January Update (Patreon)

Hey Gearheads!

I know January's update has been delayed, but that by no means is an indication of the amount of work being done, quite the opposite actually.

We've been busting hump to prepare some high quality content for you guys.  I'm going to try to keep this update short and to the point, but we'll see how successful that is.

The focus has still been on better immersion through story and high quality models and animation.  It's pulled away a bit from the Huntress Hole, but only in terms of having something ready to show. 

Our new writer is working out nicely.  We're able to get some high-quality scripts at a reasonable price.  Right now we have 5 scripts we're actively working on covering three main types: chance encounters, anime troupes and Huntress Hole victory scenes.

The character-focused ones feature Azula, Raven, Ruby and Yang with Weiss and Blake in the works for this month.  The anime troupe is based on being woken up by a childhood friend before school and things escalate because you have immunity to protagonist blindness and she's not afraid to explore beyond the usual anime stopping point. 

For these story-based experiences we get the script, then the voice over, then the sex animation, then the lip sync.  After which we need to render out the scene and/or convert it to Unity.  Lastly, we need to sync the audio with the video or for the unity side, set up the scene transitions, controls and syncing.  Not an easy or short task, but well worth the wait and effort.  Each step requires a considerable investment and that's where the majority of your support is going.

I've also been reaching out to additional animators and creators in general looking for new opportunities to keep things progressing and the most notable update there is the addition of Gifdoozers animations.  We'll be adding him to the roster of animations converted to VR and he's currently working on a custom animation for us featuring Neytiri.  I hope your as excited about seeing his animations as I am, considering how awesome his animations are.

That'll def help keep up the weekly flow of content since Naysayer has been moved to the larger story animations and I've begun experimenting with tweaking some of the new animations more towards the story side as well.  You can see the beginning of that with the Akali animation that just went up.

I'm sure you guys are on edge for more Huntress Hole content and I definitely want to deliver as soon as possible.  Though nothing new has been released we're still working on content for it.  As mentioned above we're working on scripts for special scenes in the experience and have 2 of the 4 done already.  One of those is currently in the queue for voice over.  If we can squeeze it into the budget then we'll try to get another one voiced as well, but these scripts are getting pretty expensive as far as voice over goes.

We're also slowly but surely working on new and existing animations to bring into the Huntress Hole with the focus being on quality which is why they take so long, but again worth it in the long run.

Lastly, a big hold up on progress is optimization and presentation.  With a scene, this large lots of tweaking is needed to keep it from blowing up people's computers.

Here's an example of one optimization method.  We have a tool that can take a complex object and simplify it so it uses fewer resources.  The scene has tons of chairs.  So we took a chair and converted it using this optimization method.  Now, this chair runs over 400% better.  So then we needed to replace every chair in the new version and I think there were like 50 of them.  We'll need to do that with the majority of the props in the scene and there are hundreds, but again worth it in the long run.

Ok, so now the main stuff we want to focus on for the rest of the month.

The biggest goals and areas of focus are to get another updated release of the Huntress Hole out with a handful of the improvements and new animations mentioned.

To get into the grove with Gifdoozers animations so we can add in some cool story elements beyond the initial single camera point animation.

Also to increase the flow of WIPs to the discord server which is already happening, so you guys can see the progress long before it shows up in a release.  I think discord is better for WIPs since it makes Patreon less cluttered and it's already difficult to navigate content, even with the tags.

All in all, lot of stuff in the works and lots of big things at that.  I'm really excited about what's in the pipeline all ready and can't wait to show it to you guys.
2020 is going to rock and I'm so appreciative that you  guys are here for the journey!