Bound by Night [Ch.17a] [BoundByNight]

Ch.17a
I’m pleased to announce that Chapter 17 (Build 0.17a) is now available to the public for download here from Itch.Io. This update includes:

New content for Chapter 17
Upgrade to Ren’Py 8
Higher quality images for the Chapter 14 dream sequence
Coding fixes for Chapters 15 and 16

Android Users, please make sure you read the section at the bottom of this post for important information (short version, your old save files will no longer work).

Update Information for ALL Builds
This is actually a fairly large update. However, because it is bringing a bunch of different branches back to a common path, you will not see all of it on a single playthrough. As we pick the story back up, I had to address whether you had joined Mayhew or rejected his romantic advances. And, if you rejected him, I had to deal with whether you were pursuing Nick or Connor and, even then, whether you were pursuing a monogamous relationship with either — and whether you were keeping that promise.

This update also upgrades the Ren’Py engine to version 8+. I am told that brings with it improved security for end-users (i.e., players). I had put this off for some time because the last time I “upgraded” Ren’Py engines, it broke a lot of things. Fortunately, based on what I’ve heard so far, it hasn’t broken too much, although I did find one very severe bug that was blocking the Connor romance path. I still haven’t found the cause of the bug, but I did implement a workaround to reset the values so it should play normally for everyone.

You’ll also find as you step into Chapter 17 from a recent save game that you’ll be asked a series of questions. That’s because I discovered a number of coding errors in Chapters 15 and 16 that weren’t properly recording decisions. If you go into those chapters from an earlier save game (i.e., Chapter 14 or earlier), everything will be fixed and you will not have the Chapter 17 menus, but I didn’t want to trust everyone had earlier save games nor did I want to force everyone to restart unless it was absolutely necessary.

Some other updates:

Made it easier for Nick to say “I don’t hate you” to Ronan at the airport bar
Fixed some coding in Chapter 14 that should allow more reliable transitions between parts of the game
Adjusted choices during the Connor romance at the cabin to require you to talk about his hooking up with Seth, thereby requiring player to discuss an open relationship but also enables you to activate the Connor romance path
Adjusted the size of the input font for custom save game names on PC and Mac (cleaning up the Save menu a bit)
Fixed highly pixelated images from the Chapter 14 dream sequence (which is if you’re not pursuing Nick or Connor)