10 pic bowling

Today is probably the last chance I will have to work on Redus until next weekend now as I'm back at work so I did some photoshopping and have all the sex pics ready for the second sex scene with Jenny (You get one or the other, not both in one playthrough). With the pics loaded into the game writing the scene shouldn't be too difficult and I will try to reduce the variety this time around as the shower scene had roughly four different paths with further minor variations based on your body configuration turning a six paragraph scene into roughly 25 paragraphs. This time I will try to keep to 2 paths where possible, less replayability but faster progress towards the next update.

Herpy Nude Year everyone!

The Halo 5 beta has been sucking up my free time but I did manage to get the date with Christie squared away.
As I had expected nothing sexual happens here but it does cement your relationship with her and I think the whole thing is rather sweet. At the end of the episode if you get a good ending I'm planning on adding an epilogue where you choose who (if anyone) you want to end up with. This decision would be carried on through the rest of the series if I continue with it and you can only choose those you romance during the game. Jenny will of course be the easiest as you have a lot of history together but I also want to have at least Christie, Sonia, Mark and Rebecca (Alexia is also a planned option right now but it I decide it is too much work I will let her go). Preston will not be an option and nor will Nigel, I may give Reg a shot just for the comedy factor. Ultimately the decision would not have a major impact but it will likely result in one or two character exclusive scenes further down the line.
I still need to tidy up some of the loose strings post-date to ensure I don't leave too many bugs in play but I will soon be moving on to writing one or two sex scenes. It's long past due now with Jenny being the only fuckable character and a limited number of masturbation scenes scattered throughout. If I don't add more soon I will keep putting them off.

Happy New Year and I hope you all go out and find/make some awesome games to pass the time while I slowly build 0.5 up to where 0.4 should have been.

I still can't believe she's gone

I've added a few more phone conversations with Christie and set everything up for her to invite you over to watch a movie. I will be clear now, this does not lead to sex. I may have a little experimental touching or something if I feel it fits but unlike Jenny she doesn't fully accept you as you are and it felt like I would be betraying her as a character if I tried to force something. I will be adding sex scenes for other characters soon but this is not one of them. I will try to make it funny, warm, touching etc. so that if you like her you get to spend that extra time together. So far I have enjoyed writing the lead up to it so I'm confident that what I end up with will be a positive event for myself and anyone who plays the game for more than five minutes.

I won't be doing any more before Christmas but I do have next week off work so I will try my best to get at least a couple of days dedicated to Redus, it's far past due at this point.

 Alright, with that I'm going to go back to playing Akabur's awesome Witch Trainer and mourning the end of The Legend of Korra. I really hope they decide to start working on a new Avatar show because this is one of the best universes around right now and there are few enough good western animations these days. So much feels.

 

Talk is tweak

No major work this weekend but I have been going through my archives of notepads and seeking out everything I've written on Redus and fixing parts of the game that conflict with the updated lore I have added to over the past year. There are still a few minor (and at least one major) plot issues that I would like to resolve for the next update, parts of the current story that don't quite make sense any more. The scope of the game has changed a lot since inception and some plot points were incorporated but never revised as most of the game was rewritten. I should get them patched up soon and hopefully get some new scenes written over Christmas. Still a long way off 0.5 but I doubt there will complaints about lack of obvious changes this time as there was with 0.4

Carry On Christie

As the title implies I've been working on Christie today, specifically on conversations over the phone. I've added some 300 lines of dialogue which will build up towards a new hidden event. There's a lot of work still to do before all of that is done but when it is I don't have any more content planned for Christie outside of accusing her of something at the end but that is a long way off yet and won't be very in depth. In other words Christie will soon be basically complete and will be the first character to be in that position. After her I want to get Mark done so that covers most of the bases, and then Jenny, because... Jenny. Yeah.
Halo has undoubtedly slowed my progress this week but I get two weeks off at Christmas and since it's been 7 years since I got a present that wasn't clothes or edible I'm sure I will plenty of free time then. Assuming I don't buy myself GTA V.
TTFN!

Sunday, Ruddy Sunday

Got a decent amount done today, more than I had expected. First off I added additional conditions to ensure that you can't get to the strip club or meet the fisherman before your transformation, as well as saving me from having to work on reactions for several characters it also avoids a few story conflicts. I meant to do this earlier but it slipped through the cracks.
Next I added reactions for Billy the Barman and Bob the Dock manager so that they acknowledge the fact you no longer look like the same person. I also fixed Langstrom's reaction where he was checking if you look female rather than if you have changed. This won't affect most players but did cause potential conflict, particularly in the future.
Finally I wrote 200 + lines of new dialogue with Christie which will lead up to taking your relationship further with her. I fully intend on having that complete in this version. I have two sex scenes planned for her but I haven't decided if I'm going to have both in the next update or to focus on someone else. I have two more planned for Jenny, one for Sonia and a few bonus scenes but obviously as each has lots of potential variations they take a while to write and ensure they are working correctly without being too generic.
Anyway, that's how I spent my Sunday. With Halo coming out in two days I doubt I will be spending much time on Redus over the next couple of weeks but who knows, I didn't expect to get much done this week either.

DFTD - now with post!

Tweaked a few of the images which had developed jagged outlines, I doubt I found them all but it is usually an easy fix.
I've also cleared up a few more bugs, added a few entries to the library books and added room image display commands onto every piece of furniture in the game. It annoyed me how after you have examined something in your inventory or spoken to a character the image would usually stay there until you left or replaced the image with another. I didn't want to make the image disappear after examining an item as that would require an extra Click to Continue press on every object with an image and those things annoy me enough already, this way you can still examine everything as normal with no extra input but the pictures won't stay there blocking the room image forever either. Of course it did take a while to add the command (even with copy paste) onto every examine, inspect, use, open, close etc. trigger for every furniture object (well over 100, I'm not even going to bother counting). As a result I'm done for the day.

It's not going to be like this everyday you know!

Normally I wouldn't have time to do all of this during the week but I've been ill the last few days. With that tidbit I've done some more today. First of all I deleted every image from the game and added all of the updated versions (in case you wanted to know, the game is 29MB without images, I just thought that was pretty cool). After some initial problems with RAGS thinking that many of the pics were videos I believe I have them all working again along with a small number of new ones. When playing through to look for missing images as usual I noticed a long list of bugs, mistakes and a few lines of dialogue that I couldn't stand to see exist any longer. They have been sorted out and I have implemented the urinal in the mens room at the strip club, I honestly thought I had already written it but there is no evidence to suggest that is the case.
I may or may not be back at work tomorrow but I know that I will be busy this weekend so I don't know when I will get another chance to get some more done. I have a small number of major bugs to grapple with before I start adding more content and there is an awful lot to add.

Happy Shopper

And with that, every single image in the game (and a few not in yet), has been converted to the new format, I was surprised by how many artifacts were left on several of the partially transparent images, that should be mostly cleared up now as I trimmed each image before hand to ensure accurate boundaries. Inventory items are scaled to roughly 400x400 with a max height of 500 and a max width of 600, this should provide a decent sized boundary around each of them to ensure that no item takes up the whole window. Characters will use up more screen space than that as you would expect and some use more than I would like as better scaled source images were not always available (for example, if the original image cut off the top of the head and both shoulders, rather than try to recreate parts of their bodies, I had to stick with the aspect as given. There were a small number of images where I did end up adding artificial shoulders to alleviate this problem, especially when the source images are square).
I haven't put the pics into the game yet, that is my next task. I just hope I don't miss any, there are far too many images to replace one-by-one (128 pics at last count), so this will be a bulk task.

I'm a regular shutterbug! Well, not really.

That's the location pics done and I managed to get all of the character pictures done as well. All there is left is a handful of furniture images and the 30+ inventory images. Once they are done every image in the game should be 800x600, an improvement over my original stance which was to try to get one of the axis as close to 500 as I could get (hey, that was big on my old monitor). Of course the actual image quality won't be much better and in cases where the original was blown up anway, they will look a little worse, but the consistent dimensions certainly improve the interactions. (If you are wondering, I am not simply blowing up the images used previously, I am using the originals which are a detailed as I could find and scaling down). Some pics, especially the locations, will look a bit better but I don't want to try for any larger sizes as the sheer number of images already slow down the game considerably and compounding that problem too much would likely result in more crashes as RAGS seems to give up easily if there is something it doesn't like.

Not even worth a post really, more like a stump

I took a break from gaming today to get some more of those image adjustments done, I managed to do some 70 images. There are roughly 30 left to do before I can move onto objects and then I still have to do people so there are hundreds yet to do but the improvement is worth it. Mostly it is just a case of standardising the resolution (I'm trying for 800x600 where possible), for the characters and items I will also need to resize them with transparent space. I'm also re-visiting several of my edits that I did in GIMP to improve them. This is an example of how much better they look:

The main advantage to this will be that moving between rooms should look cleaner as the image box won't keep resizing, and the items won't be switching between small in the center and filling up the whole box.
I'm sure you would rather I was finishing up the plot or something instead, but every time I have played through the game the images have been my number one gripe and I want to fix that. I'm not sure what difference there will be to the file size in the end, I am also trying to standardise the file sizes, but as I am doing all optimisation outside of the built-in image tool this time it could go either way. The pics should look better though and that's the main thing.

With this new shell softener, only the toughest bugs stand in our way!

Bugfix is live @ http://www.4shared.com/file/JvSmP-nJba/Redus_E1_-_A_Touch_of_Frost__0.html

Fixes include:
Spelling mistakes and missed words reported by Blubbif
The club should no longer be accessible pre-change
Cameron Clark (the Hall of Records receptionist/manager) has his reaction back! It turns out it was deleted during a crash last week and I must have restored to an earlier version than expected.
If you've spoken to Jenny post-change her phone conversation should reflect that, I had accidentally selected less than or equals rather than less than during a condition so it played the same message regardless.
If Jenny calls you back you should be able to talk about her findings later on in the week, I'm not 100% sure this one is fixed but there was a condition still active that was no longer relevant that would explain the erroneous behaviour

These bugs were reported but are not fixed yet:
The dock manager ignores your gender change, after looking through his conversations it will take much longer to write his reactions than I had hoped so I will push this back to 0.41
Kues reported an end-game bug, due to the complexity of the final scene and the lack of conclusive content the work required to find and fix this bug is excessive at this time, I will keep the report logged and will get to it once I get back to work on the endings. Expect this fix in 0.5

Any further reports of bugs or mistakes are appreciated and where I can I will release bugfix versions like this for the next few weeks if required, after that any reported issues will be fixed in future major(0.5) or minor(0.41) releases. Thanks to all for your help and continued support.

Well that was a disaster, here is a release then!

After six hours without a single download I've decided just to release 0.4 publicly, I had intended on getting some feedback before letting everyone at it but even with a higher than average pageview count today not a single copy was shifted. I could've held off for a couple of days to give more people the chance to get it early but if I'm going to get the number of testers required to make this work asap I have to look elsewhere. Sorry to anyone reading this when this is the first chance you've had to grab the test build but the numbers are just too low for this to be feasible. On the bright side, you still get to play 0.4 and with more players, the bugs will be squashed much faster.

Well, here it is. I hope you enjoy: http://www.4shared.com/file/NvqUjit7ce/Redus_E1_-_A_Touch_of_Frost__0.html

As this is the same copy as the test version it is still likely buggy and I won't have a huge amount of time to fix it during the week so please, be patient and report any bugs you find. End game content remains the same as in 0.3

Let's hope tomorrow goes better then.

I'm getting tired of apologizing for not getting as much done as I had expected but I'm going to anyway. Rather than give an excuse I'll just say that I only managed a couple of hours this weekend so I'm still not done with Cameron. I do have tomorrow off though so with any luck I should get some more done then, I definitely have some free time so it will just be a case of forcing myself to get on with it. It's been a few weeks since I made any major progress so it's getting harder to get back into the groove but I know that if I get my head down I will get there again.
All of that said I did make some progress with a whole new conversation and the groundwork set for the work I still have to do to finish him up.

Also. This is post 69. I tried to leave it but I couldn't resist.

There must have been a cat on the mat

My mouse has died on me, I can pick up a new one easily enough but it made working on Redus today a little tougher than usual. Still, I got a few hours of work done, mostly on minor characters to ensure that they at least acknowledge your change in appearance. I wanted to get more done but it's getting difficult to find enough free time to do even three hours per week these days, you guys know the score by now though. Progress may be slow but I have no intention of abandoning this project and one day it will be finished. The next update isn't that far off now and I will try to reduce the amount of new content in future updates to minimize the delay between them. I want to finish off Cameron next weekend and that should conclude the non-adult portion of the update.

Nothing much to report

but I would rather post something than leave you guys in the dark for too long. I've been very busy this weekend making up for last week as expected as well as mothers day here in the UK, I got a few hours in working on the guard and some pretty brutal bugs I found but no real progress to speak of I'm afraid. I know I say this a lot but next weekend I want to make a solid push towards the next checkpoint. Sorry to keep you all waiting but I need you to be patient for that little bit longer.

The early post catches the reader

I'm going to be busy for the rest of today so I may as well post this now rather than later on.
I managed to complete Dr Payne this morning, that means that I now have more characters with reactions than I did before the instant TF changeover and am one step closer to releasing the update. I still have to:

• Finish off some implementation of a new lead, 
• Add a little more conversation content to Michelle, Jenny, the landlord, Cameron and the warehouse guard, 
• Fix a few long-standing bugs, 
• Finish a masturbation scene, 
• Finish a sex scene, 
• Tweak some of the hidden, unlockable content and add one or two more things
• And I was planning on working some more on at least one of the endings. 

Then I can get testing. There are lots of other things I wanted in this update but they will have to wait, I'm just too busy right now.

If I don't post anything next weekend it will most likely be because I'm not at home, if that's the case I will let you know as soon as I get back.

Just another working Sunday

Mark is done now. Just Preston to go before I can move onto other things, I have about thirty more things to add yet. I'm torn between wanting to get the update out ASAP and wanting to add as much content as I can. Most of the update is just rewrites and mechanic changes with almost no new story or explicit content. After such a long delay I don't want to release it only to have everyone complain about how they can't get any further than they could before but I certainly don't want to hold it back any longer than I have to. Still, I've put a lot of work into this update so it's happening one way or another.

Getting stuff done on Friday!

Quitting early today since I started much earlier than usual. Jenny is done. Almost. I have to add something but it isn't related to what I was doing with her today so I will leave that bit for now. Her reactions are done though, there's two different triggers for that with two different conversations. I've also brushed through her other content to remove any references to old variables and such. So that's the women done for now, for this update anyway. On either Sat or Sun I will take on Mark, I may or may not create reaction conversations for Preston at this point, we'll see. Then I can move onto to the next thing I need to sort out, but more on that as it develops!

What's this? A progress? How does it work?

I said I would get some work done this weekend and even if I missed a day I still think I did alright. Also there are lots of "I's" in that sentence. Both Sonia and Rebecca should be done now, I say should be because until they are tested and everything is read through there could be massive continuity errors but assuming there are not that's two characters done in a single day. I said those changes would prove invaluable to speeding up production, I even wrote all of the Rebecca reactions from scratch today and it still only took a few hours. I call that a win.
Jenny will take a little longer to do as she has more conversation branches than most if not all of the other characters in the game, she's next on the agenda. There's still a lot to do but I really feel like I'm making progress now. I'll see you all in a few days time.