Update 49 (Patreon)

Even though I've made decent progress this week it feels slower than I actually want to be progressing. The last few weeks have seen me settling in to my new schedule for my day job, so I guess that's one reason, but it's not a good enough reason for me, so I'm going to try to increase the pace from now on. I think that should be viable. I already work on the game every day, but I'm going to try and have more big days of progress.

This week's image

Obviously this is from the Ai/Rio threesome, which I've been working on this week. There's probably not a whole lot more to say about it, apart from the fact that I've made a number of images in this series this week. I believe that series is now finished; it's not that it would be impossible to add more, but rather I think I have enough images for this scene now - pretty much all the most important moments are covered.

Demo testing

I released the early access demo for PAL to a couple of private testers on Tuesday to check that it was playable and fun. So far they haven't found many bugs or surprises, which probably means it's mostly ready, although I have had to fix a number of things (as you always do). I've decided I'll probably add more objects and descriptions around the house before releasing it, however, so that's my next job on my work schedule. That's something I've been planning to do for the main game all along and it's something that play testers have been picking up on, so it's worth sorting out. Also Archer Fifteen (AIF author who is testing the demo for me) gave me some suggested lines for some of them, which should speed up the process some. It's a boring task, which is the main reason I haven't done it yet, so it's nice to have some text to work with sometimes.

I imagine I'll release this fairly soon. I also want to be sure the level of challenge is good before putting it out.

Normalised voice volume (somewhat)

Getting voice acting to be a consistent and clear volume across multiple actors can be hard. I had previously thought that I had hit on a new method to more reliably balance the volumes, but I was wrong. Instead I found that the volume balance was actually worse than before and I've gone back to my more traditional method of playing it by ear. This is a bigger job than it might seem to be, but I think I got the combat audio about right this week. Let me know if there are any imbalances that you notice - voices too quiet or too loud at any points. It's not always something that I've necessarily noticed or done deliberately.

Worked on the Ai/Rio scene some more

This scene is mostly implemented now, although I haven't yet added the voice acting or (importantly) tested it. There are probably some smaller features that need to be properly implemented before it's ready, plus I need to write a few more paragraphs to really finish it off. Still, this is almost to a point where I will be able to move on and start working on the next sex scene, which might be Iku's.

More image design; maids + goo

I've also designed some other new images for the game this week. It's kind of miscellaneous stuff, but one thing I tried out was having another go at a special combat picture for Kimiko. I got a request a while back for a feature in the combat system where the maids could be splashed with the slime's goo and it would dissolve their uniforms. Then the effected maid would run off to get dressed again. I thought this was a great idea but I didn't have an easy way to implement it in the combat system without having to add in some major new variables to account for a maid not being present any more, when they might come back, what they would do at the conclusion of a fight, etc. Additionally when I tried making images for it they turned out really badly.

Anyway, this week I took another look at it, and I think what I can do is simply have slimes sometimes explode after they've been killed, covering a maid at the end of the battle (avoiding that whole mess of variables). I also had another shot at the pictures (just Kim so far) and it turned out better than before. Not excellent, but at least reasonably good.

Do you have anything to add or ask about any of the stuff I've brought up this week? If so, please drop me a comment below!