Hello,
Defending Lydia Collier is going to be released on the 5th June 2021!
This update will be the biggest yet by a country mile!
This will be the first update I've ever released anywhere near the 1,000 render mark, and will go far beyond it, being nearly 1,500 renders in length.
Vanessa, Steph and Ellie will all have their paths progressed and the story's central plot will advance significantly.
This update will also fix a couple of errors on the news stories, a couple of typos that were reported and try and add some suggested improvements to the Betting site.
Here's some things to expect with Defending Lydia Collier v.10:
Spend an afternoon browsing holiday attire with Vanessa and Tiffany if you're jetting off at the weekend.
You'll start to see the first signs of Ellie's corruption in the workplace if this is the direction you've been taking your young assistant towards.
Some revelations from Steph will open up the chance at a completely new aspect to your relationship if she's moved in.
Lydia's case has never been what it has seemed, and now you'll have the choice of four distinct groups of allies to choose from to uncover the truth and clear Lydia for good. Stories will not end with the MC, now any endings will show how your interactions have affected those around you with customised epilogues depending on choices.
All in a higher quality! The very lowest quality a series of renders will have been made in for this update is 2k, with over 90% originally rendered in 4k, whereas everything was renders at 1080 or 720p before. This means renders will look crisper and have more detail to them despite all being downscaled.
Better colours! Any adjustments I'm doing to colours are now being done on a colour-true monitor, meaning they'll be no repeat of the green-tinged edits caused by my post-work which I thought looked great on an old monitor that has actually clearly had its day.
Plus a lot more, new Our Moments posts for nearly all the girls, significant additions to Whistle and the first contact on the app for the MC with somebody you might not expect, new clients at the law firm, new opportunities depending on the work you've completed, more news stories, an opportunity to try your card-game skills and a lot, lot more!
Why has it taken so long?
Firstly, and this is beyond far the biggest reason just the size of it! v.10 is going to be roughly 1,500 renders long, to put that into perspective, the current game has 3,852 images in it, so this one update will be coming up to the size of half the entire game so far. I could have released a v.09 size update weeks ago, but it wouldn't have all the content I wanted in it and would have been incomplete.
So without at doubt the main reason is just all the stuff that is going to be in it. Vanessa's route has hundreds of new exclusive images, Steph's route also has hundreds of exclusive images in it. In the past I've left an update incomplete for certain characters and then make a second update for to catch that path up, but at that point I'm releasing the first update purely so I can say "I've released an update!" whereas as this is first and foremost something I do because I like telling stories, I'd rather release what I think is a good quality, complete update than just push out multiple updates so I can say "Hey I do an update every month!".
The second reason is just the timing. I'm still in the middle of doing all my final exams at University, and I need to revise and focus on these and there's a lot of them and I'm not done yet. Additionally the day I released v.09.1 my GPU died, and whilst I've got a better replacement, that did completely knock me out for over a week which was effectively completed wasted.
However, the real reason is just the amount of content. The updates being released this time last year were 300-400 renders long, and that was on about a monthly basis all rendered at 720p. v.10 may have taken just over two months, but it is going to have 4-5 times as much content, and that is all rendered at 4k and downscaled to 720, so it should also look a lot better!
What will be coming next?
Following Defending Lydia Collier v.10, as voted on several months ago, will be Defending Lydia Collier v.11.
This update will be slightly shorter than v.10, I'm aiming for about the 1000 render mark, so it will still be nearly 3x the size updates were last year and will be the last combined update before the different completely different weekend events take place. I'm hoping with University finished and everything in place with the new PC to have this done in one month. Shortly before v.11 there will be another poll of supporters to see if a break is wanted and a Shadows over Manston update before v.12, and then we'll go from there.
Thanks for all your continued support, and I'll be back here on the 5th to post the update!
WP