re:Dreamer Alpha 0.14.0

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Hey folks, sorry for the delay! I had a major life event happen to me during this development period that I cannot go into details about that made the gauntlet of getting sick 4 times 2-ish months ago look like child's play.

Pic related, it's me (or at least, my astral self) (this pic far more relevant than it was last month).

Man... I really want to talk about what happened to me, but I gotta keep at least a little OPSEC despite it being an open secret...

re:Dreamer (0.14.0) gets rid of one of the last holdouts of placeholder purple-haired Zoey, the Day 1 Zach dorm room masturbation scene, and replaces it with amazing new art from TiltSHIFT (that I can't show off more than the previews as Zoey's uncensored vagina is front and center in all the variants of it).

Pic related: it's purple-haired Zoey realizing her life is almost over as the dream sex scene HCGs are all the art of her that's left in the game outside of the color variants for the Zoey sprites.

Because of my recent life developments and how much that took up my life, this release is a bit lighter than usual, despite the changelog looking so long. Additionally, I decided to eschew the sex scene with Britney and Zoey I was touting for now as Myumi is going to be taking a bit longer with the Molly sprites than I was expecting and he was going to be doing that CG set (and I don't want more Barbie dolls slamming into each other; Britney deserves a full, proper HCG).

Changelog:

• The Zach dorm room masturbation scene has been heavily reworked with gorgeous brand-new art from TiltSHIFT and almost entirely brand-new writing. Espeon has reverently called it "quite possibly the best vn tg scene in all of existence" and while I'm not willing to go that far, it's very, very hot.
• This means that the writing and expressions of the whole Zach dorm room masturbation scene (not just the CGs itself, but the prelude and the aftermath into the "therapy" session too) are now up to modern standards. In fact, everything besides the starting day of Britney's route to the middle of the mall date (once they go inside) and the Keisuke route from the start of the showers to the end of the phone call on day 4 is now up to modern standards in terms of overall polish with expressions consistency and variance, writing, animations, SFX, and overall presentation. There's still a lot more to polish up (I shudder thinking of what is involved with cleaning up the Keisuke frat party), but I now consider RD to be in the "modern" era and almost entirely free of the messier days of its roots where I had a lot less of an idea where it was going. It's humbling and yet inspiring, if that makes sense.
• Zach has a new tattered gray hoodie and sweatpants outfit that which shows up during this edited writing (although its true use is for the start of Rich's route for a secret reason). It's a hand-me-down from his dad that he's held onto for housework, and at the start of the visual novel, it's the only thing he has that covers fully covers his new female body. It's a wildly complicated outfit that I can't justify leaving as a non-custom outfit as it has so many variants, and as counter-intuitive as it seems, the outfit will break less in custom mode because of the way I built the layers.
• Some of Keisuke and Britney's writing has been adjusted for continuity of the new tattered sweats. I still need proper briefs for Zoey, but "boxers" are still in use in the meantime.
• Zoey's "men's jeans" in the sprite viewer have been more accurately renamed to "mom's jeans" as they are hand-me-downs from Samantha. Zach is very reluctant to wear his mom's clothing now that he has a woman's body that looks so much like hers, but desperate times can call for desperately measures.
• I edited Zoey's nude breasts in Pose A to make them perkier and rounder to match the intended shape and firmness for updating them later (this also made them 5% bigger). I think they look damned nice, but standardizing her cup size across all of her outfits is simply beyond my grasp. TiltSHIFT or Myumi will have to be commissioned for that. Don't worry; the old nude Pose A breasts are still in the game and can be changed with a variable toggle, but I am leaving that option out for you players at this moment.
• Thanks to Espeon, the phone text messages now save the sender after saving and reloading. There's also data in the list for who sent what for what time and what date they sent it that will be used in later releases of the VN.
• I added a new menu choice to help Britney with her theater stuff without making it a bet during the Day 2 arcade date (or at lunch, if the question never got posed or Zach won the only game he can win on the second bet). Choosing it triggers a variable an rewards a bPoint and a bit of new text (the one in the arcade that shows up by avoiding Mrs. Puck Man both times is quite to my liking :3c).
• I added a line to make Britney a little pouty about not having sex on Saturday night (Britney Day 2) as she was kind of looking forward to it.
• I added a few more author's notes in Keisuke's new writing during the sex scenes.
• The IQ part in the day 1 lecture is now locked behind Awkward >= 4. I finally got yelled at enough to gate it despite how I consider it relevant for the story because I'm sick of it causing drama every few weeks. In its place is new writing that is a lot more blunt about the issues Zach has with his genius mom.
• The precise variable control of keisuke_devotion is now "None", "Soft", or "Hard" instead of a True/False that relies on other variables to check the severity of how yandere Zach/Zoey is acting.
• The maximum amount of bPoints available at any given moment are now tracked as a variable internally. This (and the change to the devotion variable) are in preparation for on-the-fly adjustment of route variables as a Sustainer patron feature.
• The C.H.E.A.T.S. screen now includes an adjustment for the "therapy" answer because of how important of a variable it is in every route. Backer patrons get in-game adjustment to it and the rest of C.H.E.A.T.S., as usual.
• The "therapy" answer is now a persistent variable that saves in saves to make the above not roll back. Making this work destroys save compatibility, hence the major version change. You should really be using the route jump menu for saves if you're not sure, tbh...
• The menu choice to go to the C.H.E.A.T.S. screen in-game is now clearer about how the system can change the length of the story Zach tells since that length has been a persistent issue from readers and I'm sick of being blamed for being a bad writer by impatient people unable to read a settings menu made to address their concerns.
• Fixed "moaningzoeyunknown" being improperly defined after changing how Zach/Zoey uses variables for the text colors. She's only been used twice, but now those times won't throw an error.
• The question for the way to start Britney's route got further clarified to explain that Zach is willing to be manipulative in the shorter stub one. The choice box for the phone also got redone to line up with the look of the other choice bars.
• I had somehow mislabeled Keisuke Day 10 as Day 9 and Keisuke Day 9 as Day 8. That's been fixed.
• While it's borderline unreadable, the PNG flowchart is now being included again alongside the legible SVG one as it allows for a quick glance of the new or edited content in the way that the SVG doesn't as it's hard to zoom out properly on some devices.
• I fixed a few minor animation issues in the Britney Day 2 arcade.
• A number of small typo fixes and expression errors fixed.

As usual, the full changelog for every release can be found at https://justpaste.it/rdchangelog

re:Dreamer (0.14.1) is out April 7th, 2023. For it, I'm polishing up the start of Britney's route and writing that poll about adjusting Zoey's breast size to a consistent "very large" (spoiler: we're not going to be able to adjust as much of her sprites as I thought, but the nude layers, underwear, and key outfits can get fixes).

Samantha's full sprites are set to drop during this development period but I want to make sure that she gets a full update for the blursed Mom Route (disclaimer: there is no incest in this route), and then Molly's sprites drop soon after, and then Britney gets those CGs, and then in June or so I go back to Keisuke's route with new art for him.

Until then!