Hello, dilukha here!

As I said in my last DevLog, watching the Visual Update come together has been a dream come true. Not many are given the chance to lead a project of this caliber, gather an art team from scratch and secure a budget to make that possible, so I once again thank all the patrons who have chipped in to fund the Visual Update, and Mino for his trust and friendship.

We've worked tirelessly to bring you this and I hope it continues to bring the story of Minotaur Hotel to many others. Thank you for your continued support!

~~~

Mino here.

Nine months ago I gave my word that "for as long as I live, my promise to finish Minotaur Hotel stands". Though commitment to that remains relevant, today's spotlight falls deservedly falls on the amazing team that has come together to renovate and improve Minotaur Hotel.

Were it not for our extraordinary art team, and each individual member's talents, the Visual Update would not be possible. Were it not for our coding team, with both Creeeples and Wattson getting us to the finish line of every release, this wouldn't be possible. Were it not for every amazing new member who's joined us to assist in every other aspect, Minotaur Hotel would not be what it is.

I thank the Muses, the patrons who made this endeavor possible, and I thank you, dearest reader. I will remember you and sing another song.

Here it is.

Phase 1 Changelog

• Sprites:
  • Asterion's injured sprites were redone. In both instances he gained a variety of facial expressions, which have already been fully implemented into the script.
  • Kota, Luke have been fully overhauled! Kota gained a bandana for his lounge manager costume, which has been scripted. Please report any odd situation where he appears wearing his bandana when it doesn't make sense!
  • Robert has been overhauled and gained a new emotion in the process (happy). His introduction has been polished and rescripted. His expressions will be further rescripted in the future when his hangouts are rewritten.
  • Argos' sprites were redone and gained two new poses. Additionally, we redid the expressions on his first encounter to include one of said new poses.
  • The Old Man, Jean, Greta and Ismael had their sprites redone. Greta and the Old Man gained new expressions as well, which are already fully implemented in the script.
• Backgrounds:
  • BGs for the Hades Statue, Valley Entrance, Cold Room, The Bedrock, Lounge (Luke and Kota variants) have been redone by Faun, Kinutao, Bork and Phwog. Some of them include morning, afternoon and night variants!
• CGs:
  • The Cold Room has been redone and expanded, now consisting of three sequential CGs.
  • Asterion's lyre recital during Chapter 12 has been redone! It comes in two variations to account for who's the lounge manager.
• Music and ambiance:
  • New sound effects and ambiance tracks by Samples.
  • New music track, EMACIATED, by Nick Shutter, replacing the track previously used during the cold room scene.
• UI:
  • The majority of the UI has been redone!
  • Early game items redone (Hotel's Deed, Labrys Blade, Passports, Wine Bottle, Ledger, etc)
  • Title screen redone.
• Edits and rewrites throughout the early chapters to account for:
  • New expressions to previously static sprites — microexpressions previously described on the text are now displayed on screen, which required minor changes to the narrative to reduce repetition.
  • Changing "--" to "—", among other substitutions of visually similar but distinct characters.
  • Sloppy sentences and ambiguous moments which we had meant to improve and polish for a long time. (Including but not limited to Robert clarifying he's not actually Swiss.)

Bug Reporting

You may report bugs, typos and issues of any variety through this form.

Before you do so, however, please take a moment to check our list of known issues. The following bugs do not need to be reported:

Known Issues

• THE VISUAL UPDATE IS AN ON-GOING PROCESS. OLD AND NEW SPRITES WILL COEXIST IN THE GAME FOR A WHILE. MOST NOTABLY, ONLY ASTERION'S EARLY GAME SPRITES (CHAPTERS 1 TO 3) HAVE BEEN REDONE FOR NOW.
• If you try to skip through the game, particularly the earliest chapters, the game might frequently stop skipping through text boxes. This can happen because we've done a number of typo fixes and polishes to the writing of these earlier chapters, and each one interrupts skipping if you have "Skip Unseen Text" disabled on the Settings.
• If you are skipping through the game you may experience lags and stutters when some of the new sprites appear on-screen. This happens because of how Minotaur Hotel handles and displays character sprites. We are currently optimizing this feature, and it'll gradually be fixed as we roll out each phase of the VU.
• During Hinterlands 3, the map of the Hinterlands and the boxes pointing to each location you can visit will not line up.
• Some character sprites (most notably but not limited to Kota) might not slide off-screen fully, in such a way that some part of them sticks out from the side of the screen. This is due to the change in the game's resolution. Please report these instances via this form.
• Some elements of the Daily Management, Customize Asterion and Team Management screens may look slightly off. This is temporary and will soon be resolved as the Visual Update works through these menus.
• Sometimes items displayed on-screen (like the Wine Bottle, Torn Pages, Ledger, etc) may not disappear when they are supposed to. Please report these instances as a bug via the form.
• Tutorial explanations have not been updated. This will be addressed when we update the Team Management screens.
  
• There may be times when the narration no longer fully matches the art, particularly where minute changes to the character's costume or design were made (for instance, Kota will now wear a bandana as lounge manager, but the narration may describe him messing with his hair.) Please report these instances and, broadly speaking, any incongruent occurrences via the bug/typo report form.
• Robert's "harness" costume has not been redone, and scenes in which he wears it (wrestling with Khenbish) might have visual bugs.
• Warning: save files made with the VU Phase 1 build are not compatible with older versions of the game!

As one final point, we've just published a new version of the game on our Patreon — it has all the new art from the VU, just like this one, while also having the Patreon-exclusive Chapter 20 content we've been publishing there over the last few months. And you can get it for 50% off until the end of the month, since we're doing a discount to celebrate the VU!

That's all. Have fun!