Update 33 (Patreon)

Phinn has sadly had to pull out of the project for health reasons

I'm sorry this weekly update is a day late, but because of this issue and another point below I have made this update available to all patrons, just for this week.

Anyway, I'm very sad to announce that Phinn has had to pull out of the project because of health reasons. Phinn has been contributing graphics to the game, including a bunch of what you will have already seen in the alphas if you have access to them. He also contributed many of the graphics in Super PAC. I have wished him the best on behalf of everyone who supports the project. It's not necessary, but if you'd like me to pass any further comments along you can send them to me.

Consequences for PAL

So what does this mean for PAL? As you know I already make graphics myself, so I can continue to do this, meaning that I will be able to illustrate the games satisfactorily without help. I've never been basing my work plans on being reliant on anyone else on the Internet, because I know other people may have to pull out. Voice actors can be recast, and I can do everything else myself.

Phinn has also already completed a substantial amount of his contributions, so that makes things easier. He has contributed significant illustrations for the Kimiko scene, the Fumi scene, the Ai scene and one of the threesomes, to the extent that I don't think any of those need much more work.

That said, this might slow things down a little bit. I was expecting a little bit more help than I'll have. There are a couple of bits I wrote in because Phinn was going to illustrate them, so now I'll have to come up with a couple of alternative solutions; either finding ways to illustrate them myself or reworking them. Hopefully I won't be slowed down too much, but this does mean that a couple of scenes that weren't very complete are now sections of the game I'll have to tackle solo. Don't worry, I'll get by, I just hope you understand the potential delay.

Removal of the 'thank you' reward

This is the other issue I wanted to make this public for. It's far less grave, but something I should discuss with you for transparency. Most of you probably didn't even notice that I have removed the optional in-game 'thank you' credit from the $1 tier upward (it was in every tier). As a reminder, this reward gave you the option of telling me if you wanted an in-game thank you credit in all projects.

I designed it with this awkward 'opt-in' model because I decided to assume that most people who supported me probably wanted their privacy protected, so putting anyone's name in the game without first having their express permission was actually a negative, not a positive. This led, however, to nobody actually opting in. :) I'm not sure if I just hadn't explained it properly, or if people felt like it was immodest, or (most likely) really nobody ever cared about it in the first place. Assuming the latter, I've simply removed it from the options.

Frankly, I'm really bad and inefficient at the record-keeping anyway, so I will just be including a non-specific thank you in all games to all of you who have supported me. Naturally I want you to know that I am thankful, but maybe there's better ways for me to show it.

Progress on the game

Well, with all that out of the way, what progress have I made this week?

If you're a $10+ backer you'll know I put out a new alpha version of PAL this week - v0.5.0. This is the first version to contain a (more or less) full sex scene. Probably all future alphas will add more sex scenes, so things have finally got to a fun stage. Finishing off this alpha comprised a lot of my work this week - programming it to get it all ready.

My rendering computer is back with me this week. I'm still getting the occasional crash, and I'm just deciding whether to live with it or push for a full refund. I'm leaning toward living with it, as it only crashes occasionally. It's frustrating, but not impossible to deal with. Anyway, I've done a bit more graphics work as well.

Oh, and I've been discussing some sample voice lines with the actress playing Masami; she's going to be recording soon, so I'm expecting those lines will be with me soon as well.

This week's image

This one isn't fancy - it's no-frills and you might have seen a similar pic before. The only reason I decided to show this one off is that this is a nice demonstration of the latest version of the naked Kimiko model I created this week. She has an 'anatomy upgrade' you may have noticed, and I have changed a variety of rendering settings to bring out her best in Iray. I hope you can see the difference. Moving forward I'm learning methods to ensure the quality of rendering to a degree I haven't been able to in past. Also, just for this particular render I decided to double the pixel count; that's pointless in the game, but I thought people with larger monitors might like to check out the full version.

Questions? Comments? Please leave them below and I'll respond. :)