HELLO THERE!

I hope you all had a happy holiday! Sorry for the silence for the past... year😭It's been a turbulent 2024 so I hadn't had much time to dedicate to 2 Hours. But I do want to TRY to get an update out before the year ends in some form, ideally on its 1st anniversary, December 31st.  Partially because I want to start 2025 fresh and with a clean slate.  

At the beginning of the year, my thought process for the 2.0 update was to add new stuff on top of what was currently in the game but that mindset has changed to focus on elaboration and characterization of what was already made, so less new content and more improving and fixing what was already in the game. Usually, I try to keep my mouth shut on development because I tend to change my mind a lot and make horrible estimates for release dates (flashback to when I told someone Do Not Kill Me Jacob EXTRA would come out in October of 2021...) but let me show some progress I've made:

-NEW SPRITES

One of the main things I wanted to update was the art. Jordan, Greg, and Blake's designs have changed so much just this year so I wanted to update their sprites to reflect that. Another change is to how Jordan's sprites work, Jordan now has a normal sprite that can appear on screen when he's alone or with just one other person, then when more characters appear on screen he'll move to the bottom left. It was a bit tricky to get it to work at first but it's smooth sailing now!! Especially thanks to Feniks' gradient shader, which made it easier to use Jordan's normal sprites as side images. 

So far only like half the cast has updated sprites, whether the update will come with everyone's sprites updated or not is up in the air since I also have to juggle writing, music, and programming. It's cool seeing how much my art has changed! My friend gave me a lot of feedback when I was updating the sprites, so it's thanks to him for how they look.

-NEW MAP

I wanted to replace the old mall menu with something a bit cooler and more explorable. Thanks to  Devil Spider's Point and Click Framework I was able to achieve the map I envisioned!  Unfortunately, the main background artist is busy but a friend has generously offered to draw the map art for me!!! <3 <3 <3 It's still under construction but it's completely functional in-game! Maybe in the future, I could put Blake on the map and he could chat with Jordan. 

-NEW THINGS I CAN'T VISUALIZE WITH SCREENSHOTS

So far, I have made 4 new tracks for the update, 3 replacing some old tracks and the last track is for a new scene. Speaking of new scenes, another change will be some rewrites/additions to the script. Mainly a new opening scene and an extended ending scene. 

Something that has been on my mind has been giving the game a slight name change, because "2 Hours" is like probably the worst possible name someone could choose for a visual novel if you want to try to find it on search engines X_x. I was thinking "2Hours: ReGift" sounds good since a lot is being overhauled. 

I was also thinking of changing how the endings are counted. Instead of each gift counting for an ending, the endings would be counted by which reaction Greg got to the gift (so like, Bad reaction, Good reaction, Best reaction) so there'd only be 3 endings listed instead of 15. This might cause issues with persistent data/save files, so it'd probably be best to start fresh when the update comes out. 

-CLOSING NOTES

Unfortunately, the 2.0 update won't come with any new stores, mostly because of writing lol, I have ideas but I'm gonna hold off on them for now. So pretend you never saw that blue guy in the last post. The main roadblock that could delay the update is the writing, which has been the roadblock for like every project I've made T_T but I'll try my best to push through and get it done!!! I hope the 2.0 update will be worth the wait! Thank you for reading!

-Bradley