(art) update 43 (Patreon)

Wecome to my grabbag of thoughts! Don't let the name of this update fool you : )  

So far things are looking good again for getting the next build out on our much coveted end of the month date! Months haven't magically increased their number of days so it still feels tight, but that probably has a lot more to do with the amount of stuff we're trying to cram in. 

When it comes the amount of scenes with entirely new art we're possibly right up there in the top three of our earlier releases for the next one. In fact.. I've told the coder he should just set apart a couple of scenes as bench warmers and just finish the build before even thinking about including those. Just a measure to make sure he doesn't blow a fuse or is forced to just rush the player through things soley for the reason to include them. 

More new stuff is nice, but pretty useless If we're just dropping them in to get the scene count up. Having only one new scene for each new build, no matter how detailed etc. isn't going to still anyone's appetite for new content, but having seven or so which the player is rushed through at break neck speed is kinda shitty too! Balance is the key! That's what the coder is telling me repeatedly and considering he's had none for quite a while in his personal life I can see why he's deadset on that and I more than agree. 

One scene which is meant as a whimsical extra had me going crazy this time.  I try to put scenes together in a super efficient way so they'll remain small. I strongly feel I have to  since we're planning on four books and the way each book has become bigger.....  scares me for what book 4 might become.  Efficiency is nice, but getting it all to work can sometimes really take it out of me.

Anyway, except for a few bits and bobs the drawings for the new build are pretty much all finished. There ARE some small things I'd like to improve upon (there always are)and the coder has even asked me for some additional small stuff so I'm not ready to jump into material for the build after this one just yet, but I'm getting close.

I prefer to have a minimum of at least two weeks as a headstart which means I need to start wrapping up things. Naturally I'm trying to finish whatever the coder is asking me for asap, but it's mostly simple things so... no problem!

Do you ever write stuff on your arm to remember something and later can't decipher the meaning behind what looks like archaic runes? I'm having that problem as I'm typing this.

I taped a piece of paper on the door and am writing down what I've done that day and still want to do in what timeframe. I've done so in the hope it'll let me keep better track of all the stuff necessary, but so far all it does is making me guilty for being behind : (

We've done something sliiiightly different for the next part of the maze. You'll probably have noticed the basic setup (as in which girls you get to break free) is still the same as during the slave route of book3. That won't change, but we usually just open up one new part in the tunnels with each new build where you can have some new perverted fun with whoever needs rescuing. This time we're going to spread it out a bit . 

Actually I'm still anticipating an extra request from the coder for some extra art to help the player navigate the tunnels.  I could walk through them blind and still end up where I want to be, but I very much doubt everyone else can say the same. 

We might call it the maze, but we never actually intended for people to get frustrated with figuring out where they're supposed to go. It's small enough when there's just one new area to do all the new stuff in, but when splitting that up things might become confusing? I dunno.

With the next update the clearly still unlockable access points will be gone from the "hub area" in the maze(where you enter the maze) and I feel we're making nice progress in general when it comes to this route.

We sometimes get questions like when we think this route will be finished and although we have some sort of vague expectation, we also change things along the way depending on what people seem to like and dislike, adding or removing scenes etc. Besides that, we don't want to disappoint anyone by possibly putting out a date we might not make so we mostly keep silent on that subject.

misc news:

We've started using a new filehost,  uploadfiles.io    We still have some files up using my personal Mega account, but our main one was taken down for...well we're still not sure why. We think some illegal filesharing using our links directly may have had something to do with it. We might try and make it a bit harder to do so in the future. At least for the early access and bughunt version. We're still thinking on that.

We'll be moving our files to the new filehost and hope this will be the last time we'll have to spend time on this. We think this is a nice one, but whether it truly is we'll have to find out over time. 

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I made some super half hearted attempts at looking into flash lately. Not as a substitute for what we're doing, but simply seeing if there's anything  which could help make things easier/faster somehow down the road. So far it's mostly been a frustrating fight with the interface so I can't imagine ever using it right now.

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Finally watched some episodes of the anime "Houseki no kuni" or "land of the lustrous". I heard good things about it... but it's in 3d and that kept me from giving it a chance for a long time. To my surprise I'm really enjoying it! I've rarely seen 3d anime done well.  I used to watch tons of anime, but that has dwindled down to a trickle since I  started drawing FET.

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I really hate autumn/winter. That's not news but damn do I hate those short days. 

Okay. Not a super interesting update I have to admit, but I'm really not sure what else I can say besides all is well and things are going as expected so far. 

Cya later!