dreamteamstudio

re:Dreamer Alpha 0.15.0

Added 2023-05-10 13:13:20 +0000 UTC

This one isn't actually in the game yet, but I wanted to showcase the Christmas outfits.

Hey all, sorry for the delay (as explained earlier)! I'm still getting used to how my body operates with what is apparently a copious amount of feminization (3 months in and I shit you not I have 36H breasts, which is worrying as that is Zoey's breast size). I'd like to stop being her self-insert now...

re:Dreamer (0.15.0) is an update many of you have been waiting for: the blursed Mom Route, now featuring Samantha's sprites.

For transparency, her route is not finished yet as the work on her sprites took so long and the plans for their use ended up being more expansive than I had expected, but I am actively seeking feedback on Samantha's character and where you think this route is headed and would love to hear y'all's opinions on it more than usual.

Changelog:

Samantha Taylor, Zach's mom (and a genius mentally ill demisexual yandere disaster housewife), now has sprites! While she's admittedly a minor character in every route except hers (more on that later), she has had a major effect on the life of her child that cannot be ignored or overlooked as she has spent more time with Zach than anyone else in his life, was pretty much his only parental figure for most of his life, and depending on how you look at it, his best friend (or at least, the person he is closest to).Her sprites were done by TiltSHIFT (and very heavily edited by me for strict consistency), and while he is the same artist who did Zoey's sprites and the CGs in the game that aren't placeholders, his art style has drifted enough over the past 2 years where it almost seems like it's a different artist mimicking Zoey's sprites. At least her breast size is consistent...
>She has 3.5 poses (distinct 2 head angles, but she has arm variant on her second pose and each head angle has a unique clipboard pose for her Thanksgiving outfit), 7 outfits (with many sub-variants like colors and outfit parts not selectable in the sprite viewer), many held objects in her hand for her third pose, 4-ish hairstyles (some are minor variants), 3 types of glasses, a headband, a Santa hat, and a ton of expressions.
>Samantha has 20 expressions for each head angle, and every single facial expression part is unique. This means that she has 16,000 possible unique expressions of eyes, eyebrows, and mouths she could make, which shoots up to 18,400 unique expressions because I gave her extra mouths from Zoey and Britney's sprites that feel more natural for talking. If you then factor in her 6 blush strengths, her 3 gloom levels (including the base without gloom), 3 possible facial emotes (a sweat drop, tears, and a single tear), and 2 different types of yandere eyes, she has a total of 5,299,200 unique faces she could make, not even counting that I can dynamically adjust the strength of her yandere eyes. This is an outright dizzying amount of combinations at my fingertips, but that massive range gives her a ton of subtlety with her expressions in a way that Zoey can't quite match as many of her daughter's base facial expressions have duplicate parts.
>Honestly, it's crazy that while Samantha doesn't have her daughter's outfit versatility, she has what are in my opinion the significantly better sprites. I'm down bad for her and she turns me into a useless pining lesbian.
But enough about the sprites! Fulfilling a Sustainer request from Sandra and my own promise to expand the blursed "Mom Route" as soon as Samantha's sprites were finished, her writing has resumed.The start of the route has been completely overhauled to be a canon route and a few minor details have been adjusted, but her writing still isn't finished this update as editing her sprites simply took too long (seriously, I wasn't expecting the image editing + scaling + coding to take almost 70 hours total, and I had to go back and fix her Pose BC's expressions because the outlines were different strengths than Pose A's and that ate up an entire day).
>There's still a ton of new writing here (at least an hour, but Awkwardness makes this length vary a lot), but it stops at a tantalizing cliffhanger. I won't go into spoilers, but there are two major variants to Samantha dropping a bombshell nuke on her son-turned-daughter (later to be expanded to five; I just ran out of gas editing art and need to rest for a few days). If you play with Trans 5 and Trans "therapy" answer (like I know at least 63% (that's the gender bender number!!!) are because of the survey), you might get something many of you have been champing at the bit for a long, long time.
>The conclusion will be in the next update to create a fully-canon route of at least 2 hours, possibly 2 and a half. Remember when I said this was going to be 60 minutes, then 90 minutes?
>The Mom Route has extremely significant differences based on the "therapy" answer Zach gave Ai (and to a lesser extent, the value of the Trans stat). Trans and Cis have the biggest differences between them (of course), but "AGP" can function as a nice middle ground between "trans girl wish fulfillment that melts the heart of any trans girl reading it as it fills with envy and jealously" and "a deep dive into parental and childhood drama and trauma caused by severe mental health issues, and how even a loving mother with the best of intentions might still be a terrible mother." And yes, I know AGP is bunk that has harmed trans women in untold numbers and it turned out I was not the exception to the rule, but Zach incorrectly thinks he is that exception.
>More than any other writing in re:Dreamer, Samantha's scenes get extended and altered with Awkwardness 4 and Awkwardness 5. Even if 4 or 5 are not your usual Awkwardness values, try her route with them as the many scenes that get altered or unlocked with those stats are heavily worth checking out as I think they show just how much of a dorky goofball Samantha is, especially around Zach.
I fixed the Android phone text from clipping into the phone, but it came at the cost of having to make the text smaller to match the way it looks on PC. Let me know if it's legible on your own phone screen or not, but based on quick informal polling of Android users, they said it was legible on their screen.
The NVL mode (full-screen text) now has thicker outlines for backgrounds that aren't its default 80% opacity black overlay, increasing legibility.
I somehow took out the line that the best friend Zach picks gets a minor wish if they win re:Dreamer (think of it like Zach's wish being the limitless wish from Fairly Odd Parents vs the friend's wish being like the restricted ones bound by Da Rules). It's been re-added.
Zach finally has the very important World Information entry on Zach's stuffed animals and their extensive lore. It unlocks in the Mom Route (and later on in the first home visit of the other routes).
Zoey's sprites have a new medium-length hair option. See if you can find out where it shows up in the game!
Zoey's sprites have a new maternity bra and underwear set her mom lends her in the Mom Route. I made it myself from the existing Underwear C set (the plain orange one), partly because I needed it and TiltSHIFT was busy, and partly to test the viability of editing Zoey's breast size across her sprites for consistency myself.I promise that I have not forgotten about making the writeup about how we could change Zoey's breast size, and not by shrinking them (as they'd only get reduced by half a cup size, if that), but making the size more consistent across her outfits, making them consistent across her poses (they're quite a bit smaller in Pose A than Pose B or Pose C), and making them rounder and perkier (they noticeably flop over her arm in Pose C on most outfits). Recent art priorities have just, well, taken priority.

To simplify the complicated issues of fixing Zoey's breast size:
TiltSHIFT's style has drifted a ton in the past 2 years and he can't quite replicate his old style he used in Zoey's sprites (seriously, Samantha's layer structure was largely incompatible with Zoey's); he has forgotten how the folder structure for Zoey's sprites' Clip Studio Paint file was organized and had to be sent flattened versions of Zoey's nude poses for a new outfit he just did as he could not navigate the file; he's got better communication skill than Myumi and is more professional, but that comes at the price of being more expensive; and it is the utmost importance to stay on great terms with him as he wasn't particularly receptive to redrawing sprites and has expressed interest in drawing new CGs instead, and that is honestly what we should be throwing him at to fix some of the lopsided porn/text ratio this game has.
Myumi is less expensive than TiltSHIFT and can almost perfectly mimic TiltSHIFT's old style, but he is slower, prone to going AWOL, and would like to make new characters and CGs instead of outfits (let alone redrawing outfits) like he has been doing for the past several months; and as he's trying to do more professional art, I'd like to help him create things he can put in a portfolio instead of edited art (and again, the porn/text ratio of this game needs fixing).
While I lack any drawing skills, I am good enough with Clip Studio Paint that I can edit Zoey's sprites for generally "good enough" results, but it takes forever, slowly drives me insane (seriously, my brain was numb by the time I hit the last stretch of polishing Samantha's sprites for consistency, and I felt something inside of me, likely my soul, break when I realized her Pose BC expressions needed fixing and that took me 10 hours straight of work), editing art is a lost opportunity cost of me writing this visual novel, and while the results are adequate, they aren't as good as TiltSHIFT or Myumi's work.
Zoey's sprites now have a recolor of the complex compression bra for the routes that aren't Britney's route. It's labeled as "chest binder" (although to be honest, I probably need to swap the usage of "chest binder" and "compression bra" as the more complex device Zach and Britney make in Britney's route has binding features not found on compression bras, but that's a project for another release).
Zoey's sprites now have a modular Christmas outfit. It consists of a red off-shoulder sweater dress, thick tights (which are internally named "stockings" to keep with the Christmas theme), and a Santa hat. It matches with Samantha's Christmas outfit and they pair well when on the screen together.
Lots of typo fixes from dedicated readers actually telling me about them. Thanks! This also alerted me to the fact that my Visual Studio Code spelling dictionary was broken, so that's cool...