Hey there Itch!! Long time no see! For once, here's an update from me that isn't just a stream announcement! How exciting!



Actually, I shouldn't hype you up too much. This update is mostly just  'housekeeping' that I've been putting off for... well over a year! Woops! Let's break it down!

Over the last year, while I've been writing like a madman and otherwise working to stay afloat, I've had an accumulation of minor bugs on the 1.5 version of the demo building up on a google doc when they get repoted to me. This google doc, originally dating back to December last year, started off small and with very minor bugs so I kept putting off pushing out the fixes to the live version of the LS Darlings demo.  I thought it might be too much trouble to go the effort of making a new build just for these minor fixes. Then a few medium-sized bugs appeared, and I told myself "Eh, I can do this later. Writing is more important!" Weeks turned to months, and in that time one or two GAME-BREAKING bugs reared their ugly heads and... for some reason I decided I'd wait to fix it still? (I have no idea what I was thinking here.)

This all came to a head when yet another game-breaking bug was reported to me, by a new player who was focusing on spending time with Steph during their first run of the game and ran into a bizarre scenario where they had spent so much time with Steph and were so friendly with her that the game accidentally reset their relationship progress and assumed they hadn't even done the infamous cello trip! Woops!

That was just bad programming on my end, and hearing a new player run into this problem was exactly the wake-up call I needed to go back and polish up the DEMO so that it gives a strong impression to new players!

Admittedly, it did make me sad to see that two of the big game-breaking bugs were associated with spending a lot of time with Steph. They took so long for people to find/report - which sadly shows that she's the least popular heroine... but anyways! That's not relevant!

I finally got my butt into gear and went about stamping out the now long list of bugs, typos, inconsitencies, obscure loops, and glitched prompts! The game should be running smoother than ever! Which is why I'm referring to this as a "housekeeping" update. Considering how this update is mostly about performance and bugs, you may not think it's worth makiing a post or even a new version number for the game - and I don't blame you, I nearly decided to do just that - but after I saw the game had gone over a year since it's last update I figured that was reason enough to justify a new version number. The game hasn't transformed in some new insane way, but in the spirit of "housekeeping" I figured I should dust off the old "1.5" this demo build has had on it for the last year and make it look a bit more shiny and new. This is both good for my morale, and also good for marketing hahah!

I also went back and edited a ton of dialogue from early on in the game to make the earlier incarnations of characters more consistent to their later counterparts and to better set-up certain storylines and character arcs. This is all minor stuff that's important to me, but I doubt will be something players will be able to notice - which is why, despite the shiny new version number, I'm not otherwise treating this update like it's a huge change to the game people need to play ASAP. That is NOT the case, there's no rush to re-download the game! Unless you want to, of course!

Here are the changes:

- Fixed a glitch where Steph's relationship progress would reset if you spent too much time with her in the demo.

- Fixed another error where Steph references Social Events that haven't taken place yet if you spend too much Free Time with her.

- Fixed the Player Review not detecting obscure combinations of choices and outcomes and skipping to the end accidentally.

- Fixed several visual and animation bugs. Same with music loops and cues.

- Sharpened dialogue in the beginning section to flow better and more accurately represent characters (Syd used to say "like" a lot! That's so not in-character for him. I fixed a lot of those kinds of inconsistent mannerisms for the cast.)

- Inserted about two dozen extra invisible variables the demo can trigger that won't pay off until you play the full game.

- Fixed countless typos and awkward sentences.

When I have time, before launch, I actually plan to use this build to do tiny "soft" patches to fix minor things like the animation style of the game - because it has changed a lot since launch! In the early days, I had character occupy default parameters ont he screen, but as development continued I started setting custom parameters for characters to occupy. This is especially the case during the first "week" of the game. This is something I can fix any time, but it will be time-consuming to manually change all of the first week's animation. I'd rather spend that time writing, so for now that change is going to the backlog. But it's something you can expect before the game launches (eventually!)

If you feel the need to check the update out for yourself, feel free to download the new build from itch right now! But like I said, the changes in 1.6 are mostly invisible. I wouldn't go out of your way unless you feel like seeing the gang at Foster Hills High again!

The update is also live on Steam, so if that's your preferred platform - the game will automatically update there!

Anyways, that's everything abut the update! I hope you've all had a great 2022. I'm sorry that once again another year has gone by without LoveSick Darlings being completed.... but it's getting there! Bit by bit! I promise! I'm still passionate about this game and can't wait for you all to finally play it when it's ready!

If you check my Kickstarter updates, I've actually written well over 200,000 words since the start of 2022! Isn't that an absolutely insane number?! So I hope you all understand why it's taking so long for this game to come out! I haven't quit or given up - I'm just doing EVERYTHING in my power to make this game as perfect as possible!

My estimate is that I need another 100,000 words to wrap up this game's story. We all know how unreliable my estimates can be, after I've missed both my release date estimates... but if you do the math: I did 200,000 words this year - so, six months for 100,000 words. And if I only need 100,000 more words to wrap up this story... it should only take me... well, I'm sure you can do the rest!

I won't deny the possibility I may need 200,000 words to REALLY wrap this game up. It could happen. But I'm doing everything in my power to avoid hitting one million words! If there's such a thing as too much game - one million words is it.

Anyways. Let's hope I don't have to eat these words in a year's time.

Have a happy holiday season!

- Dimitri

Links:

•  LoveSick Darlings Twitter: https://twitter.com/LoveSickDarling 
•  LoveSick Darlings Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/4YAgnvd 
• Steam Store Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1151410/LoveSick_Darlings/ 
• Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lovesickdarlings/lovesick-darlings-a-visual...
• Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lovesickdarlingsofficial 
• Youtube Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMNSE68JdVbfPSykQW4bcHQ 
• Dimitri's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DAdoniou 
•  LoveSick Darlings Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoveSickDarlings/