One year ! (Patreon)

I just remembered it's been one year (actually 1 year and 1 month) since I started this Patreon campaign and I though it would be a good idea to write about what has been achieved so far with your help.

I started working on my first hentai game, Vampire Revenge, in 2014. It took me about 1 year to get it to a playable version with sprites I drew myself. As you'll be able to see from the first girl in the image, the result was soso but nonetheless, everybody has to start somewhere and this first release allowed me to get some positive feedback as well as some cash to start hiring an artist.

It was in February 2016, last year, that I decided to give it a shot on Patreon since I saw a few other games succeeding there. I didn't expect much but since I already had a full game working which just needed some graphic overhaul, I assumed I wouldn't need much. I found an artist at a reasonable price which upgraded the game and you can see the result with the second girl. Better quality but it was still missing the hentai quality I was looking for. But with the initial low income, that's what I had to settle for. The first month of the campaign ended with 4 patrons ! It was already a good thing that some players actually dared to invest in my project ^^

1 or 2 months later, I decided to start my other game, Glassix, which was using SBPR Studio from Illusion which allowed me to create really nice sprites very fast. The project was not that big at the beginning. I had planned to use it as a filler while the artist was working on Vampire Revenge. But as more and more patrons gave me their support and feedback, it became quite big and the main game for my campaign. I spent most of 2016 working on it and as the year went by, the support increased which allowed me to hire an even better artist.

That's when I decided, instead of improving the features of Vampire Revenge, I would work on a whole new sequel for it which would allow me to add many new features which would have not been possible otherwise. I still have not much to show yet, Glassix having taken most of my time. However I still had the artist work on new sprites over the last months and I  now  have enough for the first version which I hope to release in 1 or 2 months.

I'm taking my time on this one because I work a lot by trial and errors. I've been learning to use new softwares over the past years, the latest being a 2D animation software, Spriter, and the more I worked on games, the more I noticed a lot of repetitive tasks which could easily be processed by computer instead of wasting time on doing it manually. For example, image processing for Glassix, to remove backgrounds automatically and resize them properly. I always wondered why other games don't have that much new H content included in their new versions when several persons work on the project. I'm thinking it might be the reason. A lot of game devs seem to do repetitive tasks by hand, since they don't know how to process it automatically. Sure, it takes time to create the process but in the long run, it will saves HOURS of work in the future.

My latest example is PSD processing for Vampire Revenge Rebirth. For the first game, I had few body parts, few animations, and only 1 model. In VRR, I end up with dozens of layers of body parts to animate and since I'm new to animation, I often had to manually edit the PSD, extract the layers and animate them. And that's not counting errors which often forced me to discard hours of work because I forgot to take into consideration that new outfits dimensions would be different and screwed the existing ones. So I took a few days to work on new scripts to extract those layers automatically, resize them, add custom filters and calculate pivots for similar sprites then inject all of that in the animation software. The result is worth it because I can now click one button and my animations will be properly updated from the PSD for any new girls and any new outfits.

I'm detailling this because this part of work is usually unknown from the patrons but it's actually an important one. I did the same for Glassix and this is why I can deliver so many new scenes for so many girls in each Glassix version. If you compare Glassix with other games here on Patreon, you'll be able to judge by yourself. Even duplicated content between girls still counts as unique scenes due to how the studio works.

Now that I have the base working for VRR, I'll be able to work on the game engine and with my experience from Glassix, I'll be able to work quite fast and include similar features, like local saves and text display, while adding  a lot of new features I was hoping to include initially in Vampire Revenge.

All of this is related to the dev and design part of the game. Another important part of a Patreon campaign is the business part. I couldn't offer any rewards besides Vampire Revenge to my higher tier patrons. Glassix using a commercial 3D engine to process images, I'd rather avoid using it as reward. As a result, the current higher tier is not that used, which is understandable. As the months go by, I often check other games and how they handle this. There seem to be 2 main tendance here : either use delayed releases for low tier patrons, meaning higher tier patrons will be able to play sooner, usually a few weeks or a month in advance, or creators offers goodies, such as custom made H images to their higher tier patrons.

With Vampire Revenge Rebirth around the corner, I'm thinking of using the first tendance  too. The first version would be released for all my 10$ patrons, starting from August 2016 since that's when I said would have a working demo (damn I'm late !) and after this, offer a delayed version for high tier patrons. I'm not a fan of the second tendance because I don't really trust creators when they say the creation of such extra goodies does not delay the game release. How would that possible ? Creating content always takes time and if it's time taken to work on goodies, it's time not working on the game. I'd rather focus on the game.

Anyway, I'm still working on the business part and it can wait until VRR is out. If you have any suggestions about this, let me know !

And that's the end of this one year introspection ! 2017 starts quite well too and I have lots of ideas for Glassix, VRR as well as potential new and unique H-games, but that's for much later, I'll focus on what's in my plate at the moment.

Thank you all again for your time, your trust, your patience and your support ! I'll try to keep up with your expectations !