Hey Everyone!

As some of you may have noticed, I just posted the NYD game page to Itch. I am so excited to get this released to you. I can't wait to show you how much I've learned since the end of Christmas Eve!

For those of you who are curious about the game dev side of things, I have really learned a lot during this chapter. Among other smaller stuff, I have learned 6  fairly major things while completing chapter 1 of NYD. 1) I learned the basics of dForce, which was pretty great. 2) I learned that "Ghost Lights" exist and how to use them 3) I learned of the existence of HDRI lighting and (some of) how to use that 4) Depth of Field for the camera - game changer for sure, both visually and performance-wise during renders 5) I learned how to edit textures so I can put custom images on, say, a TV screen or phone. Really cool. 6)  (And this is the biggest) You guessed it - Baby finally learned how to create animations! They're not the best I've seen, but they're a hell of a lot better than using Renpy to cycle back and forth between 2 images.

Needless to say, I feel a lot more confident about the overall quality of Chapter 1 of New Year's Day(e) compared to Ch.1 of Christmas Eve. So much so, that I am DEFINITELY going to go back and redo whole sections of Christmas Eve - maybe release it as a deluxe edition, just in case some of you prefer the original.

Anyway, I'm still putting the finishing touches on this chapter. There are a couple of scenes that need to be touched up, and an animation or 2 that need to be replaced/reworked. I will hopefully have it done by this weekend and then run through it a few more times just to proofread it a bunch before releasing.

Barring any catastrophic failures, I hope to have it out by 5/26/23, but we'll see what actually happens.

As always, thank you for all of your support, kind words, constructive criticisms, and suggestions. It means a lot to me.

Until then,

~ Jonesy