v1.5 Thoughts

Here is the pre-release/progress log-ish post!

v1.5 is finally properly complete. It's been a long time for this scrappy and messy update. Going from it being a small NPC update, to it then expanding into including proper events and event lines, then even adding a new activity, not to mention the whole mess that it was waiting for the artwork and adding more content while the artwork was catching up. Things were messy. Many cool ideas were written, some of them made it, and some others were unfortunately shelved, but ultimately, v1.5 is here.

The main reason I went back to make this expansion was due to a few complains about the content in level 6 and 7, and those complaints saying the content strayed a bit from the exposure theme. I personally don't really agree with the complaint, but it did give me the idea of there being improvements that could be made. I initially thought of rewriting some of the content in those levels, but then decided to leave the existing content as is, and instead simply add more content. It's better to simply add content to the game than to bleed content and then add content to fill in the gap.

For the sake of lessening those complains, the content in this expansion is exclusively exposure stuff that doesn't involve bukkake or other stuff. Overall, it's about 20+ solid events, with about 30+ smaller events.

Something that I wanted to mess around with was multi-CG events. So far most events use a single CG, with a few of them having more CGs, but those CGs have a linear progression so to speak. What I wanted to mess around with was multiple CGs where any of the CGs could hypothetically take place at at any point in the event, and offer a different perspective of the same situation. This was mainly seen in the duck event, with it having 3 different CGs, and all of them providing a different angle and purpose for the same situation. The main reason for me wanting to do this is for Purple Dream. PD will contain various interactive events that are not linear, and with gameplay that will span across multiple CG with different perspectives that you can swap between, and each of them will have interactions that you can initiate through that perspective.

Something that became a small issue was that the NPC events that started to become a bit bigger ended up becoming something that had to be more than a small NPC event. As a reminder, the duck event line and the stargazer activity were both supposed to be small NPC events, but I ended reworking them and turning them into actual events, with the duck event being a proper event line, and the stargazer being a full on activity technically speaking. Even the old man changing persistent NPC event became so lengthy that it reasonably should've been a proper event line, but I decided to just keep it as an NPC event and not complicate things further. Scope creep was a major thing with this update.

Overall, this was a weird update. The plan was for it to be a quick and small NPC focused update that would add the once scrapped NPC event feature, but as you can see, it kind of derailed and ended up becoming something that adds content in various different ways.

The NPC events generally had a bit more going on than originally planned. I bumped up the budget on them so to speak in order for the experience with them to have a few more bells and whistles, as opposed to them being a simple dialogue. I did some camera work for them, movement with Hana, messed around with the front and back body, a couple of them required even temporarily tweaking the sun direction, some multi-POI and routine intensive stuff with the old man changing events, etc.

The added NPC events, in particular the random NPC events and early levels of the persistent NPC events are meant to be a small piece of content to give a small kick to Hana's strolls around town, nothing big. I hope they achieved that goal.

Another thing is that I'm not entirely sure of how the content added here in v1.5 will feel. If you look at the numbers, it expands the game about 25%, but the content isn't something straightforward like "two new POIs", and is instead a bunch of varied content that is spread through various means. I get the feeling that the content won't actually translate into as much content as it technically is, if that makes sense.

Overall, would love to hear what you thought of everything. The new events, multi CG events, mechanics in the new events, how the content was spread, how the update felt, etc. Let me know what you thought!

Thank you for supporting the development of Hana Exposure, and I hope you enjoy v1.5!

Random v1.55 hotfix patch notes here for the sake of keeping the main v1.5 post clean :

• The Crater will now be available and accessible from the town after having cleared the game

• Fixed an issue causing the level 5 Crater activity to be available earlier than intended

• Polished and redesigned visually the level selection screen of the memory system

• Updated Crater activity memory thumbnails to also include the duck events

• Added thumbnails to the epilogue memories that were missing them

• Added CG viewer functionality to the Nube gift social event memory

• CG Viewer button will no longer appear when the selected memory doesn't have its CG viewer function implemented

• Fixed PUB persistent NPC event not being available when replaying the PUB work activity through the memory system

• Fixed an issue during the level 5 PUB persistent NPC event that caused Hana's maid bikini to not appear when the back sprite was in use when seeing the NPC event after the cleaning event

• When viewing a previous unseen level of the level 5 PUB persistent NPC, Hana will now temporarily revert to the uniform that is intended for that event for the duration of the event

• World sprites will now adjust their brightness based on the current time

• Fixed the level 1 standing split event memory being broken after v1.5

• Fixed an epilogue memory removing the 2000 silver once again when replaying it

• Fixed Hana's hat remaining on her sprite after replaying the last epilogue memory

• Changed the warmth social event from a level 3 event into now being a level 5 event