Update #32 - Urgent Update! + May Previews, Legendaries, Crossovers, and More! (Patreon)

Hey, everyone! Happy... Thursday? What day is it? Eh, it all seems to blend together lately. I wasn't planning to do another Update so soon, but we've got a lot coming up and there's some important things to go over regarding recent problems with Mega/Koikatsu, but we'll get into that in a bit..

At the moment, there's nothing new to report from the front, here in California. I hope all of you are riding out the lockdowns as best you can, playing a bunch of different games to keep busy.

One of the games I've been playing again recently is Stardew Valley, which really does justice to games I grew up with like Harvest Moon. Since I've been playing it recently, I had lots of motivation to make some cards for KK, since I noticed, unfortunately, there isn't a very wide selection on the boorus.

Long and short of it, over the next few weeks (and possibly longer), I'll be pushing out some Stardew Valley cards, for those who may enjoy the series, and if not, perhaps you'll be enticed to give it a try.

Tomorrow will be the first release - almost everyone's favorite girl, Abigail, seen above.

Here's a preview of the card:

(Card doesn't work, don't bother saving :P)

She'll be released tomorrow once I do another pass to make sure everything looks good. That said, there is something important that must be mentioned regarding mods, which I should have started with, but let's get into it now:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important!!!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you're using the BetterRepack by ScrewThisNoise (I'll assume most of you are at this point, if not, what are you waiting for?!), you may have already heard the news regarding Mega's hosting of Koikatsu related mods and content.

If you haven't yet, I'd highly encourage you to check this post out here, as it affects all of us:

 https://www.patreon.com/posts/recap-sideloader-36169293 

Here's the relevant part:

On friday, the PRIMARY mega accounts of myself as well as several modders (amongst them the maker of HF-Patch, ManlyMarco, and the admin of the Koikatsu Sideloader Modpack, DeathWeasel) got taken down. We have all attempted to figure out what's up, but Mega is not replying to these requests, so we're looking elsewhere to proceed. I tried setting up a new mega to keep us over till the end of the month, but that failed and got deleted as well. So next up is to accelerate server setups. For this purpose, both Koikatsu and AIS now share one server that were supposed to be backed up with Mega to make sure it doesn't get overloaded with traffic just for AI Shoujo. This isn't optimal, as this server would slow to a crawl when either of us releases a new update. 

So what EXACTLY happened here?

Well, like the above states, Mega removed a bunch of accounts (and ALL of the content) related to Koikatsu, at least the major ones, without any word as to why. If you were using the KKManager in recent weeks you would have run into an error, preventing any mods from being updated, as the modlist was not able to connect to Mega (since the account was removed).

The simple fix to this would be updating to BetterRepack RX4.1, which should be easily doable by clicking on this button here:

If that doesn't work, you can go directly to the website and grab it on the right hand side:

 https://ai-syoujyo.com/public/ 

And if you already have RX4 and want to quickly update directly to RX4.1, you can do so here:

https://ai-shoujo.com/download/update/KK/UPDATE/ 

And just click on the "BetterRepack (RX4 to RX4.1 update).exe"

And bookmark all of these pages for future reference.

Doing all of this should fix all the issues. Then you can run KKManager and update all your mods with the click of a button, as usual.

And if you haven't updated in a few weeks, there's, like, 3gb of mods out, so I'd recommend doing that soon, especially since there's tons of new hair options that I'll most certainly be using in the future (and that I actually use for Abigail, as seen above).

Oh, and by the way - my Mega account has not been taken down yet, although I don't exactly have much confidence in it staying up. I have been neglecting it lately anyways, but at the moment I will need to find a new site to host everything on - with the likely candidate being Google Drive, but still searching. In the mean time, I have everything backed up on my hard drive, and for the moment, everything still works:

 https://mega.nz/folder/LiR1CKib#cqdckm6H7ia1ZWPD_wfkig 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's Next?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Now that that's taken care of, let's preview the stuff coming in the next few weeks.

First up will be Makuhita & Hariyama!

These are recently updated sprites (or at least Hariyama is), so I haven't fully decided yet on which to use, as I may use an older version - I'll come to a decision later, but you get the idea.

Next will be our Dewford Gym Leader, Shauna, and her Meditite & Medicham!

These two may also see a change in sprite color. I don't have anything against darker skin tones (in fact, I like to include lots of variety), but I'm actually not sure why the artist decided to make them darker in skintone, when their actual sprites are very, well... pale.

So it's more of a consistency thing. Absol, for example, makes sense to be darker skin tone, given her skin is.. well, black. But I digress - perhaps I'll just include their Shiny versions:

Yeah, that looks easy enough lmao.

These should all be out by Tuesday, by the way. After that, we have a bigger release in the form of the Aron family!

These are recently made sprites; their older ones were good too, but I like these a ton better, especially Aggron. That helm is going to be an absolute pain in the ass to make - for all 3 of them - so I'll be needing an extra day or so to get it right. 

I still haven't forgotten the Nincada family, by the way. They should be out soon as well.

Oh, and as far as the NEXT Gym Leader is concerned, I haven't yet settled on what they will look like, considering I need a Wattson replacement. However, whoever it may be will use his Electrike and Manectric:

I'm getting some strong Linkle vibes from Electrike.

Aside from those, I also have plans to update a few older Gen 1 releases; I've had my eyes on Grimer/Muk since there's a few Material Edit options to make them really.. slimy, let's say. And with the new hair mods out, I can finally take another pass at Jigglypuff/Wigglytuff and even Clefairy/Clefable, potentially even releasing Igglybuff & Cleffa, since I have the opportunity. I also have eyes on a few other updates.

Meanwhile, Groudon has actually received a new sprite since I polled everyone last month. Check it out!

I would say it's a massive improvement over the previous one. Groudon has received a lot of iterations, and this sprite isn't even final yet - I expect it to change dramatically over the next few weeks, but conceptually I can begin working on her soon, particularly those arms.. That's going to be lots of work. And clipping. So much clipping...

Anyways, that's mostly it for our previews. I'll see you all tomorrow for the start of our Stardew Valley mini-series!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week-in-Review
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

April 18th - Previous Update!

April 21st - Whismur, Loudred, Exploud!

April 24th - Legendary Release: Kyogre!

April 26th - Crossover: Tifa Lockhart!

April 28th - Surskit & Masquerain!