re:Dreamer Alpha 0.16.3

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Hey y'all, CaptainCaption here!

This release of re:Dreamer (0.16.3) took two weeks extra (or a week extra, if you count the extra week I said it'd take to work with Britney's new CGs), but I think it was very much worth the wait. So without further ado, let's look at the changelog to explain why:

Changelog:

• Britney's route has a lot of new writing for Day 3 night, with a dinner scene, a scene of Britney teaching Zach how to prepare for his inevitable upcoming period, Britney finding Zach's gender bender doujin stash, a sex scene with Britney topping Zach and trying to explore this discovered kink with him, and two scenes of the aftermath.
• This means that Britney's Day 3 fully concludes with 18,724 new words, bringing the total day to 81,524 words. Now, while that's a lot of reading (based on the 250 words per minute average of English reading, respectively 1 hour 15 minutes & 5 hours and 26 minutes), the tool I use to capture the text length from individual folder and files is a bit greedier than the one built into the Ren'Py SDK for the overall script, potentially over-reporting by up to 56% extra. Still, that's like, respectively 47 minutes & 3 hours and 28 minutes, but because of C.H.E.A.T.S. and other text substitution methods, take reading times with more than a pinch of salt. I do not think I am doing a day this dense again, but it was nice to really show a day in Zach's new life in this much detail from the very start to the very end with very little in the way of gaps.
• But enough with the dry details, since everyone wants to know more about the sex scene! This is the first "proper" sex scene for Britney's route, with amazing new CGs drawn by TiltSHIFT (Zoey's sprite artist). It's got a lot of moving parts as Zach and Britney move around on the bed, and it's a dialogue-heavy affair as it focuses on Britney pushing Zach to improvise a scenario to act out his gender bender fantasy, only for the lines between Zach and the character he is playing to blur as Britney doesn't know when to ease up and not rush things along at her fast pace.
• Beyond that... a lot of the expressions in Britney's route got polished up, and there's some minor edits to the dialogue in a few places to be slightly better (notably with the start of Britney's route before the first choice menu and the Day 4 morning to better fit the events last night). I am now only missing a few spots here and there of "two girls standing around with their mouths hanging open" or wording that feels a bit clunky given my improved skills as a writer compared to two or more years ago, like right before they have sex for the first time (which definitely needs CGs itself so it's not an awkward moment of one Barbie doll eating another Barbie doll out), some less common C.H.E.A.T.S. variants, and the very start of the Day 2 date.
• There's a new unique variant of the ripped gray XL hoodie at the start of Britney's route, with Zoey lifting the bottom hem up to show Britney just how much her body changed. Yes, it works with the SFW filter on to keep the boxers in place.
• To reflect the Rich route's unfortunate cancellation (which you can read about here), the option to choose him has a bit of text from Zach explaining how he's definitely not choosing Rich, with a hyperlink to that Patreon Friday Update before jumping to choose someone else.
• I fixed a minor issue with the sprite viewer grabbing showing expressions on odd cases (like Zoey's mouth_14F) that would return the incorrect expression.
• The Sprite Viewer button is no longer in the quick menu because the update to Ren'Py 8.1.2 very annoyingly broke it (and hopefully nothing else; I need to be more careful when I update the engine).
• Fixed a minor pathing issue in the arcade date. It's just the headache that keeps on giving, isn't it?
• A few typo fixes here and there.

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

"Oh my God, I have so much fucking work ahead of me if I want to get the revised Author's Notes system in the game by the 4th Anniversary release on October 7th..."

"I've got to finish the CaptainCaption sprites, rebuild the GUI code to allow for the side image of me talking about the VN, make the code for those side images, add a toggle in case you don't want to see that hard work, add a toggle so you can give Samantha Taylor red hair to make the 'CaptainCaption is just Zach/Zoey's mom' joke go full circle, and go through the entire fucking visual novel and add 1,913 expressions (that's more expressions than Samantha Taylor has) and even more Author's Notes as I go along."

"Holy fucking shit, this clipboard is going to be glued to my hand for the next three weeks, isn't it?"