hey! i came across your speakeasy tonight recreation just now, as someone who never got to play very far into the game when lovestruck was still alive, it's nice to see this project :) i also love the charming new ui you made for it!!
i saw you mention the itch.io size limit for the web version, and a good workaround for decreasing the game size would be converting all of the images from .png to .webp. (i recommend towebp.app, a site, for this!) this should cut down the game size a good amount
anyways, i'm part of the lovestruck remix project if you've heard of it, and i'd like to offer some help as a fellow recreator (?). if you'd ever like to discuss more or need help with anything such as coding, or transcribing, you can dm me on my sideblog @shadowheartyuri!
if not, then it's totally fine and you can feel free to ignore this ask!
Hello-- thank you so much!! I've absolutely heard of the Remix project (it was actually a major inspiration for starting this, with your QoT being my introduction) and I appreciate you reaching out. I did consider reaching out myself, but as fun as working with a team would be I ended up deciding to use this project as a learning experience to eventually make my own original vns (hence the urge to flex my ui muscles lololl). That and I'm sure the Remix team has enough projects to juggle already, I don't know how you guys manage it! (I say, tossing one around like the world's worst carnival barker)
For the itch limit, it's actually a limit on the amount of assets you can have. I believe it was 200 files? I ended up going through and deleting whatever sprites or backgrounds were unused, and that thankfully got me under the bar. But I'll definitely check out webp conversion just for general optimization, the amount of outfits for the mc alone (105!!!) is ridiculous. Sometimes I wish Ren'py could take sprite sheets for outfits and expressions 😔
If I ever need help or change my mind about joining up, I'll absolutely let you guys know 💛