Update - Shizu kneeling (Patreon)

Happy new year! Let's make this one a good one, okay?

This week's image

I thought this one turned out pretty well. I spent ages trying to get just the right level of shine on her lips. :) I think you get a better look at her braces in this one too. I'm still developing some of my skills when it comes to effectively using the space of a 16:9 ratio image, but I think this one works well. With my left-side oriented text box it's also oriented so that when the text is up it'll just cover him and she'll be in the centre of the open space.

By the way, on a largely unrelated note, I'm happy that the reception to the Nobuko pic I recently posted was good (although the number of 'likes' wasn't all that high, but the comments seemed positive) - I've been concerned that people seem very happy about the Shizu design and happy with the Emi design, but I don't quite know if people are going for the Nobuko design. It's always good to hear feedback on those things - remember that I really get very little feedback, so anything you tell me is something I'll likely take seriously.

My schedule for 2018

Fittingly for the new year and in an attempt to make things more organised I've drawn up a schedule for my work for the next five months. This is a pretty big deal for me - normally I don't really have to try that hard to schedule because I'm always working on something that's going to end up in one of the games at some point. This time, though, I wanted to be more efficient so that I'll be more comfortable taking a holiday in April. Yes, that's the kind of time frame I have to work on now - if I don't start preparing for it now then it's pretty hard to take a holiday. :)

What I've laid out is a plan to have updates to PAL every month and I'm going to try to make them all pretty substantial.  I've often made monthly schedules to get me through a week or two, but I haven't done anything like a five month plan before.  Managing what content will go in which release is kind of hard because I normally just follow my muse when making content - by which I mean I wake up and just make whatever I feel like making at the time. It's kind of lazy, but I feel okay about it because I'm always producing something useful. With a more structured schedule I need to follow the goals I set for myself, which may be a problem, but then if I wind up working on something releasable I can always swap things around a bit - so long as I'm achieving my overall production goals on time.

Working on PAT

I had some free time after Christmas so I made some fairly substantial progress on PAT this week - although I still don't really have a spot for PAT in my five month schedule. I'm going to have to take a serious look at that. Anyway, if you've played the demo I've got so far the plan is to expand that by polishing what's there (I've already done that), adding voice acting (I hope, but that could come later) and adding an interactive sex scene at the end. 

The scene will be from a little later in the game - actually, it's the Shizu scene from which the picture above comes - and it's not supposed to come up next in the story. I think it's worth including anyway because for a really worthwhile demo I need something in there that demonstrates the type of sex scene gameplay I'm going for... and I also need to test that out to see how it'll work.

If you have played the demo, I'd be interested to hear what you think people will make of it. Does it seem too moody and downbeat? I think you'll ultimately like the story, but if it's not compelling right away then that's a bit of an issue. And what about the production values and gameplay? Does it look good compared to rival h-games you've seen out there? I want to tell the story I want to tell, obviously, but I'd also like it to be well received and it's good to get some feedback early so I can make necessary adjustments.

PAL work

I decided, after drawing up the schedule, to jump into getting some stuff ready for later down the line, so that I'll be prepared. The big thing I'm trying to bank for a later release is the Kimiko + Iku threesome scene, which will be worthy of a nice big update by itself, more or less. I've made a number of new pics, I've been programming the scene and I've been writing it too. I'm trying a slightly different structure to how the scene plays out, although as a player you won't necessarily notice much difference. It's a fun scene to make and, I admit it, I really want to be able to go on that holiday. I don't even get weekends.

One method I'm trying to do more reliably is to pose images but not actually do a full render of them when I'm in the middle of productive work time. That's because while an image is rendering I can't pose another one, nor can I do a whole lot else on my PC because it chews up so much memory. Therefore I'm just trying to make the scenes but save the very passive process of waiting for them to render for times when I just don't particularly need to do anything on my computer (like when I'm out of the house) or when my work is low intensity, like writing weekly updates!

Are you happy about the schedule? Or upset that I'm trying to make space for a holiday? :) Did I get the shine right on Shizu's lips? Let me know in the comments!