Hi everyone, it's BáiYù again with another Games Report this week. This post is a bit of a mixed bag so strap in for this one.

Alpha(?) Version 0.1 is now LIVE!

"Wait, I thought we were on Alpha 0.4 last time?" We were, but...

Changelog:

• Engine changed from Naninovel in Unity to Ren'Py
• Voice acting implemented up to the beginning of Scene 7
• Sprite and CG animations added
• Screenshake effects added
• Accessibility options added
• Content Warnings at game launch added
• Textbox and Quickmenu customized
• Custom Ren'Py File Slot Actions by KnickKnackPJ added
• Pronoun Tool by npckc added
• Android version now available
• tbh the switch to Ren'Py means a lot of changes I can't count on here. It's a completely different engine.

Known "Bugs":

The full and complete script of Gallagher Mansion is still technically playable, but most of the scenes after Y/N wakes up and talks to Taylor will not be directed properly, meaning that there may only be rough background changes and basic sprites. You'll know when you're past the point of voice acting being implemented, and we won't require any bug reports from that point. Please note that the GUI outside of the main menu and main game is extremely rough at the moment, and if any issues with the game screens occur however, please do report that.

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Patrons at the $5 A Little Bite tier and higher can access the alpha here. If you're having trouble accessing your early access copy, don't buy it! Please message us privately on Patreon instead and we'll custom generate a key for you, or help troubleshoot your Patreon - itch.io connection if possible.

Having trouble opening the game? Try installing it via the Itch App, which acts as a launcher for all of your games! If you were a previous Macintosh player who could not play the game properly, we ask that you try out the new Ren'Py version to see if the change in engine helps.

What Happened?

Since the last upload of the Alpha 0.4 Unity build, we've been having difficulties contacting Oriana in order to ask them to push their progress to GitHub so that other Unity programmers could finish the game ASAP. After 3 weeks of low correspondence and no activity from Oriana due to a personal life event, I asked our other programmers on the team if they could redo the work that Oriana had last posted in the Development server; upon downloading the last push to GitHub however, they discovered that the folder structure for the entire project wasn't uploaded correctly. This ultimately meant that anyone else trying to use those files would need to start a fresh Naninovel project and plop in the resources, which also meant that any prior GUI prefab configurations would need to be redone.

TundraFlame gave me an estimate of 15 hours to both rebuild the GUI, create the layered sprites + CGs, and redirect the scenes using the properly layered sprites. This explains the low expression count for Elias throughout the alpha, despite Sauce drawing an abundance of expression pieces for the groom.

As you can imagine, this was devastating for the project. I don't personally know how to use Naninovel myself and it'd take longer for me to become familiar with the development environment. Having TundraFlame take on programming responsibilities when they're already the Audio Engineer would push our timeline back even further than it already is, and asking Terra to do so would delay the SDJ demo port as well.

Rebuilding in Ren'Py

According to my work timer, I've spent just shy of 12 hours in the past 2 weeks building the Version 0.1 Alpha of the Ren'Py port that we've uploaded today, all while juggling other administrative tasks for SnaccPop Studios such as writing devlogs and coordinating the internal restructuring. You won't see much of the programming work as most of the set-up under the hood will ensure that directing future scenes will be easier. When TundraFlame sends me more audio files that have been cleaned and balanced, slotting these in will be much faster while accommodating for split language text and audio preferences when the translation process is underway.

I'll be frank: I had to put myself on a death march to accomplish this. This is decidedly not great. Death marches are extreme forms of crunch in game development that can occur when there's a breakdown in communication with key members of the team, and I didn't want to impose rebuilding Gallagher Mansion on anyone else in the studio. The project is safely at a point where I can ask non-programmers to help me with mundane tasks however, so hopefully I'll be able to get some breathing room again.

I apologize again to all of you who have stuck around with us for a while. The Groom of Gallagher Mansion was meant to be a quick project that should have been released 3 months ago, but due to a variety of factors, we've missed that deadline. At this point I'm more worried than upset with Oriana as they are a long-time friend of mine and even their parents have not been able to speak with them lately.

Regardless, I'm doing everything in my personal power to get this game out the door. You all deserve nothing less for your continued support of SnaccPop Studios. As always, thank you for your patience.