Current status (Patreon)

Hello there everyone :D

Strap in for a wall of text ;-)

Let's start off with a GIGANTIC thanks to everyone supporting me, both monetarily here and all throughout the internet, recommending my packs to their friends and just simply enjoying the packs, it means the world to me, so thank you all <3

Now, let's get onto the current status.

Support providing:

Now, lately I have released a lot of packs, and most of them have come with their own spike of support requests, some minor and some major. I am trying to address everyone that tries to get into contact with me, both here and elsewhere (Discord, Anime-Sharing, f95, Nyaa.... goddamn it's a lot of channels at this point xD), but the downside of being a lone one-man project, besides just not having time to do everything I'd like to do, is that it sometimes takes a lot of time to get around to everyone that wants to talk to me.

If you need quicker help than I'm able to provide, do drop by the help channels in the community servers. In general that's a good idea, as there are amazingly talented people in those channels that can usually draw on a vast base of experience with the games, and sometimes (ok, quite often) outshine me many times over on troubleshooting. (I mean it, seriously, the game communities would look a lot less inviting without them in place, all due glory to the good helpers in there). I also jump between help channels when time allows, so it's by far the most effective  way to get help. :-)

PlayHome and HoneySelect:

These two newcomers to BepInEx is quite the interesting experiment. While PlayHome is going great, making the transition to BepInEx very smoothly (In large part due to help received from 2155X), HoneySelect has a bit of a problem with WideSlider. I can probably address this with prepatching the hardmod to de facto use that for the time being. I have also posted for a commission to get the softmod/Plugin version of that fixed at a $50 bounty, hopefully someone will take me up on that, since I quite simply don't have the time to address the code there.

As for the future of the two packs, HoneySelect is still in a prerelease state, versioned 0.5 due to the early days deal, I still plan to work on it, but it's not a priority (I'll get back to my priorities in a bit). As for PlayHome, work is way underway for a R2.1, but I keep finding new stuff to add to it, so doing that currently. I have also heard the complaints that the PHIBL settings it's shipped with is too dark, so I've enlisted some help to make better lighting settings for it (let's face it, I'm no master of lighting =P), so do look forward to that.

Also, ManlyMarco has stated that he may be willing to port his IllusionAPI over to PlayHome, but due to it not being a trivial task, and not really a game he's interested in himself, he wants to see interest. Fair enough, I pledge $300 to making such a thing come to pass as that's the basis for a lot of the newer stuff in AIS and KK, so that may prove to be a major boon to the game. If anyone else is willing to chip in, I can manage it all. I'm going to reach out to marco and ask how he perceives such support to be done.

Emotion Creators:

Let's face it, EC has had a hell of a time transitioning from BepInEx5 RC to the full deal. This transition has caused the Chinese patch to stop working (BadAss Translation), effectively locking out chinese users of my pack, some minor problems with loading certain types of scenes and some false entries in the character creation. Neither of these are gigantic problems, barring the chinese patch, but I'm actively looking into it and trying to address it as best I can. The BadAss localization project seems to be on a hiatus, so looking into using BepInEx/XUA instead or, failing that, seeing if I can simply modify the patch to make it work somehow.

Prioritisation:

Now, being a one man show and all, I need to prioritise my time as best I can, so just to give a bit of a insight into how I go about it:

1. AI Shoujo Sideloader Modpack
2. Koikatsu
3. AI Shoujo
4. PlayHome
5. Koikatsu Party
6. Emotion Creators
7. HoneySelect

These are basically how I prioritise, in a normal scenario. Ofc, some stuff may happen that forces me to re-prioritise for a shorter time... Maybe a new essential mod, or base game update drops, that will put the affected game straight to the top of my list.

Future packs:

Well, as you can see from my prioritisation list, I do have quite the workload to keep up with, but I do need to address this. I get requests for some packs on a regular basis... Custom Maid, Sexy Beach Premium Resort, PlayClub... if it's in any way similar to illusions games, you can bet I'm getting requests for it, and I'd love to oblige, but again, I'm a one man show, trying to carry this all by my lonesome.

I have games I want to tackle, mostly one off deals (Itazura Gokuaku, I'm looking at you in particular), but that's extremely lowly prioritised, so don't expect any packs, one off or mainstay, anytime soon.

Updater functionality:

Every pack release here now, I get questions related to the updater functionality, if that can be used to update between pack version, so R3.1.1 to R3.2 for instance. Currently, no, that's not available, though as of the Koikatsu RX3/AI-Shoujo R3.2 release, KKManager does have the required functionality to update more than just the sideloader modpack. I am currently playing around with it, trying to figure out how to offer such a thing and get it properly tested. Rolling this out without properly testing would be horribly irresponsible of me as a error there would be real bad for anyone using my packs, but hopefully that will come eventually.

Now, some of my packs don't currently use the updater functionality at all, I am planning to test this with those games as well (PlayHome, HoneySelect and Emotion Creators), but that's for further down the line.

Seeking help:

To address all of this, I have asked someone I know to assist, especially on the largest time drain, the sideloader modpack, but real life is real life elsewhere as well. I'm also offering mod creators to upload their mods directly to my updater to allow for a faster time-to-market on the mods, and currently a few modders have taken me up on that, and I really appreciate that, if anyone else is pumping out mods on a regular or semi-regular basis, please do contact me and we'll set you up :-)

Addressing concerns:

Some people are sceptical of my ability to keep a updater server going for all eternity, and wonders what happens if I become unavailable to do such a thing, let's say an accident or anything of the sort, life stuff... As long as there's a will there's a way. It's incredibly easy to setup a new repository once one already exist and am tested properly. Setting up a Sideloader Modpack update point for instance is trivial, it just needs a specially formed file along with an FTP server or a Mega storage account. By no means is this locked to me, so if something happens to me, and I become unable to continue for whatever reason, anyone with a base level knowledge of XML files can really setup a new server by example.

There, that were todays ramblings from a madman. Hopefully this addresses whatever you're wondering about regarding my current status <3

With love,
ScrewThisNoise.