The select for Base Image and Day 1 image was on the left, but it was covered by the navigation bar. So I set it to the right. :)

This was a typo on my part. It has been fixed and should not cause the game to crash. :)

Adjusted the Extra Menu to suit the five languages the visual novel is in.

Upon testing reconfigured things (like the Content filter), I noticed that both the Chinese and Japanese versions of the Extra menu had no navigation. That has been fixed.

Also, redid some of the content filter functions so that it does not immediately leave the Settings screen when changing NSFW and Content Warning while in the game.

I also made menus for screens to give a more consistent look.

Change a few menus to screens for a better look (similar to what I Have done to other menus).

When selecting Long Replay Scene (when you click on a replay and another screen pops up), the hover background now works.

Fixed a misspelling and a few translations.

I could've sworn I changed the scene name for some images, but those are now fixed.

Also, changed the Aida motel scene (both of them) to fit a tone.

This function allows you to hide the interface within the gallery system (uses the same key as everywhere else). However, I did not include the Translations. Now, this fixes that.

In the process of redoing the gallery, there were some bugs I fixed. I can't remember them off the top of my head at the moment.

A few things about the gallery before:

In order for me to put a gallery image up, I would need to make a few different entries, and more than once I had gotten "button not found". The allievate that (and other frustrations of the Renpy Gallery system, I made a special screen to do the same job based on dictionaries and such.

You may notice that the "count" has gone down and most of the nudes do not appear. That isn't the case. I combined quite a few of them to lower the number of pages since a lot of them were sfw/nsfw variations of the same scene. :)

I am planning on taking a Daz Studio break (for a few days anyways) and work on some things in the script to adding additional content a little easier to avoid potential "can't find" bugs.

Version 0.48s has been released:

• "Preparing" Storyline Segment in Part 2.
  
• Modified the Gallery with pagination.
  
• Bug Fixes.
  
• New UI interface with Clothed, Nude, and Sexy as options except for the main menu.
  
  

Just a quick update.

• All Principle artwork has been done for "Prepare".
  
• Translations has been done.
  
• Replay and Sex Gallery updated.
  
• Interface work has been done.
  

• A few more gallery images.
  
• Add new achievements and images to those.
  
• Fix a sound issue with two of the videos.
  

For some reason, the script file didn't save. So, now sync is active. :)

It turns out it was something I did in development (for a split second), and it got caught in my achievement list as None. When Renpy sends the list, both expect strings (the API name of the Achievement), so this caused the problem. However, it was only a problem with my system. I have fixed the issue on my dev copy, so there aren't any issues.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Change where the notification is so it does not dinge every time it is called. In the script, there is the part that checks to ensure you do not have the achievement already and then grants it. However, I originally put the notify where it would sync every time. To avoid bothersome notifies, I put it in the same portion that checks before granting, so it will only play if you do not have the achievement.

I don't know if Renpy or Steam is causing the issue, but it will throw a "no encode" error screen if Fire of Life and Steam Client run simultaneously and try to sync. It has been reported to Renpy developers to see what the issue might be. In the mean time, the sync part has been temporarily disabled. The visual novel will still grant them.

Still working on the story, but:

Meant to post this yesterday but life caught up. :)

A few things:

• 3 more images for Duo, and then I work on the Trio Set (and hope I don't take as long on those ;))
  
• When I cannot focus on creating new images, I adjust older images (from Source PSD) to match the tone.
  
• Adjusting some UI elements as well.
  
• I managed to re-render one series of animations (the Subway Snacktern one) to get the tone and also add sound effects. I did this with a few other animations as well. So when the update does come, it might be a big one because it will be new and updated content.
  

Progress was slow this week. One part was due to a personal life incident, but another was due to Daz Studio acting erratic. Removed the plugin that was causing it after discovering it, and the pace picked up. However, in between, I did some work for the main menu and came up with this as a final. Went with darker colors for a tone, and the main menu buttons on the bottom were an attempt to make it look cleaner. :)

(Don't worry about the 'a' or the 'beta'. I try not to switch branches unless I am working on a bug fix that affects things. :)

I am nearly done with the Duo scene in the gym, and had trouble focusing on the screen coding. So, I decided to do something to give my mind a break. For awhile, I have been considering updating the main menu a little bit. The above image is a draft and subject to change. ;)

Currently working on a scene that involves the three werewolves and Kimmy. It does add some complexity because it will be available if at least one of them do not have remorse for how they acted the day before. :) Right now, I am finishing up the single portion, and then going for duo and trio version of the sex scene. :)

I had not put in a substitution bracket for how labels are called in tori.day1, and had to change the name (and make other suitable changes) to get dev lily 03 to work (as well as 1 and 2)

A bug issued on discord. I typed in end_replay with renpy.end_play(), which caused the "end_replay() not defined".

Day 2 Prepare progress.

While it is still in progress, there are a few things I have done and things I am planning to do. Ultimately, Preparing is a transition between Day 2 to Night 2, and a good part of it occurs at the Darling Moonshine. One thing I am trying to avoid is Oh, they are just there.

[h2]The ButterFly Mini-Game[/h2]

This one took me a little bit of time to figure out how I wanted to present it and get over how much it hurts to do it . A long long time ago, I was on the High School Swim Team. Not very good, but enough to realize how difficult each stroke is to perform. The reason why Coach gives Eric X number of Butterfly laps (if you trigger that) is because of how difficult it is. At the same time, did not want to make it too difficult to distract from the story.

[h2]Fae Appearances[/h2]

So far, we have seen Amy mostly appear like a normal person. At the Darling Moonshine, she is under no such obligation, so I used some of the options (and clothing styles) to fit her well. And, she gets even bossier.

[h2]Fun with steam[/h2]

There is a section for Bria here, and this one I had to specially craft to make a point about how hot she is. Daz Studio had updated over the years with physical steam (vs. planes with transparencies) and decided to have fun with that.

[h2]Consolidating some choices into new dictionaries[/h2]
This does not directly affect previous chapters as I leave those in to avoid breaking anything with saves. In Preparing, the first thing it will do is put those values into unique dictionaries (i.e ericroberts, briaconnell, etc). The biggest reason is to make it easier to transfer it to a multipersistent. TLDR: Multi-persistent can exist between Two or More Renpy VNs. So when I am done with New Day (still got Night 2, Day 3 and Night 3 to do), I can start work on the next VN that continues this. Going for an interactive Graphic Novel.

Rather than:
$mp.something = HUNTING DOWN THE dictionary for it!

It is:
$mp.briaconnell = briaconnell
And
$bria.connell = mp.briaconnell

A nice clean way to transfer.

If you click on the Long Replay button where Madison goes on a lunch break, it will repeat the scene before moving on. Rewrote this Replay section for that chapter so that doesn't occur.

• Updating Renpy to the released version of Renpy 8.2. This will help with potential bugs that Renpy may have had, and also took care of some conflicting properties that may cause problems in the future.
  
• Removed some orphan translations to avoid any potential issues in the future.
  

I change the JPGs that I used for start images. Basically, FFMPEG (that does the video) can take a bit to decode, so the jpg was able to show something rather than a blank black screen. I change to AVIF to get an accurate count of images without too much issues. ;)

However, I also fixed a bug where the last scene for Dee played at certain points during that chapter. This was caused by an if that should have been an elif. That has been changed, and now that should play as normal.

If you play Day 1 Bria replay..it seems to repeat at points. For some reason, I did not delete the Jumps I was using in the previous method. Those jumps have been removed, and now should play as normal.

The names on some chapter boxes were not correct. Fixed the issue there.

The part about "Locked Images" in the previous small update...I did not put it in the Steam branch for some reason. Now, that fix in there.

An issue I found while troubleshooting the previous one: Some galleries would show even when "images were added", And since I changed the gallery image listing dictionary, I have changed it to see if a persistent is true. This keeps the "locked" images out of the screen to make it look a little cleaner.

Not sure why Lucia (0/7) still shows up at the moment.

What was suppose to happen:

1. Check to see if you saw a label.
2. If True, try to add a missing gallery image.

However, this wasn't working. So I change that to changing the related persistent to True. :)

A few changes:

• "Dealing" Storyline. Similar to Classes, this focuses on a particular theme. This focuses on Tony dealing with certain psychological things with his patients, Aida dealing with what happened the previous night and what it means to Emily, and Dee and Tobias working on the Men of Sin crimewave.
  
• This uses Renpy 8.2.0.
  
• You will see a number after 0.46s.xxxx, which is the build time. I am expertimenting with this to let it be the minor version (or when I build a version or fix) to avoid forgetting to do it. :)
  

As noted, I had merged what I was developing for the next segment into Main and pushed it to Steam. However, I had forgotten to add gallery.rpa, so some of those ugly error messages were showing up as thumbnail. That is now fixed. There should be 4 that are locked. and will be unlocked when I release "Dealing" and you play through it.:)

Made a backend change to how the Gallery runs. This makes it easier for me to add them on without unnecessary data. :)

In the process of working on the latest segment, there were some fixes I have made:

If your language is set to None for some reason, it would cause problems with the recent update. So I put a code in there that if your language is not in the known_languages (at least for Fire of Life, and None is excluded from that list), it will switch it to english (not the way the doc preferred me doing it but..).

Hopefully, this resolves that issue.

Part of the problems lately has been this variable. I made a default so it always has a value, and not None. ;)

This is attempting to fix init things.

Usually if you get an error with "game_menu_ doesn't exist, something else is going on. However, I investigated the code and removed parts of it that not relevant anymore I believe.

When you went to look at a gallery (Bria for instance), an exception screen came up and showed tempCount didn't have count. I took care of this error.

The fixes yesterday we not updating the gallery when an image is added. So, I put it in locked images to help solve that problem.

My solution for some of the items was the default the gallery locks. Unfortunately, I missed one or two. This resolves that.

There were a few errors, and fixed them so it displays correctly. ;)

Ok, there was one more part of code I didn't see. TLDR: I had to reinstall Windows, so I opened Fire of Life as if I had no persistents. Corrected the issue that stopped it at the screen, and should now show the language screen.

In some cases, there is an init that tries to change the language from None to 'english'. Unfortunately, that caused a problem with "none type" so removed it.

I have been relatively quiet for a bit. Sure, there were those small updates, but...:) For the last month or so, I have been experiencing issues (health related) that made it challenging to focus. I am feeling a little better in that regard now (at least my typing doesn't look like I faceplanted on the keyboard, which is the other half of why I didn't write too much before).

I am trying to finish this one scene as soon as possible so I can get to the next one. I had been stuck on this scene for a couple of weeks because of the above mentioned reasons. ;) The image above with Bria posing was my attempt to break the "creative" block caused by my health and get the wheels rolling...which more or less it is. :)

Thank you for your patience. :)

Somehow in the Content Settings page, I wrote function instead of Function. That has been corrected.

I am still working on content for the next segment, but I have been seeing areas where I can improve the code. The biggest one were the lint errors. For example, there was one where Renpy would not reach a function call because I accidently put it in the wrong place, and it could cause a problem.

Prior to this, you can click on a flag and it will change the language. However, it would go back to the greyscale. Added the necessary code for it to know which one was selected, but also what to display when selected.

Replays involving Aida (and the one in Demon and Mage that is the last scene was playing after the first one in replay...weird. Anyways, fixed.)

If you play the English language and turn Bria's accent off, there were blocks. What was happening was it was loading the Japanese dictionary for Bria was saying (which requires Japanese to be set to load that font). I have corrected the issue so the right dictionaries are being set.

I fixed some of the cosmetic issues that the translations have caused, and also made an "english" translation file.

Long story short: The bubbles rely on Translation ID (if you are familiar with Renpy inner workings, it is how it replaces certain things. Change the text, it makes a new id.) However, making that new id means I would have to make sure all the bubbles are right, and that...is a hassle. However, using the English "Translation", it keeps the bubbles in place, which was help in adjusting things.

I added an init that if you are currently using Language None (which is what the base script uses), it will switch you over to English and that will be all set. ;)

I am aware of issues that occur in the English (or None) with the text, especially one I made bold. i am currently working on a fix.

A few more items were found and addressed. :)

Issues in the common.rpy caused certain features (like Screenshots) to throw errors, and the Save Files didn't have the right information showing.

After a few weeks, I have translated (to the best of my ability) to four languages. These will likely be improved in the future, but it should suffice for the moment in Early Access.:)

Also added some new screens for menus.:)

Fixed a few bugs from the galleries (some images were not appearing).

A short log:

Right now, I am going through each scene and screen to make sure that:

• the translated text fits in the bubbles,
  
• something that didn't translate (I didn't do a _(), or something)
  
  On top of that, made some changes to reduce the number of text menus where it made sense to do so.:) Replaced it with imagebuttons that depicts what it is asking. ;) Why I said where it makes sense: There are some cases where it is overkill to make a screen when Menu does the job.:)
  
  

Well, for Day 2 at least.

If you had it on and played classes, you might have gotten "Key Errors". I found those while trying to translate. TLDR: All translation of Bria's accent into other languages will go back on the filter (what changes it from accented text to plain old english). So, got a lot of those, and fixed them.

Right now, I am working on French, but once I am done with that...a lot of rest will be making sure things appears correctly rather than reconfiguring the script to do certain things. ;)

Right now, I am currently working on Translations and getting them to work properly. :) At this point, I nearly got all of them in a Best Effort Translation (Machine), and will probably redo them at later time for a more ACCURATE translation.:)

There was a report where the "Change Name" achievement fired off without changing the name. Fixed it that it will only fire if you click on the textbutton to confirm the new name.

Similar to the bug I patched earlier. I took a look to see what else had been eric. and fixed those.

I had changed some variables to a dictionary to easily count. However, I somehow missed an if statement, so it was bypassing the scene itself. That has been fixed, and I will doublecheck in a bit to make sure other scenes work as needed.

I somehow couldn't spell concepts for a brief moment. That has been fixed.

I have added something to the moment when Neil says something about Bria and there is a button "Stop Neil Comments". How much patience Eric has affects his bond with Bria, and having it go all the way isn't that bad of thing. I will elaborate storywise why later, but figure I would give that heads up.

For starters, Bria is not defenseless...she is fire! :) I will elaborate on this narratively later.:)

I am going to delay my attempt at translating what is currently there by at least a week. The reason is I am ill and I am not concentrating as well as I could. This makes me miss things, so I will hold off on it for a week while the remedy tries to resolve the issue.:)

Andrei, Bria, Eric, Cayla, Kei, Matt, and Tori head off to class! This story also elaborates why Bria and Eric act the way they do when in proximity to each other (a supernatural reason) .

A few changes:

• New Initiate Screen: That scene with Lily and Fio when you click on Begin. I have moved that to the splashscreen section, and use that for initial set ups and a brief tutorial. That way when you click on Begin, you are going right to the chapter window.
  
• Continue Button: This will load the last save. I am keeping the Load button (for now) if you have you have another save you want to load.
  
• Main Menu button (both in Game Menu and the Chapter Screen): This will create a quicksave before you fully exit. This will cooperate with the Continue Button.
  
• Also changed the Chapter screen a bit. The top bar (Prologue, Part 1, Part 2) makes it easier to switch without doing a "Next Page" mechanicism.
  

Storyline content is done.

Right now, I am working on a few things:

A few updates.

I know I missed last week, but I have been busy with creating content. TLDR: Pollen count has been really high in my area, and been trying to get through the rendering while enduring significant sinus headaches.

Part 2 will work a little differently than Prologue and Part 1. As noted by the image, Bria (fae), Andrei (vampire), Tori, and Cayla (mage) are involved, and on the other side of the Room Kei is sitting near Eric. Integrating the stories as they fit best by what going on overall.

English class: Done.
Art Class: In progress
Biology: Will do that after art

And there will be a few in-between scenes, and the chapter I am labeling (currently) Classes will have it content complete.

Right now, I am working on Part 2 (or Day 2) that continues where Part 1 leaves off. I am going to handle this a little differently. For example, the first chapter will be Classes, which will have related characters who are in the school attending classes. There will be a moment in the beginning where you can select to play a lead-up scene for Bria, Andrei, Tori and Cayla, and Kei and Matt (currently working on Kei and Matt and will do Cayla and Tori).

Also taking care to make sure choices that were made in Part 1 impact Part 2. :)



Including how naughty a certain redhead is...:)

When you hover over the Demon and Mage, it is giving the image of the Council. I thought I got everything when I built the original 38, but. However, I have added a hover image that is reflective of this chapter.

Except for the look of the Chapters menu, a lot of the changes aren't visable. :)

So, Part 2 is going to have least one chapter where it is necessary to see 4 of 5 of part 1. :) So I restructured the JSON file to account for that, and made sure it works. Also made sure the Replay menu had the same thing done.

2 differences on the screen:

For some reason, the thing I use to mark a chapter completion (complete with Notify) wasn't there for Demon and Mage. So I added it, and also put in code that if you have seen the Dee Home scene (the last one), it will add that in.

I noticed that the number of images unlocked was wrong, and there were some other issues (images not opening, wrong image opening, etc). These have been fixed.

There was a few bugs:

Fire of Life v. 38 Demons and Mages
This version represents the last of the remake for the Prologue and Part 1. Shortly after releasing it in December, there was people who complained (rightfully) that is was very fast pace (too confusing the exact words were) So, I approached it with a different method as you see it now. This chapter shows Madisons day at work and Cayla/Tori getting orientation done for school.

[h2]Enhancements[/h2]
[h3]Bio filters:[/h3] There are a lot of characters in this story, so I put in a filter so you can search based on who they are (human, vampire, shifter, etc.).
[h3]New Pics for Bios:[/h3] I have render new images to serve as Day 1 rewards (it goes based on seeing a particular part of the story). All the ladies are done, and I did some male. I plan on doing more in the future.
I So you dont have to go into each bio to change the picture, there is an option to change all to the Base Image or Day 1 image.

Somehow, the image definition that I had for the first image in Amy's gallery got..deleted. Fixed it so it looks as it should.

Usually try to do this on Sunday, but dealing with a loss of a family member as well. While keeping busy helps me process things, it also makes me forget to do things. I will be fine...eventually.

In any case, I am down to just doing a few more gallery images and a final bug check. So, the Demon and Mage chapter should be released within the week.

I will be sending out a small update in a few minutes to address Amy's gallery glitch.

I have one more scene to (and quick one at that) left to do for this chapter. Just getting my motivation up to do it. ;) TLDR: I just finished a scene with Madison and Cayla that had alternate clothing options I needed to render. So brain is a little...off. ;)

Also coming up, I am planning to enhance the bio/character profile a little. When you reach a certain point in each character story, it will give you an additional bio pic that you can select and it will stay that way unless you delete persistent. Here is one of them:



This will conclude Part 1...and I will move onto Part 2 shortly after that ;)

There were some entries that were merging into others. This was the result of me using vpgrid, which assumes the same size grids as all. Changed it to viewport and used vbox so the different size text areas will stack neatly on top of each other. :)

If I have been quiet, I do apologize. Outside the fact I am normally quiet, I had been ill the last few weeks with sinuses causing holy havoc. But I still try to get some work done.



You might recall her appearing in the Madison and Tori prologue...briefly. Morrigan (Celtic goddess, not to be confused with Dragon Age :)) was one character I thought "Maybe a brief appearence to introduce Cayla, and ...

Then came the idea of her making an appearence in the same gym Tori and Cayla practiced in. :) Thinking some mother-daughter interactions to help work through their issues for the greater good. :)

As of right now (with Prologue and Part 1 and some left overs of Part 2 I am going to rework):

• Number of AVIF images (main image format for this VN): 2,167
  
• Number of Webp (Secondary and often used where AVIF doesn't work out well): 188
  
• Number of WebM (movie animation): 146
  

One didn't have a $renpy.end_replay and continued playing even though (The Dungeon) it was at the end of that scene. Another would end too soon (Katia at the apartment).

I misspelled Available (missing the L) somehow, and it would crash when going into Supernatural part of the Lore. Spelling now correct, and should not cause that exception screen.

Working on Madison's lunch break. :)

For those who played the original one:

As you might notice, the scenery is different. The main reason: I wanted plenty of space to get camera angles in without worrying about walls (I know I can make them invisible, but when multiple things are attached...I tend to forget to make them reappear). That would not be such a problem for stills, but would be for multiple animations. ;)

A little preview without showing TOO much, both the bathroom and the prologue adult scenes are progressive. Meaning you can select on the first option (the left) and it will give you the option to go through all three scenes. Not that complicated to program, but does require me to render transition scenes (which isn't an issue).

Right now, I am primarily focusing on the Madison scenes because I have a clear vision of what I want to show. Expanding the Tori and Cayla scenes, I am workshopping it around. ;) Also, the person Ryan works for (Dee) also has scenes I will doing as well. You might not have ran into Dee because she originally appeared in Day 2. However, doing a bit of intro work before she appears for that scene. ;)

The fix I did for the Menu...it made the scene loop. Fixed that.

So I had something set to guide you to the prologue if it isn't playing. However, it created an exception screen about parameters lists. I have fixed that.

The way it was before: It would sync (maybe) when the Fire of Life loaded up, but not when you received the Achievement. This patch fixes that so it will sync with Steam the moment the achievement been granted.

If any who are not in the Playtest and are interested, let me know and I will open the applications again.

If you are in the Playtest, once I get something resembling a scene done, I will push it to the Playtest area.

With that said, there is no rest for the weary. :) The first scene I am working on is the Madison bakes scene. Originally, this was at the end of Night 1 but I am moving it to the beginning of this chapter, adding a little prologue involving the house Madison lives in now, and a little discussions of Succubi in context of the story. ;) The above is a fresh render with nice glowy eyes. ;)

When you get to the screen that replays animation: The first button would end animation, and the second one would idle with Madison. I have gone through what controls that and made sure all the names are correct. :)

Not sure if the Nightly Fixed caused any issues..but..

Fangs and Claws has been released on next page after the prologue. Both Andrei and Keis prologue link to the same chapter. Two months, but did two character worth of a chapter I believe.

Some fixes and refinements were also put in.

The Window 32-bit version is on hold until I figure out a way to do it with Renpy.

Above is Lucia relaxing after going through the Story for Fangs and Claws. ;) Right now, the majority of it is done. Just got some gallery images to do, check for bugs, and such. It should release next week. ;)

From the scene I am currently working on. Got significant segments of that scene done, but right now working on animations. Those take a little longer, but more importantly, takes some concentration. Concentration I do not always have due to a back injury, but I am progressing the best I can. :)

Once I am done with this scene, there are two scenes left. One is big and the other is smaller. The big one involves Alex (Kei's brother) in a makeshift camp that explores werewolves in that region, and the other involves a small Darling Moonshine scene.

Once those are done, I will be doing gallery images, checking for codex entries, updating the chapter's UI, and such (those shouldn't take nearly as long). After that and a check for noticeable bugs, it will be released. It will be a significant update at (currently) 97MB.

There was some re-use of images, but they were converted from the base .psd to avif. Since webp can be lossy, I always keep the psd files stored and monitored. Going from Webp to Avif is a risk because it is compressing a compressed file, which means more quality loss. But there were a couple re-renders to match previous scenes. For example, Kei going through the woods..it would not make sense for her to go with boots and hose, so took them off. However, the warehouse scene: she had them on. For continuity, I did this:



IMO, It looks atmospherically better. :) The Shifters and Vampires chapter will be called "Fangs and Claws" to represent both species.

I do appreciate everyone's patience's while I work through these scenes. ;)

The last animation settings for the bathroom scene with eric and michelle got messed up (including a missing jpg). Other changes may not be as noticeable because they are addressing lint errors for text tags still work correctly.

Working on some Lint errors (nothing major..just an eyesore for me), I ran into things missing in previous chapters. I am going to go through them and fix those issues, and issue a bug fix hopefully tomorrow if not today.

I did the same thing to the Game Menu as I did the main menu. Now both show the display Extra if using the demo.

Removed one of the If statements to hide the Extra menu option in the main menu. There is still one there so it doesn't appear in the demo (doesn't have galleries and certain features). This seemed to most expedient way to resolve an issue with things looking the same going from demo to full.

I have finished redoing the Vampire Dungeon scene for Day 1. The set I had used in the previous one was...ok. However, I found a set that had a much better feel, and didn't just repeat the "Grand Inquisition" dungeon I had used for Andrei Prologue and The Council chapter. Also finished a scene that explains the mech that was in the previous version (and still in this. When I have a chance to use a large creature like the Deathstalker, I will use it to tell a story ;))

Now, I am going to work the Lucia portion of the backstory. Up to now, you have seen her briefly in Kei's prologue and Andrei's prologue. I did this intentionally so I could have an opportunity to flesh her out a little more..which I am going to do now. ;)

Someone said "Isn't there enough women?" Well...there is always more. :) Here is a character I am introducing in the Vampire storyline. Related to Lucia...and will give a little more details about her type.

Hint: Dria (pictured) does have a pulse, and she drinks blood. ;) The undead are a type of vampire true, and I do cover them. However, the strictest definition of vampire is a being who feeds off human essences (i.e. blood). They don't have to be dead to do that, which goes into a little more lore from around the world. :)

Somehow, there was a problem with the bubbles when Emily causes an eruption. Fixed it.

There was a bug that would not show the correct images if you had content warning. Adjusted it and now the correct image shows.

Still working on sex scene. This one had a choice of who is involved, and I decided to add four choices (with unique personalities). I am working on the third one, and then the fourth. However, rather than reiterate those through Kei (working with Matt)...I am going to repurpose a scene I did from before. There will be an in-story reason explained.

This particular scene has been a little daunting. One part because trying to work through it the last two weeks with constant headaches (unrelated to rendering, but the headache didn't help with trying to do them. :))

In other news....

I plan to figure out how Daz to Unreal works. So far, I have gotten the "Daz had a fatal exception". However, I am going to go step by step manually sometime in the future and explore it.

Why?

Iray is nice and all. Really. But...it seems to make me say "Feck Daz and Nvidia" quite often. So I want to learn some new tools to accomplish things. I am uncertain when the transition will be complete, but I will let everyone know. :) I might even do hybrid approach if I find something I can do in Daz Studio and not in Unreal (unsure if I will find anything.).

Somehow in the scene where Bria needs to make a choice between watching Rebecca or returning the favor, there were three watches. I added the appropriate conditions so only one shows up. :)

If you played the demo and starting the game for the first time in the paid version, it will show the new chapters because you have seen the label. I will leave that in for the time being, but it may be removed in a major update (or 2).

The Demo carries over the saved data via cloud, but no persistents were being set. Also, changed the prologue persistent to unlock The Council. Shouldn't notice much of a change.

Removed the persistent for Kitsune Torment and Ascent from Hell for the Next Button on the Chapters screen. This will prevent the next button appearing if you only play Andrei, Kei, Madison, and Tori's prologues. I will add them back in when I finish the related segments.

The way it previous read, it did sound like ONLY the prologue was complete. I have noted which Part 1 (chapter 1) will be on page 2..and indicate where to click to go there. Also made the bottom menu bar on the chapters screen a little more visible. Again, thanks for any feedback I can get to improve things. :)

I believe in the process of creating the storyguide, I may have not spelled the function all the way through. I doublechecked to make sure there was only one instance it. This will resolve the issue.

A screenshot from one of the scenes I am working on. After going through the Council, figure I would do a little about shifter life. Also, working on a response to what happened in Kei's prologue. ;) Also considering doing a little bit of Andrei's life as well as delve into Vampires. Give a little more context on who is living the town. ;)

Part of the reason is to give a fuller chapter since some things don't happen until nightfall (Vampires). Additionally, it will start "combining" the story a little bit since a few of them work together (Like Cayla, Tori, and Lucia).

. Corrected which key is used for the translations to not create that exception.
2. Also redid how it gets the unique wording. May adjust in the future with the word bubbles.

I put:
day1.fioanswers

instead of day1.fioanswersfirst, which is what caused the exception in Kei prologue. Also, adjusted the name box for Tori in the Madison/Tori prologue. It is narratively suggested that a shorter name can be set later in the story...so just ask for the Long name ;)

You may see a "Turn this on" twice without any messages.

If you didn't have persistents from before, this error would come up. I have made a default for the variable in question and this fixes the issue. I apologize about this error as I do not recall deleting the default before I made this particular change.

I have added a Story Guide to the visual novel. When you launch, an option to turn it on and off will appear. Additionally, it can be turned on and off in the Content Settings.

You would get an exception if you went past the shower scene. This used to have something for solo animation and two animations (which this scene is). I have implemented that back in and it will now work.

There is a new feature coming "Story Guide" to help figure which occurs with achievements and what affects future events. I am currently through Emily prologue, Eric Day 1 and Eric Prologue. It will take me a little bit to implement this, but wanted to get this bug fixed asap.

S was missing from the version name, which will mess with the Steam Achievement granting.

V 0.36s The Council

This chapter focuses on the Virginian American Branch of the Council. In previous chapters, there were mentions, so this one elaborates more on it (especially why the supernatural creatures dislike them). This is still Day 1, but it is a few weeks after Ben captured Emily.

[h2]Renpy Improvements[/h2]

Tom had changed the distribution of Renpy Nightly. The channel I will focus on is Fixes, which can fix any bugs or errors from Renpy. So if you go to credits and see Nightly, this is still the released version of Renpy 8.1.

[h2]JSON Support[/h2]

I believe I had implemented a bit of this in previous minor updates. I transferred a few things to JSON files and now use them to manage things like the gallery, etc. It keeps the Screens clean, so I can troubleshoot that rather than scrolling through a long list. Furthermore, it updates the moment you launch. It is also a step to reduce errors on my end.

[h2]Version. rpyc[/h2]
You dont see this file, but I separated critical information, such as buildname, into a new file. This enables me to ensure the correct names are displayed (and I dont see a visual novel called Fire of Life: New Day Beta in the main channel).

[h2]Bugs[/h2]
As far as I know, there are either no bugs or less visible ones. If any crop up, let me know, and I will fix it as soon as possible.

Beta made it into the names. So, I fixed it.

What I will likely do in the future (not today...I messed the code up enough;)) is make different rpy files for the different branches (steam, develop (beta), demo) ..so they have a unique define that have the correct name so I don't worry about it too much. :)

Disabled the access to "The Council" chapter. As I said, still working on it. However, it is getting close to completion.

I will be honest and say I intended to send updates with different processes. One of them is changing over from having certain items stored in dictionaries to storing them in json files. The benefit? It loads when you start the game whereas I have to hope any changes refreshes. ;)

However, what happen was: I am sick. Nothing major. Just between air quality being terrible at the moment and I have asthma. So some days are better than others. My biggest concern is on the day I am not so well I might code something that causes an error and not catch it. So with these changes, I am making sure they consistently work when I am able to pay total attention to it. So when I do release these item, I am not sending a swamp of bugs. :)

This week I had gone through all the dialogue (and still need to tweak some) and change them to Word Balloon (like Comic Books). I will add a switch in to go back to "adv" style (how it looks now). However, it is one of the features of Renpy 8.1 that I thought would make things stand out a little more (make it clearer who is talking..what their emotion in their tone is..etc).

Working on a scene (well..trying to). I have been a little distracted the last day or so, which is a bad thing for any 3D program. :) So, I have spent a little bit of today transferring some information into JSON. Why? It was making the screens a little unwieldy the way I was doing it.

Once these adjustments are done, tested, and working like it is supposed to, I will likely update the UI.rpa and defines.rpa and push it out. ;) emily day 1 is not ready yet, so don't want to push that content yet.

Thanks for your patiences.:)

Dana

Included in the Renpy 8.1, is word balloons/bubbles, which I think would be a nice and unique way to convey things. However, as I was going through the code (and there is some rewrites of it that will come out in a later patch), I noticed that even if Eric says "Go to practice" at the end of the dorm scene during the day...the Coffeestop scene still plays. There was a missing flag and that has been fixed. Now when you say "Got to go to practice" It goes to the first swim practice scene.

Upgraded the Renpy version to 8.1.

Most images have been converted to AVIF to address some quality issues.

Noticed a few bugs and patched. Most importantly in Bria Day 1 content where the SFW Bria image after returning the dorm is not shown.

When you run the Michelle Shower scene, it will error out with a positional argument. This particular sex gallery uses a label seperate from others (not doing that again...:)) that will play the relevant scenes (better way to do it, so I will do that next time..or fix it in the next content update). :)

I apologize about that. I thought I caught all of them, but apparently this one slipped through.

Made some progress with the Council chapter. This also includes redoing three animations to match the thematic look.

I am taking care in writing this section because not everyone in "The Council" is the bad guy. To logically explain that, as well as for them to function globally, there are autonomous branches that follow ideals. So that means one unit may behave differently, which I am stressing in this case.



If you played Fire of Life: New Day before I started restructuring the story, you might recall Aida. If you don't, she used to be under the employ of Ben as a scientist. She is still a scientist but restructured her as working for another branch. I hope this provides enough contrast. :)

So while working on the chapter with Emily, I went to review the image where her eyes glow. Then I notice that the shadows look..weird.

To summarize my postwork process: I make "masks" for skin, hair, and clothes so I can make adjustments. I try to make sure I save the right PSD file with the masks so if I need to redo the images, it looks the same. Well..key word is try. For reason, I didn't save that file right and it was a bit dark so I didn't see the odd shapes until now. This fixes that.

I missed one sound effect name. I had changed it to female_moan_01 rather than femalemoan_01. I could've sworn I fixed this, but...missed one spot. Sorry about that. All of Andrei Snacktern options should play without a crash.

For some reason, Beta was in the build name.

This label was part of the old animation system before switching to Webm. I thought I had gotten to Josh scene, but... sorry about that.

Eric and Bria taking some R&R as I release this update...


Update 0.35.5
Eric Day 1
The continuation of Journey of Knight where you start in the lobby of the Male Dorm. It continues with different scenes until you wake up in the library. With the completion of Bria Day 1 and Eric Day 1, this sets up the Fae Storyline.

[h2]Previous Save Games[/h2]
The bad news is that critical changes have made previous save games incompatible. However, a lot of the variables are persistent, so it will go with that. If you need a chapter variable to be defined, both Eric and Bria can begin with their prologue and continue onto their Day 1 Story. Basically, if you load a save, there is a risk of Cannot find Return error. There isnt a good fix for this other than replaying.

[h2]Animations:[/h2]
On top of switching to WebM, I have designed the Sex Screen to be able to change the video inside rather than calling the scene itself.
Sex Options For Eric:
As you might notice with Bria, she is open to guys and gals. The same choice can be for Eric, which there will be a menu option to let you decide.
Updated Codex:
Added a more text to indicate which Bio/Codex/Gallery/Sex Gallery was changed.

Renpy 8.1

I routinely check the GitHub page for Renpy to see where they are. They have two crucial milestones: 8.1/7.6 Prerelease and 8.1/7.6 Release. Currently, the only thing in the "Release" milestone relates to Live2D. Now, I am familiar with Live2D and like some of the games that use them. However, not something I use. So unless there is something stops the game from functioning, I will likely start work with the pre-release. Good chance that it will be pre-released before I finish the bug testing for Eric Day 1. So included in that release will be updated images/movies.

Size

I did get a comment about file size (as long as it doesn't exceed 500MB). I have a few thoughts of game size:

[h2]Size of Game[/h2]
Fire of Life: New Day could get big if I am not careful. I remember back when played my first RenPy game, and going "Wow, that is a large file". Furthermore, I remember how disinterested I got because I had to update it with yet another big download. Thankfully, Steam only sends the changed/missing files, and Renpy has ways of organizing files. Part of why I put all the scripts in defines.rpa is that if there is a bug..it is a 1.6MB download vs. 200MB. Given the complex story, the size of the RPAs will get larger, but I want to make sure it is within reason.

[h2]Quality[/h2]
However, I am not going to randomly reduce a file size. I once went too far, and the renders looked..eh. Right now, WebP should be at 95% quality and the WebM should be at 22 Quality according to Handbrake (export as mov, and use Handbrake for final compression since Adobe doesn't have a native tool that works well in my opinion). The AV1 version split the video file size in half with the same quality. On average, I saw the AVIF achieving the look I want with a much smaller size then WebP was achieving for the same result.

[h2]Ability to Play[/h2]
It should not affect your ability to play the game at all. Renpy uses FFMPEG to play, which is always included in the renpy folder as part of the install. :) There are small things in 8.1 that will make me change a few things to ensure it plays, but...easily fixed.

[h2]7.6[/h2]
One of the primary reasons I use 8.0.3 is because of Python 3. Long story short: I am an IT person. So, I recognize certain issues with using a language no longer supported by the community (python 2.7). However, the drawback is that Renpy 8.0.3 only delivers 64-bit executables, which will not play on 32-bit Operating Systems.

So...

If someone wants me to make a version that able to be used by Windows 32-bit (Windows 7 to Windows 10 since 11 is 64-bit only), let me know. I will create a 7.6 version of the game. :)

Apologies for the Silence
So, I have been a little absent with making announcement updates (or bug fixes). A huge part of that is because: I was recovering from a cold. There were days I was sitting in front of Daz Studio and not able to progress forward because of illness. However, that is being taken care of and now I am working to move through the Eric Day 1 Storyline. If I am remembering the sequence right at the moment: I have this scene, plus an alternate sequence, and make sure the library works..and boom. The biggest part of the scene that will take a little time is that it involves animations, but that should be fine.

AV1
Yes, I had managed to test AV1 in the Nightly, and it seems to play well from that test. I even converted a WebM with VP9 to AV1, and it looked decent. So I will likely be converting videos once Renpy 8.1 is available. The goal for this is smaller file sizes while maintaining quality.

Once 8.1 is released (or preleased) I will also get on converting the AVIF as well. :)

Who's Next?
After I am done with Eric, I am considering on going onto Emily (The girl who had a short prologue through the woods). I can be convinced otherwise, but here is my reason:

The Council

A lot of fantasy and urban fantasy stories have these. In terms of humans, it is usually a group of people who make sure regular humans don't know the supernatural exist. The Council has been mentioned briefly in the different chapters, so having one that goes a little more into detail will help the overall story. :)

I would be remiss if I didn't do a St. Paddy inspired image of Bria, so...:) Now that is out of the way. I am working on the Eric Day 1 content, and I got through first half of it. Now, I am working on the "Night 1" part of the segment. Only downside is I have been ill, so it has been slower this week than I would like.

Right now, I am at the Swim Practice portion and expanding on that piece. Renpy 8.1 is at 91% on GitHub, so it is getting closer to release. ;)

One of the promises is that AV1 video will be released there and it is supposed to be better than VP9 (a common codec used with WebM). I will probably test it soon, but my main concern is responsiveness. My goal when video play is to less delay when it start playing. AV1, from what I heard, can be a CPU intensive item unless you have a RTX 40xx GPU. So, need to test that. ;)

• In some cases, the Extra menu will not show even if you do play through a prologue scene. So, made it so it evaluates the flag for unlocking the extra menu regardless if a persistent flag exists.
  
• For some reason, the file for one of the long chapter thumbnails did not get replaced for Kei. Fixed.
  

I thought I had gotten all the animations right, but there was still one using the old method. This has been corrected.

Obviously, I am going to do a new chapter, and I will focus on Eric at the moment (although there is a chance I might do one more for the update depending on how much work needs to be done. :) However, one thing I am noticing is the bloat of the visual novel.

• Emily Prologue will activate the Extra's menu.
  
• Bria and Lily's gallery gallery fixed so the "missing" images now show. :)
  

There were two bugs that prevented Bios from loading properly. These have been fixed. Also, made sure Andrei will end in the bios. :)

v.35 Bria Day 1
As the title suggests, the content will go from where you left off with Bria in the prologue to the end of day 1:

As far as I am aware, the content and code for Bria Day 1 is fine. However, doing some additional work:

Changing how Long Chapters are done in Replay.

The Kei and Madison/Tori prologue as well as Bria Day 1 have multiple scenes that are a little long (well, depending on how you view long ;)). So, I created a new screen that will show different sections to start with. For example, want to Start where Madison finds Tori? You can do that.

Adding code to insert different Codex, Bio, and Gallery images as you move along.
Rather than locking it to a single chapter, I will introdoce gallery images, sex scenes, etc. as you move through the content. This one is taking a little longer than expected, and what I am currently working on. This also means I will need to user after_load to convert existing persistence to new ones, but that is fine. :)

Thank you for your patience. I hope to have Bria Day 1 chapter up in the next couple of weeks.

The name change was happening, but there was a problem in the code that allow it to go with the name as is. This has been corrected.

If you use a custom name for a character, it would cause a crash in the gallery for not being able to find a key. I have fixed the problem.

The artwork for Bria Day 1 chapter is done. Right now I am debugging and refining things. A few things I want to address:

Somehow, someway..the beginning of Emily's prologue didn't have music (the songs were there) that has been resolved. Also put a note on the prologue page to clear up what's happening. Might do something with this page to indicate what to do.

As I was going through the process of preparing for AVIF conversion, I noticed the names of a Tori file that would result in a "Cannot file Error". This fixes that.

Noticed that in Extra menu and you click on return in the Bio of a single character, it will return away from the Extra menu. That has been fixed

Demo code got into this somehow.

There was a wrong hover image in a scene with bria and reb.

For some reason, Bria and Reb thumbnail ended up in there. Fixed it so only Andrei/Katia thumbnails are in there.

Added Sex Scene Gallery back

I did a little bit of the code so it would work better. Additionally, I had updated the file names so it can find the images (to avoid "Can't find images").

I had webp in the name, which Renpy cannot find files if I do that. Fixed. Also temporarily disabled sex gallery and cg gallery to get them working.

There was a typo in the name (I had thought I fixed, but it was still there...). It is now fixed.

There has been some missing file problems occuring. So, to resolve this:

So, there was a typo. I could've sworn I typed in a "or" in there, but it somehow got deleted. This puts it back in there.

Additionally, it will check if emily is in the dictionary. if that key is not, it will rebuild the dictionary.

In certain instances, you will either get a blank name for character, or an error message that Emily couldn't be found. This resolves that issue.

Caveat: Renpy 8.1 (currently at 61% Pre-Release) needs to be released before this occurs. I have tested this with a nightly build, but I am not going to subject players to potential issues that might come from that. :)

One issue I have seen come up is comments about images. I don't think the source images is the problem, but rather the compression used.

The problem is:

Even worse than that, it doesn't help with the color.




Here is how Bria appears in the Game with Webp at the current setting. Even if I went to 99, I have not gotten that much clarity and colors seem a bit meh.



Screenshot from 8.1 Nightly Build with avif file. Her freckles appears, there is stranges in her hair, and things look more pronounced colorwise. So, my plan is this:

Even though the scene is not available (yet) in regular play, I left it in the Sex Gallery for people who made it that far. ;) However, the content filter had changed and the call would cause a crash. Commented that out for the moment until I get to that scene in the re-write of chapters.

IF you cleared persistents, the menu would disappear. Configured it now to appear if any of the Prologue segments are done.

Used the Long form way of accessing the files, so that error screen with "Can't find image" should not occur now.

If there was any rollback that went past where the Conversion occured, it would give you a "Cannot find file". This includes a rollback prevention past that point. :) This will allow you to watch the Initiation screen without worry.

Release v 0.34s

The vital feedback I have gotten is that the story is confusing with the constant change of characters in short scenes. The story will tie into each other, so it might be difficult to create a single Renpy game for each storyline (see Such and Such that are common in comics). So, my solution is to develop concrete chapters. When you load your Save, it will take you to an Initial scene where Lily and Fio will introduce you to the new method of storytelling. Your progress isn't lost if you are past the Prologue scenes in the previous version. I am still reorganizing Day 1/Night 1 into chapters (currently on Bria).

[h2]Clarification:[/h2]
When you see "Continue" appear, this is because it is a looping animation, and Continues triggers an action to state you are finished viewing the animation.

[h2]What is fixed:[/h2]

After taking time off to get my focus back (was feeling a little blah the last few days), I noticed some bugs or things not going as anticipated. So I am going to work on those so it functions as intended.

I plan to release the prologue in the next couple of days. Most of the content is ready, but I want to doublecheck to make sure it works as intended.

So I have completed the prologue section of the story, and now working to put the different scenes done so far into the chapter system. This may include new renders, but hopefully not as many as the prologue where new scenes were required.

On top of that, there had been some notes about image quality. I don't want to be the person who has a multi-gig Visual Novel if I can avoid it. ;) Keep in mind, I have all the source files that are in high detail, so I can go back and save into a format for higher resolution of the image. So, options:

Prologue Update
So for context, there are Six prologue for characters. Madison and Tori will share a prologue story because they tie into it (and also because for the first half, Tori would be technically underage. To avoid that bit of blurry lines, the first half will focus on Madison while the second will focus on Tori after she is over 18. Any mention of Tori in Madison's half is just that..a mention. She is not portrayed.)

So with that context, I am nearly halfway through the Madison/Tori prologue and the other 5 are done content wise.

Coding Change
When I am not rendering new scenes, I am also making changes to behind the scenes code. For example, I am changing how the Gallery works. Will you see a major difference? No. The reason for these changes is simplicity and lack of crashing on because of an error I made. TLDR - I am creating a dictionary for different functions so that I have a standardize format to follow for entries and I decrease how many mistakes I make. :)

So, this is to say I am still at it! :)

Somehow, the wrong code went into Lucia Gallery (I could've sworn I tested that). Fixed it and now it should work.

This patch addresses some bugs (particularly for the last few sex scenes). If there are still any oddities I missed (exception screens), let me know.

Now, this does not have any new scenes like I mentioned in the announcement. This is strictly bug fixs. :) So far, I have one prologue done, and working on other to explain characters a little more. My priority is:

First off, let me thank everyone for their interest in this story. I have received reports that there are some issues to resolve (particularly in the last three scene in this version). Please know I am working on it. :)

There have been reports that the story is confusing and goes through a lot of characters very quickly. I get that. The story is complex, so I am working on a chapter system to break the story apart into more logical chunks (in the same game so you don't have to buy something else for that) so it is clear who the main character is within a storyline (there are multiple protagonists depending on the storyline).

There was a case when players had "Rename" character on where Bria would have "None" in the dialogue when she is still ???. This bug has been fixed.

The Irish Accent filter created an error. I had reworked how Bria would speak in the beginning with that filter to solve that issue.

Created a switch for Bria's Accent. It will be in the initial Splash Screen, but it will also be in Settings>Content Filters. When set to off, it will give dialogue without the Irish Accent. :)