0.12.x Public Release Update - Updated 12-15/18

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eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

0.12.x Public Release Update - Updated 12-15/18

Hey fam,

"TLDR":
We were going to release on November 30th (11/30, "by the end of the month" as I said in a few places), but because there is so much cool stuff in the next update (some of which landed on our plates at the last minute), we are probably going to have to delay the release for at least a week. It's only because we don't want it to be anything less than awesome! Oh and the holidays pushed us back a few days as well. We wanted to alert you all to the possibility of an additional delay days ahead of time so there's no room for surprise or confusion.

"The Oh Fuck Why Can't he Focus on Brevity?!" Follow-Up:
So, what's this "cool stuff" that one could interpret as excuses but obviously they aren't because Erasmus wouldn't do that to me, you ask? Well, first of all Madison's Phase-2 content update is preeettyy big. Additionally, we planned on getting only 3-4 new character models back from the 3D scanning/modeling company we work with. But...we've ended up getting new models, improved shaders, hair mechanics, improved clothing (for a few NPCs), and more for ALL the existing characters. Including an actual...wait for it...FACE for our protagonist! We don't want to release these across several updates, so almost all changes related to the models are coming in 0.12.x. We've also had to work certain components of these models into (or our components/Unity stuff into them) genitalia mechanics changes we've been making, lighting and reflection improvements, minor animation upgrades, environment additions and improvements, and certain changes to...ahem "fluid mechanics", and more, and with integration of all this across the new characters and our existing systems, workload scaled upwards by "a lot".

The next release will arguably be our largest ever in terms of content (or at least in the top three), and will almost assuredly come with our longest and girthiest set of patch notes to-date. It will also include a decent number of bug fixes to existing content in the Original Story, and a large number of fixes for the Vickie Vixen Valentine side-story. All this means putting as much testing into it as possible before we release it, and as you can imagine, having more things to do all the sudden means a last-minute increase in how much we feel we need to test and tweak. Remember, we're 5-6 people at best in terms of a dev/testing team. We're also working on getting German and Spanish translations completed (crossing fingers for deploying these w/ 0.12.x!), starting to plan new content alongside our recent Casting Call contest winners (Lety and the Grumps), working on the next content update we've already got planned (it's for an existing character, sorry!), fleshing out the story and appearance for the new character we came up with on our own (name TBD), and trying our best to stay in touch with all facets of our community at the same time, amongst other things.

So that's the deal! Sorry for the delay, and we'll post further updates should there be any additional changes in our timeline!
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eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: 0.12.x Public Release Update - Updated 12-13/18

12/13/18 Update: Just wanted to stop by and reassure everyone that the update is being tirelessly worked on! We're just hashing out little things like clothing mishaps and polishing the story, while in parallel prepping for our next update as best we can. Since it's an Early Release game we know there will be some imperfections in these updates, but we still want them to be as stable as possible for you all. All I can say for an ETA is that we're a matter of days away! Thanks for your patience and support!

12/15/18 update: 0.12.3 is up on the "testing" branch on Steam. To access this right click on House Party, select Properties, then Betas, and in the drop down select "testing". You don't need a key. Hit Close, and wait for the game to update!

We'll be pushing the game live to everyone very soon! Game Jolt and itch updates are being worked on as we speak, there is just no "branching"/version control we can use on those sites... but we'll have them ready soon!

Thanks for your patience, and we hope you enjoy the update!
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