Update - 25 July 2016 (Patreon)

This week's image: Puppiko!

Continuing with the theme of the last couple of weeks, this is Kimiko's animal form. I wasn't totally happy with this particular picture because she's snarling and that makes her rather less cute. Still, it's a combat picture so making her happy wouldn't look right, and yes, I tried that. I had her smiling and panting with her tongue hanging out, but it just looked weird. I do like the way her dress turned out and having the leash pulling down her top worked out well.

Medium-term image design work

A bland heading. Basically what I mean by it is that this week I've been working on some 3D image projects for PAL that are necessary but don't result in immediately usable renders. Stuff like getting new monster models for the combat scenes; I bought a new slime monster model this week, for example, but it's a bit different from what I envisaged so I'm going to have to change some descriptions and vulnerable points in the game. Some monsters, meanwhile, just have no 3D models available to find, so I'll have to improvise and work around that problem a bit.

The other thing I've been doing is improving some rooms for the sake of future images. Specifically I've been working on the dining room (which isn't quite done yet) and Masami's bedroom (which is almost done). They needed stuff like more furniture to look a bit more realistic and come up more interesting in renders, otherwise the rooms often look too spartan.

This is actually quite a frustrating thing to work on because it doesn't feel very productive and because it involves a lot of experimentation I wind up having to discard a lot of progress when it doesn't quite work.

Masami voice acting

I continued to work on Masami's voice acting this week. I've now received all of her lines, edited and coded them in! That doesn't mean all the lines are in the game yet - many of the scenes she has VA for are not yet in the game - but Masami's voice acting is now a wrap. This should mean adding the Masami sex scene will go fairly easily, although I do want to add a bit more to the game beyond that sex scene before releasing the next alpha.

I think I've slightly improved my work flow on the voice acting part of the job (maybe a bit late...). Previously I worked on the programming and voice editing in parallel, editing a line then inserting it into the game. There's some advantages to this approach - it helps me keep track of which line corresponds to which file name and what I'm up to in the process, but I have decided to change this practice. Instead, I'm now programming in all the tags as one job, then editing all the lines as a second job. The reason is that I just find this is easier because the task is a lot less complicated when the jobs are separated, and possibly because of this it's also quicker. That's a general principal of work, of course, that it's worthwhile to focus on one task at a time, but I guess I had to rediscover this principal when it came to the voice acting.

Card system

I have started working seriously on implementing the collectible card system within the game. This involves making some more images (the cards themselves, although I do have some done already) and programming them into the game so that you are awarded them at the right times, the game tracks how many you've got and you can display them when you like. I hope for this to be done, or at least mostly done, by the next alpha. Hopefully by the next update, in fact!

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