've gotten faster and more efficient in the writing process. All of the backgrounds have been completed, and from here on out it really is just a matter of pushing through until the writing is done.
Again, I don't have anywhere specific that I'm going with this, but I at least want you all to know that the game's content is moving along at expected pace.
Progress is going smoothly! That's genuinely all I have to say about the situation.
Thanks for reading!
-Marina