Melbourne International Games Week is back - and I'm BEYOND HAPPY to share that LoveSick Darlings is going to be a part of it again!

This year, I've decided to do a short 90 minute stream where I'll reveal a brand new scene from the full LoveSick Darlings game - this time, it's the POOL scene from Maisy's pool party! How exciting!

Summer is just about to kick off down here in the southern hemisphere, so what better way to celebrate than by getting to see what the cast of LoveSick Darlings do in the pool together for fun?

During the stream, you (the audience!) will all get to vote and make the decisions during this sequence I play for you guys - like who Syd hangs out with in the pool! So make sure to be there if you want to make those key decisions!

The stream will start on Steam and Twitch[www.twitch.tv] on the 27th of September at 11PM AEST / 6AM PT!! Make sure to follow so you know when it goes live! I hope to see many of you there!

Here's an image with some extra timezones to help you work out if you can make it!

Hey Steam! I'm actually here with an UPDATE for once! Not just a stream announcement! Heck yeah!

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!

Have a happy holiday season!

- Dimitri

Links:
LoveSick Darlings Twitter
LoveSick Darlings Discord[discordapp.com]
Kickstarter
Itch Page[biolizard.itch.io]
Twitch[www.twitch.tv]
Youtube Channel
Dimitri's Twitter
LoveSick Darlings Facebook[www.facebook.com]