Reimplementation of an Endgame Event
The main new change in this update is a safer and more reliable implementation of (spoilers for the end of the game): the game's final delete functionality. Previously, in order to delete the game, the game would first check if the game's parent directory was named what the game expected, and if so, delete the entire directory. In the new implementation, the game instead references a hard coded list of all files of the base game and deletes each file individually. This ensures that only game files will be deleted and not other files such as mods or other data that are placed inside the directory. Issues regarding some files not deleting sometimes in Windows and a crash that often occurred on the final screen have also been fixed.
Official Linux Support
Despite a native Linux version of the game being available since launch, the Creator did not have any experience with this platform five years ago when the game was released so had not implemented the final endgame functionality there. Five years later, this lack of experience is no longer the case, so starting with this update, this endgame functionality has been implemented and tested on all major desktop platforms, meaning Linux is now officially fully supported.
RenPy Engine Update
The other significant change is an update of the RenPy engine from version 7.2.2 (released March 2019) to 7.8.4 (released December 2024). The motivations behind this update are to get Linux running without any graphical glitches and to better support newer systems. This newer engine has a new openGL renderer implementation, better gamepad support, and less platform related bugs. This comes with a small caveat: some older systems will now be deprecated: WindowsXP, and macOS versions 10.6 - 10.9. So that the game does not become unavailable to older systems post-release, the previous version of the game using the older engine will continue to be available on itch.io.
The Creator has done their best to make sure the game has not changed in any perceivable way as a result of this engine update, including making tweaks to the configuration of the new renderer to match the look and feel of the older renderer. Special thanks to RenPy's primary developer renpytom for their work in RenPy which makes this update process as easy and painless as possible. If you find anything that we missed please let us know.
Other Changes
The following changes have also been made:
- Only files relevant to your platform will be downloaded. (Steam only)
- RenPy's default Help menu which explains some keybindings was previously intentionally hidden and has been added back to the main menu. This choice by the Creator has been determined to have been pretty lame and has thus been reversed.
- Additionally, RenPy's hidden Graphics and Accessibility menus have been added as new options in the Preferences menu. These menus have a few engine-specific controls such as framerate control, self voicing, render backend choice, high contrast mode, and more.
- Powersaving, a framerate limiting feature, is now disabled by default. There were too many issues with this feature and recording/streaming the game. It can be reenabled in the "Graphics and Gamepad" menu.
- The prior update (version 1.0.3.0, released June 2021) introduced a single line of dialogue regarding winning an achievement that was only in the Steam version. This line now appears in all versions of the game in all storefronts regardless if achievements are relevant.
- Many words were removed from the outsourced "bad words" list that were not actually bad words. A few examples: "gay" "lesbian", "lmao".
- In the interest of delivering on the promise of not being a subversive horror game with jump scares, the music tracks "Too Intense Beat" and "Too Intense Beat 2" have had their volume lowered slightly.
- The credits are no longer skippable (apologies to the confused streamer who skipped the entire credits by accident, hopefully not too many other people did that!)
- The vocal sound blip files have been reencoded to fix a sound glitch that manifested in newer versions of RenPy.
Now that the game is officially supported on Linux, we've asked Valve to verify the game as "Playable" for Steam Deck instead of "Unsupported". Valve did a manual review of the game in 2023 but somewhat erroneously categorized the game as Unsupported due to RenPy's self-voicing accessibility feature not working on Steam Deck. In a future update if resources and time allow we will update the game to be fully supported. This would involve some tweaks to the game's UI for the smaller screen among other console specific tweaks.
Content Locked
Regarding future updates and patches: All of MetaWare High School (Demo)'s current game content is now considered "Content Locked". The game still contains several minor logic bugs, story inconsistencies, and software performance issues, however the Creator feels that modifying the game experience this far after release would go against the game's themes and identity as an unfinished demo. Therefore except in rare circumstances, all game content, dialogue, animations, logic, software performance issues, and any other details that contribute to the game's core experience will be considered off-limits for changing in future updates, even if doing so were to improve the game by some metric. Updates will instead focus on keeping the game supported for future players on newer hardware and preserving the original experience as closely as is possible and practical with all of its quirks and flaws.
Until next time,
The Creator
P.S. New Bluesky Account. Made it today. Will likely stop posting on the decomposing bird eventually.
P.P.S. New steam developer page. Follow here to be notified when something is new on steam.
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Was planning on releasing this update on the five year anniversary coming up this April, but decided to push this update earlier when I discovered the game's ending functionality was not working at all, at least in my testing. Sorry for leaving it that way for so long. Having it work properly and safely is more important I think than preserving the busted functionality. I've improved a lot as a programmer since then!
I'll share more of a life update and what I've been up to these past five years around the game's anniversary.
- Ahmayk/Marc
