Devlog #1: First of many!

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone! I won't take up much of your time with a yapfest here so let's get into it! (There will still be a TLDR at the bottom)

It's only been 3 days since release, and I did take a couple days off to let the nerves settle and to refresh my mind a little. But I did make some decent progress in the short time I spent working on the new release.

First major change: The forum UI

Most feedback I got about the initial release was that the forum UI was both ugly and annoying to navigate through, so I've done some changes to tackle both issues at once by changing the UI to look more like a forum and adding some nice QOL changes to the interface.

As you may have noticed from the attached images, it looks much cleaner and more 'realistic' now. Also notice the three buttons at the top of the new UI. These will serve as shortcuts to the other threads, saving you the trouble of having to go back to the landing page each time you want to cycle through threads. Keep in mind, this is still a rough prototype, and I'll improve on it some more, but for now I feel like I'm headed in the right direction. Any feedback about the UI change so far would be greatly appreciated.

To be frank I was a little worried the redesign might take me some time, but it turned out way simpler than I thought. Moving forward, all forum posts will be within the new UI, however, whether or not I will have time to go back and retroactively add this UI change to the forum posts already in the game remains to be seen. I will always prioritize adding new content over rehashing what's already in there, so that's something I'll have to play by ear based on the speed of the progress I make in the story.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: Story

I'm going to explain my workflow to you before we dive in to the small progress I made, just so you have an idea as to how each development cycle is going to go.

The way I work is as follows:

I work on each girl's story individually, and when all her content's done, I hop on to the next one. I've started with Adrianna, so this is how it's going to go.

Create outline -> Write the scripts for the messenger dialogues -> Write the scripts for the events -> Implement dialogues -> Implement omniscient events (this is what takes most time because of the need to create renders/animations) -> Implement forum posts -> Implement side story.

For this update, I'll be working as such:

Adrianna -> Gemma -> Marissa.

With Adrianna so far, I've managed to create the outline for the upcoming days of the update, and I've started tackling the messenger dialogues (almost finished with them actually, it's ridiculous how quick those things get done). Next up I will need to start scripting the omniscient events, which hopefully won't take much time at all. I write pretty quick and I know where the story's going for now so I won't have to waste time coming up with any new ideas.

One final note: I'm aware the game would benefit a lot from sound, so that's something I will also be experimenting with and implementing for the coming update.

And that's it! I wish I had more for you, but it's only been a couple days. Next devlog will contain more, for sure!

Thank you!

TL;DR:

Things finished:

• New forum UI

• ~80% Adrianna's messenger dialogues.

Things left to do:

• Adrianna's forum posts and omniscient events.

• All of Gemma and Marissa's content.

• Sound implementation.

• Side story for the forum

• Rework of old forum posts (Low priority, might be something I chip away at over a couple of updates)