Update - Shizu enters the library (Patreon)

tl;dr - This week I've been developing a new approach to animations in PAT, as well as commissioning more voice acting!

This week's image

This is just a test idea I threw together, seeing how it might look. I quite like the idea, so this might wind up as part of a scene later in development. What do you think?

New animation

I might put up a separate update to show off a video about this, but I've been working this week (among other things) on making a new animation for Nobuko shifting poses, with a little bit of boob jiggle as she does. It's a little hard to describe so I'll have to show it instead, but I think it's pretty cool and I hope you like it too. It's one of the ways that I want to liven up the feel of the game - make it feel more alive and animated, so it's not all just a slide show. You can see it on Discord already, if you want.

The way I've actually designed this animation to work is actually fairly novel, I think. I haven't based this approach on anything I've seen, so if anyone else is doing this kind of transitional animation then that's more a coincidence than anything. I had to mess about with VNM to get the engine to do what I wanted it to, in fact, but I got a good result in the end and I'm quite proud of pulling it off. (Don't take that out of context.)

The main reason I don't have more animations, though is that they take sooooo long to render. If I can get the budget together to get a powerful new rendering machine then I'll do more of them, because I'll be able to justify it. In the meantime, I'll try to do a few, but they'll be more rare. (I know, I'm always saying I need more money for this kind of thing, but this really is a legitimate budget issue for the project.)

Rendering shortcuts

I've at least come up with a way to make animations somewhat feasible by rendering them much smaller (lower quality) than a normal image (360p rather than 720p), then using an AI image enlargement program to scale them up to 720p. The results aren't as nice as rendering them in the original 720p, but you lose quality when you turn it into a video and the frames go by pretty quick anyway, so I think it looks pretty decent in the end.

I've been able to use this for some images that go by in the game very quickly, so you're not going to notice a slightly lower quality image anyway. Here's an example:

This was from the original render at only 360p, so only a quarter of the size I would normally put in the game, and it's a little grainy too. I've blown it up and as you can see it looks pretty crappy. Here's the version I'm putting in the game, though:

This version has been run through the AI image enlargement software. Not bad, huh? I mean, it's not the sharpest, clearest image in the game, but since this is a low priority picture that will only be visible for a moment, I think it's just fine.

When it comes to making animations I have to render lots and lots of frames, which just takes forever, but if I can render smaller pictures and blow them up then it does speed the process up. I still need a hardware upgrade, but at least I can do an occasional animation render.

More voice acting!

This week I sent out a few scripts for more voice acting! I've cast Kumi: Shiyon, who's doing Shizu's voice, will also be playing Kumi, since the characters don't sound like each other and their roles don't overlap. Shiyon's great, so the big sex scene I added in v0.3 will be much improved thanks to her. I've also sent out scripts to SilkyMilk and Sacci for new Emi and Nobuko lines, so hopefully I'll have a whole load of new VA in there soon! I've already received the Emi lines. :)

Putting the scripts together actually takes a good amount of time, so that alone was a couple of days' work, but I think it's well worth it. (And I've been able to render up some new pictures in the meantime as well.) I hope you'll agree that the voice cast I've got so far has been knocking it out of the park so far.

I'd like to know: are animations important to you as a player? And have you liked the VA so far? Let me know in the comments!