UI update and story progress for Dairy Tale! (Patreon)

It's been a week, so here's a quick update!

I completely overhauled the UI this week. It's so much more readable now. Each character has a color, and talks in that color. You can easily follow who is talking, and the story flow is so much better as a result. I've never done that before this game, and will always use that code on new games.

My work on adding ending content and updating for story continuity is going well. I've made 10 backgrounds, and just over 30 character renders to support the endings making more sense in the last week alone! With that in mind, I started working on finalizing the ending refinement last week and have debugged all the main story and half the endings.  After the endings are done, the story's debugged, so then it's making the CG renders you get as rewards for completing a storyline, and then alpha release!! I can pretty much commit to that by April unless something completely catastrophic happens at work or at home.

I wish things went faster, but I'm simultaneously debugging my code, checking story for clarity and continuity, and adding stuff to make sure it makes sense all at once, and I'm only one girl, so progress is steady but always a bit slow since the game has so much depth. Current stats:

- 58005 words

- 494 character images or renders (includes facial expressions, so actual renders is probably ~100 lower)

- A map of the village!

- 37 backgrounds

Attached are some teasers of the new UI.

I think one of them may be the first time I've shown off Tiffani. She's an arrogant catgirl that runs a teashop -NYAA! Tiffani is hourglass-shaped and gets some big boobs and a wiiiide butt as you befriend her more.