September campaign news and update (Patreon)

Hi everyone, here's some news and update regarding Divine Arms, Alya, Daryl and the game they 're doing.

First of all, I would like to announce that I am still looking for another animator that can do Chris' style. I read and understand the concerns of other patrons. Tho Alya is eager of taking the mantle for Divine Arms, it will surely not come soon. I honestly would rather have her and Daryl accomplish the smaller game first before even thinking of doing Divine Arms.

Sadly, I can't get Chris to stay. When he did leave sometime ago, I will just be glad he stayed some more to finish all 8 sets.

Getting great animators that can do all is hard to find. When I went to local animation studios, we will need to hire the whole team and the 5k a month will never be able to afford it. (Quality studios rate is 9k-16k a month) And their portfolio shows they really should be paid that much, yet I also think it's a bit of an overkill, so I am still searching for a more reasonable studio / talent for such task.

On the search, I did get to meet a mobile game dev studio and offered to port Divine Arms to 3D. The whole game including the lewds into 3D and playable as twinstick on the phone. The offer was pricey but compared to the bigger animation studio i mentioned, we can pretty much tightly afford the 3D port, but for now I'll wait for their visual proposal.

At the moment I am considering chop-splitting the game into chapters, so the art inconsistency won't be much of a problem. And if the idea is viable, I will be the one to do chapter 2 and with enough time by then, Alya will have had enough training to take on Chapter 3. So yes, with Daryl also in the team (he already signed a 2 year contract last week) I will be going back to animating sprites and full screen lewds.

We have been devising actual game plans and designs that can still save Divine Arms even with Chris' initial works in it. All these plans will be relayed here as it progresses and we will do our best not to hurt the project with whatever changes it tilts into.

On that topic, I have been orienting Daryl about the game engine he will be working on with Alya. He stayed at my place for 4 days planning everything and me teaching him everything as well. He was supposed to stay for a week since he lives far from my place, but then this shit showed up:

So he had to go back to his kids and probably go back here next week after the storm.

Tho we have a very terrible placeholder prototype about the game they will be making, I'm certain we can finish this soon with all the details regarding how it plays and the exciting "gimmick" we cooked up to make it different from the usual eroge mechanic of: 

"player loses, therefore show reward with sex scene".

I had to get Daryl to speed with the engine and also point him to not do the mistakes and bad habits I did, but as soon as he's on his own, he's a much better coder than me.

The game they will be making is a side-scroll brawler like double dragon / final fight and the main protagonist is non-other than a very familiar Divine Arms enemy, the Blood Hunter. (Their chieftain, so the design will be less generic) and the story will play 400 years before the invasion and blightlust corruption.

Excuse the placeholder and the sprite size warping, tho the grab animation should be the correct ratio as blood hunters are huge:

More info will come to it as soon as I get Daryl to polish a bit for its initial presentation and as I make some initial sprites for it. We will release the demo here and give much info about timeline, lore and game mechanics as soon as one enemy is done and the lewd animated by Alya.

Alya news: Here are more of her mid-weeb renditions of Siggy:

Hires Versions:
https://imgur.com/QXUUERj
https://imgur.com/9Gr471V
https://imgur.com/XvOsAPL
https://imgur.com/PDtqrGq

She just recently received my animator's survival book and we also got her a license for Adobe Animate CC. I had her train with the trial for Animate CC and Clip Studio and she chose Animate CC since she also wants to explore that path and kind of liked how her stills/non-animated output looks with vector strokes. Also I will be able to help her to speed since I know flash well.

She'll send over animation samples just as soon as she's done tinkering with it and as she prepares to do her first lewd scene with the demo enemy. Hopefully by Chapter 3 (If we ever go that path) of Divine Arms she's more than ready to shift to the main game.

Alya, by the way, aside from her animation training, is offering 2-4 full colored renditions of Divine Arms or anything lewd you'd like her to draw a month. 

If anyone here is familiar with something like what other campaigns do, like voting for what she'll draw, please comment your ideas and suggestions so I can tell her asap.

Anyway, thanks everyone continuing the support despite these events. I'm trying my best to get this thing solid still, but for everything else like Chris leaving the project is beyond my control already and can only work around the situation. I thank you guys once more for sticking around. We still have tons of stuff to give and surprise you.

-kReig out!