re:Dreamer Alpha 0.18.0

Click here for the download links.

Due to the NSFW content of this update and Zach and Keisuke being naked for the vast majority of it, the usual previews aren't going to work and I've started to become concerned these previews can be rather spoiler-filled.

Okay, folks, I royally fucked this one up.

There's no way to excuse myself for this delay with re:Dreamer 0.18.0. Is it good writing? I think it very much is! Was it worth seven months in the oven? No, not at all! My personal life, mental health, and physical health completely falling apart can only provide explanations to a certain point, but not excuses, and those are explanations you are entitled to in the coming days.

Keep your eyes on the Patreon and itch.io page because I need to have a long discussion holding myself accountable for this delay listing everything that went wrong, and I don't mean entirely blaming circumstances of my life. My life is uniquely messed up, yes, but I am not an utterly helpless victim to the universe and there have been some things I lacked transparency on that were within my control yet which I ran away from solving. These are going to be hard truths to admit, but given that I'd be justly fired several times over by now if making this visual novel was a traditional job, I have to stop pretending I can ignore these issues. I can do better and I will do better. You all deserve that much, so thank you for being patient for all these months, and I'm tremendously sorry for how long this update took.

But enough of me holding you hostage to apologize and let me give you the changelog to this very, very, very late release of re:Dreamer (0.18.0):

• After 7 months and 61,754 words, the 0.18.0 release is finally here, focusing on rewriting the Keisuke Day 1 sentō and handjob to set up how Zach is a repressed bisexual disaster with internalized homophobia and other key breadcrumbs for the route because I am a lot better of a writer now than I was 3 years ago and that old sloppy writing was pointlessly meandering and needed to go in favor of something that actually fits these characters and not me floundering to come up with ideas for them.

• The revised (let's be honest: 99% new) writing is a lot more to-the-point than the old content, with a specific focus on major scene variants depending on what happened in Keisuke's dorm room earlier. If you haven't checked out those major route variants, now is the time to do so, because they're meant to add to the "noise" of Zach's messy gender identity with a messy sexuality that explicitly outlines how he is 100% down to fuck with his male best friend as a woman yet wraps things up in complexes about his perceived lack of masculinity and heterosexuality.

• Due to the, uh, "NSFW" nature of this content (Zach is naked for the vast majority of it and Keisuke's fat fucking hog of a dick is on screen for a lot of it), I can't show any scene previews of this content's pièce de résistance, the entirely rewritten handjob scene. I've gotten a lot better as a writer over the years, and one of the areas I have improved the most in has been erotic sexual content. Part of that is due to HRT giving me an inkling of what female arousal is like, part of that is my unlocked Pandora's box of a gender, part of that is due to HRT unlocking my own repressed bisexuality, and part of that is just a general higher degree of confidence in my skills with smut. I really went the extra mile with this scene and its presentation with borderline Live2D animations (sorta; Ren'Py supports something similar with a stage tool but this wasn't going that far), paying TiltSHIFT to revise his earlier art (much as I've become a much better writer in 3 years, TiltSHIFT has become a much better artist in that time), adding new facial expressions to give Zach a ton of personality range, fine-tuning the SFX, and multiple scene variants based on the C.H.E.A.T.S. stats and earlier events in the Keisuke route.

• I made minor adjustments to the zach_original_forgiveness_level_to_keisuke == -3 branch by rewording something Zach said to Keisuke to make it a lot less clear to Keisuke that Zach is in a sex game that requires Zach to have sex with Keisuke.

• The fourth anniversary update can now be accessed from the title in the "Extras" screen (but you can now only get to this content if you've hit a placeholder screen at least once), there's a prompt to hide the start-of-game menu option to the extras screen, and you have a choice at the end of the anniversary content to decide if you want to treat the events in it as canon or not (or upon starting the game if you've already finished the anniversary content; this comes with the option to jump to the "debriefing" mentioned below and make a choice after).

• I've also made a few minor corrections in the fourth anniversary content, with a short bit of new writing that expands upon what I meant by "Schrödinger's canon" and new content if you're a returning reader to that side story.

• There's a bit of new writing at the Keisuke Day 4 computer lab as Zach waits for his mom to help him cheat on his project. I forgot to make Samantha a bit of a bimbo with computers despite that being relatively important to the plot of two routes... so, does that make me the bimbo with computers?

• Minor adjustments to the Day 8 jogging scene in Keisuke's route when Keisuke points to Mt. Hood and mistakenly thinks it's Mt. St. Helens. You need Awkward 4 or greater, Control 4 or greater, Self-Esteem 4 or greater, and no Keisuke "devotion" variants to see it, but Zach with these stats should absolutely feel a bit awkward about Keisuke's confusion and take it a bit personally because his beloved grandpa's ashes are scattered on Mt. Hood.

• That depressing first bad end got some additions because I now know what it's like to be thrust into a feminized body you hate for being in a halfway point and I had neglected to bring up some obvious plot points (i.e., Britney trying to help).

• Ren'Py has been updated to version 8.2.1. I don't think this broke anything I didn't already catch, but some animations might be off since the way positioning works got changed a bit, and some text might overflow the 4-line limit I impose as it now uses harfbuzz for shaping which might change text spacing. As always, if you notice any issues, please report them to me so I can fix them.

• Made the default Zoey outfit the fitted male school uniform as it's a bit jarring to see her naked in the sprite viewer at the title screen.

• I made Zoey a new pair of eyes (eyes_28) to compliment 26, 27, and 34 so she can narrow her eyes and look in all 4 diagonal directions, and it was just a duplicate of 26 anyways.

• I remade Samantha pose bc eyes 8 to look at her hand more clearly. Should I just call these the "Sam" sprites since the CaptainCaption sprites are in the same folder?

• Keisuke's sprites now have a wet layer, swim goggles, blushes on all poses, and a flaccid penis variant, meaning he can finally stop having the world's strongest overdose of Viagra.

• Fixed a bug with incorrect outfits upon loading saves.

• One instance of Zoey's naked breasts slipping past the SFW filter has been fixed.

• The phone text sounds are on a new audio channel to prevent them from canceling out other sounds.

• Fixed a bug for some users with a "maximum recursion depth reached" error message for one of Zoey's trembling animations.

• Fixed a few minor CG issues where layers would sometimes "double stack" and have thicker outlines than they should.

• The World Information screen now has a dedicated "Return to Navigation Screen" button while within the script as well as right clicking now doing that instead of putting you back in the game.

• Made many GUI and quality of life improvements to the Android version as I now have a Pixel 8 and can use an actual phone to see where that version has issues. This includes many buttons now being easier to press, the text fitting a bit easier into the speaker textbox, the app icon working on Android 14 to not crop, and the Android splash screen being a bit better.

• Adjusted the "think" color from #efefef (intended to be 93.75% gray, but due to a typo it was actually 99% gray) to #e7e7e7 (90.0625% gray) to make it more easily distinguished from italicized narration text.

• The Author's Notes textbox has gotten adjustments to better show the state of my genderfluidity at the time. This is a bit redundant given that I made some sprite edits that do a similar role, but not everyone puts those on.

• Speaking of which, I have polished up a lot of Author's Notes, be it adding expressions or cleaning up text to remove some references to a messed-up practice (egg cracking). I am not playing a part in perpetuating that rhetoric any more within the VN.

• Unique fonts (like the yandere one) now show up in the history screen, and things like Author's Notes are removed from that screen if you turn the setting off after reading them.

• Fixed the quick menu text button outlines being too hard to read with a transparent background (it now adjusts to be thicker).

• Standardized the tags for font sizes and character display speed. It's boring stuff that excites me and no one else.

• If you have the "allow automatic interruptions" setting off, a new text tag will make your line transitions smoother so you don't have to occasionally click through them. That being said, please let me know if those line interruptions now feel too slow and jerky since I had to hack Ren'Py in a stupid way to do this.

• A ton of typo corrections and minor fixes, far too many to list here. A paid editor helped a lot with Britney's Day 3 content and the existing mom route, but the entire script got passes.

As usual, the full changelog for every release can be found at https://justpaste.it/rdchangelog

Before I go and pack up my entire room (including my PC) because my house has become an unsafe nightmare to live in, let me give two special shoutouts:

First, quite literally everyone who was patient. These have been some fucking terrible months for me and I reverted to bad habits of burying my head in the sand for some of it and not properly explaining issues. Anyone who stuck around deserves my utmost gratitude for something that I was not owed.

Second, Caithiel has been an absolute crushing it with re:Dreamer fan art for the past 4 months, drawing so much that he's gotten his own folder on the Dropbox folder for the public-facing art of this visual novel.

Due to his efforts, we now have:

Actual art of Kevin Taylor, Zach's dearly-missed grandfather.

And as a Bondsmith from The Stormlight Archive, an IP that is frequently discussed in the re:Dreamer discord server (invite); he and most of the rest of the cast of re:Dreamer have been drawn as members of the ten orders of Knights Radiant (even I got one, but fittingly, it's just a derivative of the one Zach's mom got).

K-Bear, Zach's teddy bear given to him at birth by his grandfather and what is actually his most prized possession (he tells people it's his phone because he's embarrassed to admit it's a teddy bear).

wgehuiuieghuihf like just LOOK at this!!! CUUUUTE!!

So, uh... Fuck, it's been a while. I cannot stress that I am kind of in a do-or-die situation with my life right now (like, physical safety is at risk and I have bruises on me), but it was high time that I got this out to you all and I am so sorry once again it took this long.