MNL Progress Report #42 (Patreon)

Hey there, nudies! It has been a HELL of a week for us. Once again, we've encountered an onslaught of bugs impeding cutscene progress. Amber's face wouldn't work, heads would spin around like an exorcism, heads wouldn't track objects, things would move too fast or too slow, AND we had actual hardware problems on top of all that. It was a very frustrating time, compounded on weeks now of what felt like great progress only to be met with new issues at every step. I had actually suggested several times that we downscale to a more visual novel format with 2D art just to ease the technical burden on Invertex, but he insisted that we stay our course and just work through it.

And nudies, I am so glad I listened to him.

We (really, Invertex) have finally, FINALLY pushed through these bugs and have been making good progress on cutscenes again. We can finally combine expressions, animations, head tracking, and camera work in ways that don't conflict with each other and lead to some incredibly cute and compelling results. Even our idle animations loop properly now without issue!

What would take days before now only takes a couple hours to create. And not only that, we're able to pose the characters ourselves in-engine for cutscenes without having to commission or import entire full animations. Do we want Alison to rest her arm on the back of the couch? We can do that now, no problem!

I wish I could show you more of the scenes in action, but I'm still trying to keep this relatively spoiler-free. It really looks good in motion though, to the point where both Leslie and I just kept audibly muttering "holy shit" to ourselves as we watched the fruits of Invertex's arduous labor. I really cannot stress enough how glad I am to have listened to him, to have stuck with this for so long, and just to have Invertex with us. This simply would not be possible without him.

That also goes for the rest of the team, too! AT's animations, Leslie's designs, Nalem's UI and chibis, Bear's models, and Sweez's art! And speaking of which, we have new things specifically from those two to show!

Amber's got some comic books for her room now! Two of these were graciously provided by Sweez himself (and I'm sure he'd love to tell you more about them). However, that one in the bottom left looks weirdly familiar... Why would Amber have a book like THAT? Be sure to click on it if you see it in-game!

Amber's also got a chunky little computer now! It's actually Petrea's old PC, but it's Amber's now. Sweez suggested that Amber could start a blog in-universe, and I thought that'd be a really cute way to save progress. It'd also be a good way to communicate with other residents in town, and Amber can use her camera to upload pictures. What kind of pictures though, that's going to be up to the player...

But that's all for now! See you next week!