Happy Christmas Jurors! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday period, eat more than you should, drink and be merry! I’ve spent the day with my parents, brother and other extended family. I'm always very fortunate to have family around me at Christmas time, something I'm very thankful for. While I do hope you all have a lovely holiday, I do feel it’s important to remember that this period can be quite a lonely time of year for many. It can also be a particularly hard time in general for some. Financial difficulties and pressures, family politics and perhaps even having to exert additional effort to make sure someone else has a positive day to remember. Along this thread, I’d like to offer my gift to you this Christmas, ‘Layla’s Christmas’. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43540775/c317d85af593e59c55613feb4367872c17baf905.png[/img] I didn’t want to go down the route of another Christmas themed background wallpaper, but wanted to provide some more value to the gift this year. Along with a collaborator, we have created a little side story for you to play through about Layla. You all know Layla as the happy, positive character from Jury, so let’s get an insight into her life before she took that bus to travel to the Raddison Hotel for Jury duty. The ‘mini’ side story became not so ‘mini’ and I think If you’re reading all the content, it’s around an hour play time! [b]To access it, you can find a new tab on the main menu called ‘Side Stories’. This should only be playable if you have met Layla in game.[/b] (There will be additional side stories in the future, but not before the release of Ep3. They do take quite a lot of effort and planning, and for 2025 my main goal is to get Ep3 released). [i][b]Additional updates:[/b][/i] - Added more accessibility items (change font size, style, outline etc) - Changed the way the age disclaimer functions. Now it will only ask upon first launching the game rather than on every playthrough - Added in the option to skip the prologue for fresh run-throughs - Fixed some gallery/replay items that were not functioning properly. - Numerous typos - Added in a ‘loading’ spinner which should activate when the game is going through some textless renders. - Updated renpy base code - General GUI updates (Moved away from the red/black color theme towards the yellow/black Jury colors. [i][b]Bug Warning:[/b][/i] During this update, I was required to upgrade the base Renpy code. As a result, myself and the collaborator have been battling upgrade related issues with both Episode 1 and 2 over the past 48 hours. I think we’ve managed to squash those bugs, but there is a chance that some are still there. The way the beta branch works on Steam is not ideal as it does not cater for DLC’s, so you have to create a single package containing EVERYTHING and it’s not quite the same as releasing as a DLC. Essentially, I’ll need to see how the package deploys on live and then work out if there are any remaining issues. Please bear with me if there are any outstanding issues. I do hope you enjoy the mini episode! Please feel free to leave feedback on this post. Happy Holidays! Nickle3DArt