[Progress Report]: 18th of December (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

A hearty congratulations for Riley winning the poll for her Tactical Cuddling Event! The above image is, of course, the mandatory cat conversation before the event commences.

As an aside, it's Christmas this weekend!? And the early build release!?

As you can imagine, I'm quite busy, but I am still planning on getting the early build release done on Christmas Day. I think it will be around 8 events. The overall quantity feels a little on the short side to me, but I'll take that over a delay. That has less to do with the holidays and more to do with a wall I've finally been forced to surmount, that wall being Riley. Why?

Riley did not handle the lighting change well. It's been my secret for a while.

It was actually a fateful coincidence that both Chrys and Valentina were so behind on content as soon as the lighting change took place, because these two characters happen to be the easiest for my computer to render. I was able to focus on them while I tweaked and adapted the new lighting changes to get back to the familiar quality that I was comfortable with. Basically, as soon as the Sandbox Overhaul period officially began, I updated my Rendering Software so that I could add the new assets I needed to eventually finish the game. That was the cause of the lighting issue, and why the lighting and renders have such a sharp uptick in fidelity. I genuinely feel like some of my best work has been coming out render-wise lately. The new system is a lot more difficult to work it, but can it produce great results. After so many months of practice, I now felt confident enough to tackle our resident redheaded former party girl.

If you're wondering why I didn't emphasize this problem sooner, it was because I didn't want it to affect the poll results. In hindsight, I'm not sure why I thought this would work out. Riley could very well have won earlier, and she holds the record for the most poll events, but I figured that Chrys and Valentina were so content dry that the demand for Riley would subside for just a little while I fixed things.

As for what the problem with Riley was, the short answer is the new lighting left Riley looking paler than Valentina. I don't mean a little pale. I mean extremely pale, ghost pale. Because she has so many freckles, it wasn't a very good look. It was also, more importantly, a step down in quality, which was something that drove me crazy.

I have had many highs and lows with Superheroes Suck, and a lot more lows than highs during its development. One of the things that consistently keeps me going is the idea that my game gets better every week. Not in every way, not where it needs to improve, but some how in some way it is getting better every week. A step back in render quality was a psychological blow I just couldn't accept. The idea that I would need to one day order revision work for an event I was releasing as brand new was absurd. Thus, our redhead had a content drought everyone believed was normal while I was frantically looking up guides behind the scenes on how to fix the issue.

It's fixed now and, hopefully, if no one reads this post, no one will know there was ever a problem, and Riley can continue being the wonderful, mid-life disaster girl that breaks hearts and backs with ease.

Thank you for all of your support,

~Solace