Progress update

Apologies for leaving this update for so long. Covid really knocked the hell out of me, but thankfully I am more or less fully recovered now.
It was frustrating to lose more than two weeks of production time while recovering.

The past ten days or so have been very productive though.
A combination of renewed energy and focus, and finally getting all the issues with my main computer sorted has been good.
I'm back up to 16 cores and 32 threads of AMD Ryzen processing power as opposed to the 4 cores and 8 threads of Intel power on my beta machine.
I've also worked out how to reconnect all the assets in my rendering software which became an issue when I had a drive failure a while ago.

The extra rendering speed and more efficient workflow has allowed me to power through the complicated remaining scenes in Chapter 8.

The website updates we implemented at the end of 2022 appear to have been very successful too. I've hardly had to spend any time chasing down and resolving technical issues.
And that means more time to be creative!

Chapter 8 update

I guess this is what you all really want to hear about right?

When I split the old Academy Day Four into Chapters 7 & 8, the latter half became quite a small episode.
It came in at about 900 images/pages; so similar in size to the 'new' Chapter 1.

Because there are so many parallel narratives and story choices in Ch8, you could end up with a very short playthrough which missed about 80% of the content.

I was never really that happy with the old version, in that the critical story elements felt quite rushed through, just to get to the end of the day.
There was also a lot happening in a short period of time.
If you played one scene, it would remove the opportunity to play one or two others in that gameplay session.
Of course, my games are all about replay value, but some of the options didn't exactly end well, so there wasn't much incentive to play those variants knowing you were doomed to fail.

The 'success' pathway was just too limited and linear.

Chapter 8 expansions and additions

Of all the chapters so far released, this one has the most new material.
That original 900 image count has swelled to nearly 3000!
I've used the remake process to expand the existing scenes and add in a whole new set of scenes and story paths.
There are a couple more different ways to succeed now, and more things to do on your way there.
There is also more time available on Thursday afternoon, so you can fit a whole lot more in before your meeting with Principal Valentine.

Chapter 8 will have four bonus scenes. Three of these are completely new and one is a remake and expansion of an existing scene.
The bonus scenes allow more overall story possibilities and options along with plenty of the usual fun stuff!

I'll share a bit more info about this when we release the game.
You will however require 650 credits if you want to unlock and play all four bonus scenes in Ch8.

Predicted release date
I'm hoping to finish a few things finished off today which will allow me to get the new chapter up for some initial testing over the weekend.
Then there are a few other elements to complete next week.

With that in mind, the earliest I think that we can release Ch8 will be the week commencing 6th February.
It may take a little longer perhaps but considering the two weeks lost to Covid, I'm think we aren't as far behind schedule as we could be.

Chapter 8 has been a very complicated episode to remake.
The new material is really good though.
I am however looking forward to powering through the relative simplicity of the next few chapters.

dsp3000