REC/REW - intermediate milestones (aka: behind schedule... again)

YIKES! I did it! I completed…

… the first ruote within the scope of next update.

TL;DR --> I'm well behind my schedule. *BUT* I'm still working on the project. *BUT* REC/REW will be updated. *BUT chapter 2 will se its righful completion.

... Trust me.

Now for my usual, dreadful wall o' text.

To whom this may concern: I'm still *WAY* behind my schedule. My hopes to finalize chapter 2 within spring, 2024 was mere wishful thinking (as usual -_-). I hadn't considered how much all this update has to connect to the rest of the story INCLUDING the next chapters. Things need to make sense and NOT QUITE make sense - at the same time.

So yeah, it's a mess.

Moreover, while this next update is not going to *that* big - I think previous updates had more content - it is riddled with a lot of stuff which in my mind played in a certain way, and since I am stupid I *want* things to play in that certain way on the screen too. That in turns means a lot of work creating scenes, backgrounds, images, nuanced expressions... I swear it's worth the time, of course. I swear it's worth - I digress.

To add insult to injury: on my very first "crash test" I stumbled upon a few *extremely shameful* bugs inside the content I had uploaded in my previous issues of REC/REW. I still don't quite understand how I could slip past them but... yeah, I *could* slip past them period.

The only thing I can say at this point is: please bear with me, and always remember this is a one-man-army project. I'm doing everything from writing to scripting to… whatever. Now every ISO inspector will likely puke at the idea, and tell you, doing stuff and then controlling it by yourself is against common sense (… industrially speaking, that is). Thankfully I'm not looking for an ISO certification to my workflow (would not get it anyways, uh), however… yeah, testing my own script is a pain in the ass and I'm very likely to miss a lot of stuff. This will require me to betatest things again. And again. And aga - you get the idea.

Anyways!

1) I'm alive and (kind of) well. You might have guessed from my previous ramblings that the date for the yearly renewal of ISO 9001 certification has been set at my workplace. I'm using all my spare time to work on the next issue, I'm working on this project and blah blah blabh rest assured I'm not quitting any time soon (it may sound menacing and well, that's the scope =P)

2) the more I play the game, the more bugs I will detect and tackle. I have decided to play everything from start, at this point there might be issues *everywhere*. So rest assured, you're getting a polished version of REC/REW!

… Eventually.

3) "soon comes the long dark" (sounds of thunders and consistently neat visual effects here). I've, uhm... given that name to whatever comes after I finalize chapter two (reference to a certain survival game I'm in love with is, uhm… somewhat intentional?). With chapter 3 being seriously overhauled (I'm moving a lot of stuff to chapter 4, as chapter 3 will deal with a much different story) I don't expect new content to be released anywhere soon ("new content" being a portmaneau for "whatever is not spellcheck/bufixes/arguably clever rewrite of existing stuff). REC/REW will still be regularly (AHAHAHAHA!) updated as I proceed with a remake of characters sprites and CGs and that's pretty much all. This latter project also aims at (FINALLY) updating the web version which will likely have to trimmed - that is, less scenes, less CGs, less "a lot of stuff". Have to make it realistically playable in a web - based environment.

4) Chapter 3 (Bianca's story arc) is... under development. The script right now is slightly below 700 KB - roughtly one fourth of the full script of the game so... around 90k words? The story is covering a very long time frame and I'm still on the the first 2-3 weeks of the story so expect the next chapter to be… unreasonably long. What I had been writing so far won't be thrown away as it better fits Chapter 4 (Pris' arc) which I want to be... kind of crazy.

So... that's all I guess. I hope I'll be releasing the next issue of REC/REW before my holydays  (which are waiting for me in August so... a month away).