Hey everyone,

Just wanted to check in to let people know what was going on behind the scenes with Inn Another World. Work continues on the next update, as I'm putting in as much free time to work on the game as I can while dealing with IRL stuff (family, work, etc.).

As for what's been going on, for the last few weeks I have been working hard to update all the conversations and events in game to use the new system for displaying characters. To help with the process, a new dev has even joined the team! Be sure to say hello to him if you stop by the Discord.

(Warning: boring tech stuff ahead) Basically, when I first started making the game, I thought that the best practice would be to separate characters into two different parts: their body and their head. Now, this was fine when the game was much smaller in scope, but as it grew, this system became more and more of a nightmare to work with. Basically, I'd have to export a new .png file from the art files every time a new expression was needed. For example, I may already have a sad, talking MC, but then I might need a sad, talking MC that was looking to the left, or similar things like that. This quickly snowballed, and looking at the game files, I already had over 400 different head image files for just the MC in the most recent patch!

The new system will use a function to call all the different pieces of a character (their hair, eyes, mouth, etc.) individually. Not only does this greatly reduce the number of files the game needs, but it also makes it much quicker and easier to write new dialogue going forward. Added on to this are new systems which control the character's location and movement, which will result in much more animated conversations.

(Boring tech stuff over.)

Now this process of re-coding (and updating/revisiting) all the conversations is very close to done, hopefully it will be done this very week. Once that is finished, work will move onto making new art assets for the new patch, as well as writing the new scripts and conversations needed. Then, the inventory and shop systems will get a much needed update, and finally work will begin on the new inn system, in which players will be able to decorate and customize their inns both to get more gold and unique guests that will visit temporarily.

Some of the first batch of guests (voted on by patrons) will include monster girls such as fairies, cat girls (anthro), squirrel girls (non anthro), moth girls, dullahans, kobolds, and tiger girls (anthro). More will be added in future patches as well.

Finally, some work has already been done on updating some of the older character's art, a few of which I have included above.

All told, my hope at this point is for a late August or early September release, assuming nothing comes up IRL.

Thank you guys for all the patience, and I hope you continue to look forward to the next update!

-Dagotto