itch.io

@ChimeraDD

Hi — Without a Voice 2.0.1 has just been released, which addresses an issue that can cause the final gallery image (※ which was newly added in 2.0) to never unlock if persistent save data from 1.0 was somehow loaded in 2.0.

Please try this version and see if it fixes your issue — simply opening 2.0.1 should be enough to trigger the new unlock validation.

Apologies for the inconvenience, and thank you for playing Without a Voice.

Hi @deadboob,

We’ve just released version 0.4 of the demo, which should help to alleviate the path length issue on Windows.

You can also try extracting the game to a folder path that is shorter.

As always, thank you for supporting Studio Élan!

Highway Blossoms 1.2.3 fixes the “FTFont NoneType” crash! Thank you to everyone that reported and helped test this elusive issue, as we were completely unable to reproduce this on our local testing environments without your help! And our apologies for all the inconvenience that was experienced.

Thank you all for remaining patient, and as always, thank you for continuing to support Studio Élan!

Hi Lazyhotdog,

Highway Blossoms 1.2.1 and 1.2 have been released now — the version numbers are now in full alignment, and the new 00-README.html file has the correct set of instructions for applying the patch.

Apologies for the confusion, and thank you for supporting Studio Élan.

(※ I would also like to apologise for the lack of official response until now — for some reason, it seems that itch.io doesn’t send notifications for comments here…!?)

Highway Blossoms 1.2.2, 1.2.1, and 1.2 have been released now, and as such, the instructions written below this comment no longer apply to these versions — the version numbers are now in full alignment, and the new 00-README.html file has the correct set of instructions for applying the patch.

A big thank you to @freesw and @Fortex8 for helping out in the comments!

(※ Apologies for the lack of official response — for some reason, it seems that itch.io doesn’t send notifications for comments here…!?)

Hi gamer824,

Please Be Happy was made in Unity using the Naninovel framework — while the free demo was made in Ren’Py (and therefore does have self-voicing), the final game is not.

Unfortunately, this does mean that it is a step backwards in terms of accessibility — there is no self-voicing AX TTS feature available in Unity/Naninovel as of yet.

To clarify, all character dialogue is fully-voiced, but there is no self-voicing available for unvoiced text such as descriptions, character actions, or the menu UI at this time.

I am actively looking into solutions to this for future updates so that Please Be Happy will be on par with our other games in terms of accessibility.

I will update this thread if the situation changes.

Apologies for the inconvenience, and thank you for your enquiry and for supporting Studio Élan.

Hi gamer824,

This issue should now be resolved as of the latest update, Highway Blossoms 1.2.1 (and 1.2).

The self-voicing accessibility (AX TTS) feature can be activated using the standard Ren’Py keyboard shortcut, Shift-V.

Apologies for the trouble, and thank you for supporting Studio Élan.

The correct patch to use for your version should be 1.1.1.

Apologies for the confusion — the version number listed on GOG did not come from us.

The 1.2 patch is for the upcoming 1.2 update that will be pushed to digital storefronts soon (which will also correct the version number listed on GOG, as we now have direct access to it).

(※ Version 1.2 is what shipped on our physical releases, hence why the patch is already uploaded here.)

For anyone else that may be experiencing similar issues — please try running Please Be Happy using an alternate graphics API renderer.

To do so, please download Please Be Happy 1.1.1 - Launch using alternate graphics API renderer [129C8E3F].zip, and extract the included *.sh and *.cmd files into the same folder as your copy of Please Be Happy.

(※ In other words, the files should be in the same directory as PleaseBeHappy.exe, PleaseBeHappy.app, or PleaseBeHappy.x86_64.)

For an ELI5 non-technical explanation, each “graphics API renderer backend” is basically just a different way for the game to be able to use your GPU.

Okay, but which option do I pick if I’m having issues?

Most of the reports that we have received of this issue come from Intel GPU users — the OpenGL renderer should fix the strange memory allocation issues that seem to occur with Vulkan on Intel GPUs.

However, if it does not fix it for you, please feel free to experiment with whichever graphics API works best for you. (※ One person in particular reported that they had the best results with Direct3D 11.)

※ NOTE: All future versions of Please Be Happy (even the Steam version, which has a built-in / easier way to switch graphics API renderers) will include the launcher in the filesystem by default — 1.1.1 will be the only version that ships it in a separate file like this.

Hi Kenneth,

I’m one of the developers for Please Be Happy. Could you please upload the contents of the paths listed below somewhere and send them to me?

You can send it to karen@akemi.ai and/or akemi@vnstudioelan.com.

Alternatively, you may join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/mkUvuaVcYh and @mention me in the #help-desk channel!

%USERPROFILE%/AppData/LocalLow/Studio Élan/Please Be Happy/Player.log
%LOCALAPPDATA%/Temp/Studio Élan/Please Be Happy/Crashes

Apologies for the inconvenience — this is a rather peculiar issue we’re dealing with, as we’ve only received two reports (you and another person in our Discord) of this issue, and neither I nor Adi are able to reproduce this crash on any of our systems, including my range of test machines (both physical and virtual).

Thank you for reporting!

The link to the Kickstarter can be found here! https://kickstarter.com/projects/vnstudioelan/studio-elan-physical-copies-of-our-yuri-visual-novels