Status update! (Patreon)

Monthly status updates:

We know a lot of you are anxious about the release of the Tech Update and have voiced concerned with the the speed of development. The progress bar is not currently displaying an accurate progression of the work being done due to the nature of the Tech Update requiring a heavy amount of back and forth with content implementation (and testing). It makes it hard to "close" tasks until the update is stable and ready to ship. It also explains why art tasks were faster and simpler to close, while Posing and Code seem to trail behind. The majority of the art meant for the Tech Update is completed, yes. However I'm still improving and adding content while the remaining Code/Posing work gets wrapped up. The progress bar will be more reliable once we get back to the regular development cycle for stories and gameplay.

To better help fans understand the ongoing development, monthly status updates will be posted here on Patreon (at the end of each month) with a listed summary of all the work that's been done for each department. It won't list every single small change, but at the very least show the broad strokes of what's currently being done. This will paint a clearer picture of the development progress and perhaps get a feeling of how close we are getting to a release each month. Hopefully this will make some of you feel at ease with some of the questions you've had.

That being said, here's the first status update for this past month!

Art:

• Assisted the Code/Posing devs with optimizing art and fixing inconsistencies. Such as unused art assets , missing shadows, missing character button variants and so on.
• Scenes on day one meeting Erik and Mia have been improved with new character assets, backgrounds, dynamic shots, buttons, etc.
• The new "Biker Bar" location now has an interior and Doris will be working as the bartender (non-interactive for the moment).
• Doris now has a secondary outfit for the bar.
• Old Debbie cutscenes and dynamic shots got a facelift (see samples attached to this post at the top ^).
• Added new dynamic shot to Diane's story (garden).
• All of Anna's (now named Abby) old art has been reworked and converted to new art assets + rig.
• Further improvements to the new Mia character art.
• Multiple assets renames to function with new codebase.
• Some character art assets needed splitting into multiple rig parts along with their meta data (Odette and Eve).
• Old Anon assets laying on beds needed legs extended/fixed to fit in widescreen. 
• Daily live streams for art are still active (week days) starting around 2:00PM Eastern Time (ET) where you can watch me work and ask questions.

Code:

• Resolved minor bugs in reposing tool used by posers.
• Fixed some flow issues indentified in Debbie's route.
• Added sleep-awareness to some character buttons.
• Upgraded to Ren'Py 8.1.0, and dealt with ensuing compatibility issues.
• Improved automatic transitions.
• Built a tutorial for the navigation interface.
• Improved ease with which cutscenes can be posed.
• Added base NPC behaviour for Ivy and Jane.
• Built out roughly half of Jenny's narrative route flow.
• Added a new interface mode for complex interactive props.
• Implemented Anon's phone, minus the hint system.
• Constructed Jenny's diary, and wired it into Jenny's route.
• Ensured that diary contents and text messages will be translatable.

Posing:

• Linked reposed scenes for the Main story and Debbie up to the game logic code.
• Revisions based on feedback about above scenes, and reported logic oversights.
• Reposed the Debbie scenes we didn't have art for when we did the first pass (late game/lewd content).
• Posing work on buttons particularly for Ivy, Kassy, Lily, and Veronica. 
• Finished posing pass on Roxxy.
• Early Mia flow posing ongoing.
• Finished reposing the beginning and end of Eve's route.
• Cleaning up the posing for Jenny's route. (Jenny is the next priority for linking/playtesting this coming month)
• Revisited posing from the start of Diane's route fixing asset names and logic state tests that were not previously available.

Writing:

• Dialogue for new Becca scenes not yet implemented into the game but animations are done (likely releasing after the tech update). 
• New Grace, Odette, and Eve scene dialogues.
• Assisted code with wiring up Debbie and Jenny's quest flow. 
• Currently assisting on the hint system for Jenny.
• Button schedule logic for Debbie and Jenny.

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We hope this clears up some of fog surrounding the Tech Update and thank you for all the support.

Keep you posted!

-DC