Hey lads!

I'm thrilled to share a quick update with you all. After implementing various optimization techniques over the past few months, I've successfully managed to reduce the RAM consumption by approximately 75%! In the current build (v34), the game now consumes around 400-700 MB of RAM, compared to v33 where it could sometimes reach up to 3000 MB, causing crashes due to memory exhaustion. However, due to higher resolution art files, it now consumes around 1 GB of VRAM, as opposed to the previous 700 MB or so.

Moreover, location transitions are now much faster. While it's challenging to provide precise numbers, on my 14900k and NVME SSD setup, transitions are approximately 30-100% faster based on location and game settings. I believe these improvements will be even more noticeable on slower devices, particularly on Android. Tested on Xiaomi POCO X5 Pro, location transition took around 1-4 seconds in v33, while in v34 it takes less than a second in all locations with the "Wait for NPCs" setting disabled. Enabling "Wait for NPCs" setting will increase load times greatly (around 5 secs in my case), because higher character resolution will take longer to load now.

But that's not all! In addition to these optimizations, you'll soon have access to buyable positive traits and sellable negative traits at the hospital. You can acquire these traits by spending Trait Experience gained from literally everything you do while playing the game.

So, not only do you get a faster and less grindy game, but also better art and more rewarding gameplay. Pretty neat, right?

Okay, there's a small catch and not everything is as colorful as described above. The game is now forced to run in a 16:9 aspect ratio only. I don't have a non-16:9 screen to test it, but on my 2400x1080 (20:9) phone, it still looks good, so the vast majority of you shouldn't have any problems. But if any problems arise, I'll naturally try to fix them. But all in all, I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

And one more thing that has me incredibly excited - I'm moving to a bigger flat next month and I've decided to resign from renting an office. Instead, I'll have an office in my private room at home. Hell yeah!

v34 is scheduled for 16-19th February on Patreon/SubscribeStar, and I still plan to do a few art & optimization tweaks, so the numbers provided above can still change a bit.

Cheers!