July 2021 Progress Report (Patreon)

PLEASE NOTE THESE ARE REPOSTS OF UPDATES FIRST POSTED ON KICKSTARTER! OLD PROGRESS REPORTS WILL CONTINUE TO BE REPOSTED TILL CAUGHT UP WITH CURRENT TIME.

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What’s up guys!

Time for this month’s progress report!

Today I’ll be discussing

• Art
• Programming
• Writing
• The D word
• Skippable Life stuff

Art

Some new sprites I drew up during this month! From top to bottom:

• Nana the Succubus: Nana is a stripper at Ramon’s club. It should be noted she only looks uncomfortable in this sprite because in chapter two of Ramon’s route, the club is getting sued and is currently getting interviewed for testimony to be used in court.
• Bucket the Pelican: Bucket is Kalei’s pet/courier  pelican that delivers mail to residents of Haven Home. He’s also a little sassy bird that occasionally gets on Kalei’s nerves.
• Ariel, but ferret: A power imps possess is the ability to transform into animals and the animal Ariel likes to transform into the most is that of a little ferret! Cute, aren’t they?
• Michael: This is who the writers and I have decided is the “true” protagonist of the game and what they look like. Their name is “Michael” and they identify as Nonbinary! Since the game is told from first person this sprite likely won't be used. Maybe if I can integrate a portrait window in the UI but that's not a priority at the moment. Also, you can still play as your own character should you want to! Just playing as Michael gets the player some extra dialogue sprinkled in that better defines their character and the ability to date Rosita and Irene within the same save file.

Moving onto backgrounds…

From top to bottom:

• Haven Home Town: What the main area of Haven Home appears to look like! Still needs some shading work but HappyPaca is doing a wonderful job at capturing the aesthetic of a beautiful river side town.
• Noel’s Room: My man really do just be living like this lol. But, he doesn’t seem to mind the overgrowth coming into his room, and even has some potted plants he takes care of. I still need to shade it of course.

Next is…Hordes??

From top to bottom:

• Hordes Button: Design I made for a Hordes Button. I own a button press so I can make them myself.
• Hordes Keychain: A mockup design for a Hordes Keychain. Yes, Hordes canonically wears bright yellow crocs.
• Hordes CG: Appears in Noel’s route at the end Ch. 2. Just what is he scheming? And why was this the first non prologue CG I’ve drawn??

If there's enough requests for it I could add Hordes merch to my repurpose listing on Etsy. I half want to make his items the sole holographic button/keychains while everyone else has standard clear finish like seen below.

Given these are a little more expensive to make, a holo button would be $5 and a holo keychain would be $15 at base price. Only fitting Our Rat King and Capitalist would be a luxury few could afford but I jest. Any future merchandise would reflect the same quality as the others and that includes their finnish.

More importantly it would be a venture I feel is better for when the game is released. But that being said, should there be interest I could pursue it sooner than later.

…. Also, no there won’t be a Hordes body pillow. Not till the other love interests get theirs and I’m saving that for release!!

Programming

The biggest thing holding back programming right now is simply the lack of documentation with using Game Maker as a VN engine. However our programmers have been making consistent progress on that front, and we've gotten assurance that once the documentation has been finalized that a lot of the future process will be easily automated to generate the code for the VN parts of the game. Which would leave our programmers free to work on the Minigames!

There's a lot of technical stuff behind the scenes that's a little hard to follow, but we have faith that within a month or two we should have favorable results, and the Demo should be done within that time frame as well.

Writing

Writing is still going well! Good progress has been made on Faye’s route. I handed over writing on Faye to Sam while still overseeing and I’m loving it so far. Faye is my favorite character of the cast so I’m proud Sam is doing her justice~

The D word

Oh boy… This is gonna be hard to say but… no, Repurpose won’t be able to meet the estimated September/Fall 2021 release

Our new committed deadline is June 2022 for that year’s pride month.

I’ve learned alot from working on this game for a whole year. The most important takeaway was that “too many cooks spoil the broth” and to give myself and my team more leeway to work on projects even if we are passionate about it. 2020-2021 especially given the pandemic affecting almost all of our lives.

Still, I apologize if you were looking forward to the original release and take full responsibility. While I can not offer refunds to those who are disappointed by this news please know that (almost) every day up until its release I will be working diligently on this game to make it the best that it can be. I’ve poured so much love into this project from its characters,art, story, promotion, and management.

Especially it’s art given just how many unique sprites, variations, backgrounds, and CGS will be used in game. What's been allowed to be shown off in these journals is but the tip of the iceberg!

Skippable life stuff

This section is skippable so if you aren’t interested in my personal life you can consider the prior section the end of the report. But do at least takeaway that Sam and I’s mental health has been struggling behind the scenes.

Alright, so, last month I had the “opportunity” to sell at Anime Matsuri’s artist alley this year… and it was a complete shit show. The convention, despite being one of the bigger cons held in Texas, was extremely poorly managed and they had the artist alley separated from the dealer’s den on the first floor. Where was AA at? It was on the third floor completely hidden away with little to no indication as to where it was being held. Most convention goers weren’t even aware of it’s existence.

I’ve complained more about this (and have video proof) on twitter but needless to say because of this awful experience I wasn’t able to make back the money I put into going there. It was a real hard blow to me because it was the first anime convention I had ever vended at and I know in my heart things could have gone much smoother had the convention not done the AA vendors so dirty like this.

It doesn’t even stop there. Because a week later I received word from my brother back home that our family dog in Texas ( I reside in Florida now) passed away tragically. I was… heartbroken, DEVASTATED, I loved Lucas as if he was a person, like he was my own son even. So, that has taken a toll on my mental health. I know he was just a pet, but I sincerely cared so much about this dog. I constantly referenced, and still do, him in my day to day life here in Florida and was excited to possibly see him again for the holidays… for him to meet my partner even and now that’s been taken away.

And on top of all this my aunt, who has been like a second mother to me after my blood one passed away when I was in highschool, tested positive for covid. She’s already received the vaccine but she’s elderly and I worry everyday that when I wake up the worst case scenario will have happened.

So this month has been pretty awful for myself as the project director… But I'll be okay. This isn’t exactly the “worst moment of life” but it's def’ on the top 10 list. Somewhere in the bottom tier, but still pretty shitty.

But I’ll be okay.

I promise.

Well wishes are welcomed and appreciated, but I am sharing this largely out of transparency since it has inhibited some of my drive to work at 100% and on the off chance this depression carries over to next month.

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End

August I’ll be attending MEGAcon here in Orlando so it's local and I won't have to spend too much other than food and some transportation. So if you are attending that convention you can find Sam and I at booth 161A this year so come say hi!

That’s all for now, thank you so much for reading!