Hello, monster-lovers. It's been a while since we last talked.

Progress on the back end of the game has been steady (I will provide a list of changes at the end of the post, for those interested), but as far as visual updates, we've been moving at much more of a crawl. People generally skip over the tech updates in favor of visual ones, so I haven't been updating this page as regularly, with that in mind.

At the moment, we're having a very hard time making the UI look right, and are starting to reconsider the overall art direction, in general. It has ended up being one of the most difficult parts of the process, to my surprise. We're enlisting the help of another developer to help with this, but the long and short of it is that the back end is much further along than the front. While I am happy that the code is becoming tighter, more efficient and less cluttered, that's not really an element to game dev that's of interest to most people, so I can understand how bystanders looking in might view that as nothing moving along at all.

Then on my end, personally, I am also having  medical issues that are making it harder to work on the game as consistently and as quickly as I'd like. It's several different things happening at the same time, and I am dealing with those on top of my day job as best I can. In hindsight,  it would've been more ideal to have partnered with someone to help ease some of the weight of overall game direction, but I did not expect to be stretched so thin, and I didn't have anyone to fill the role (and still don't). To say it's frustrating that I haven't been able to move this process faster while everything else is going on is an understatement.

On a much more positive, another one of our beloved contributors, TUS, has been redesigning and producing character sheets for the various girls who work at Sylvie's Bar. As always, his work is a treat to see and he's done a great job bringing the characters to life. Expect to see more of this in the near future.

Programming Changes

• Simplified EXP/VIT/GP calculations (calculation is now with flat numbers based on worker lvl + customer values + matchup)
• Removed room furnishing feature altogether (may reuse code in a future title)
• Removed room customizations (rooms must still have their cleanliness maintained)
• Added more gift items
• Restructured "bonding" scenes programming (values are now stored in a simpler dictionary in a singleton)
• Simplified level up process (Workers gain VIT, modifiers to GP/EXP earned increase incrementally)
• SLU/SKL/CLS are types, not stats
• Slowed EXP growth
• Simplified stat divisions (SLU/CLS/SKL types now exist solely to match customer/worker types)
• Worker types do still affect the rate a room's cleanliness decreases
• Adjusted/simplified business upgrades
  • Players can now choose simpler, stat-based progression updates (worker EXP + 2%, GP earned + 3%, worker VIT drain - 2%, etc. that stack) in addition to the usual gameplay changing upgrades

• Removed kitchen features (may appear in a future title) and relevant items
• Soapland feature remains, but its functionality has been simplified

• Drastically restructured save file system altogether (yes, again) 
  • Resources are loaded to folders on save and loaded from disc on game launch)
  • On first launch, the program sets up folders for the various save slots where they are unaccounted for. This should prevent future crashing issues.
  • Game saves will have a "version no" that should prevent save files from corrupting

A lot of the progress has been de-bloating and removing features that could be used in future games, or re-optimizing things to run more efficiently. It's hard for a single programmer who isn't that*experienced to manage so many different elements at once, so I've decided to remove a handful of them for now and maybe repurpose them when I have more resources.

I'm probably forgetting a ton of other small adjustments to the code base, but those are the big ones. If you've read through the entire list and are still reading, now, I'm happy that you were interested enough in the nitty gritty to do so. Most people just skip this stuff.

The projects presses ahead, albeit extremely slowly. For those of you who are still here...Thank you.

- Hatch