Progress Report (Patreon)

Howdy! Here’s what’s up:

V0.4.9.9b will be out on either Thursday (29th) or Friday (30th), because I want to draw as many NPCs as possible. We decided to slightly change our plans for the update for the sake of it having both some content and fixes that were long due.

NPC artworks take a lot of time, especially the important ones (that will be used a lot). I mean, Liuda’s art is as complex and as time consuming as an entire H-event, same for Nadya.

They didn't have to be so complex, I just chose to make them like this, I really wanted to make them as good as I can and that took a lot of time.

So, instead of doing “Shwift” (the prison pole girl) as planned, me and Moana decided to shwift our attention elsewhere - do something that would make 0.4.9.9b a better, well-rounded update overall.

In relatively the same amount of time as it would've taken me to create “Shwift”, I’ve managed to transfer Legion1 and Tunnel events to our “harassment system” and update both the text and the art (not all layers tho).

Overall, I changed 89 pictures, added four new backgrounds and 38 new pictures to this one giant H-event that we call “harassment system”. And I think this is a step in the right direction.

Now that I know how hard/time consuming it is, I can see that a complete NPC artwork overhaul won’t happen in a single update, primarily because I don’t want to half-ass them. Which is why there will be more updates like this one in the future. Updates that have both NPC artworks and layered older events.

Apart from that, it doesn’t really matter to the game in which order we add things, but it matters for your experience as our patrons. We have to think more on when and what we add to make each update (even a “system” one) as enjoyable for you as we can, and on a regular basis.

We will of course mix our “system” updates with “content” updates. Releasing them in turns. So, after the drop of 0.4.9.9b we will begin our work on 0.5, in which we plan to continue our main plot and add new H-scenes.

That said, Shwift and her appearance polls will roll out next month, because I do need her for v0.5 and I want her to look her best.

We expanded our “Harassment system” by merging it with Legion subway encounter and Tunnel H-event (“Suit up” quest). It means that these events will be automatically updated whenever we’ll add anything new to the system. Our goal is to gradually build the whole Kira's variability into it.

In fact, some events will already become “automatically updated” in 0.4.9.9b, because the overarching system was expanded (gym harassment events), and above you can see an example of that (on the picture).

I also did some “minor things”, like fixing Kira’s expressions and her default white hair. I don’t know how this happened in the first place, but her hair was cropped for some mystical reason, and there was this half-transparent dot under her chin that was kind of noticeable on darker backgrounds - it really bothered me.

As for Moana, she fixed a lot of bugs (all that were mentioned on Discord), the most notable ones being the “hips” bug (wrong outfit’s pictures were called for bigger hip sizes) and the long-lasting waitress job FPS issue.

We wanted to wait with the waitress fix, because we planned on adding more content to it and it made sense to fix this issue then. But, we don’t know when we’ll actually get to that, if at all. So I asked her to fix it in this update.

Turns out the issue was in RPG Maker itself and its browser programming shenanigans. It didn’t like how the job was coded, it only likes “hard code”, which is pretty metal but also kinda dumb. Anyways, it works now and the FPS drop should be fixed.

Oh, and while Moana was at it, she felt inspired and added three more small random dialogues for Kira’s flashing (written by her). Plus she replaced some music, added “+1 Charisma” as a quest reward in all our quests and some other “tech” thingies.

I finally did the counting and updated Liuda based on the poll results, Nadya didn’t need any further alterations because the breast size I made for her won the poll.

I also changed Liudas earring and her crotch tattoo to a dollar sign (it still needs some minor editing), because apparently the USSR didn’t have any sign for their currency, so I’ll create my own sign for them (a bit later) and replace the current dollar placeholder.

That’s pretty much it for the poll results, next month we’ll have more of them - polls on Shwift, and maybe I’ll work on some alternative “sleeve tattoo” designs for Liuda, since not everyone liked the ones I made.

I’d like to say that I do plan on upgrading (not redrawing, upgrading) Olga, Mother and Katya with polls attached to their planned upgrades. But I wanted to focus on the “ugly” NPCs first - the ones that are completely outdated.

My goal was to upgrade or draw from scratch 61 characters, which is a lot, but not that big of a number when compared to how many pictures I usually make. It was a little bit unrealistic, now that I know how much time they eat up. So, while it won’t happen in a single update, it will happen over the course of multiple “system” ones that will roll out in between of “content” focused updates.

I hope you like our slight change of plans. We only did this because NPC art alone doesn’t feel like an “update”, especially since I don’t want to half ass-them. In fact, I don’t want to half-ass anything, I’m a full-ass kind of person. It’s just that layering events takes almost the exact same amount of time as NPC art, so I’d like to mix them together for a better overall update experience.

In conclusion, “system” update 0.4.9.9b will drop this week and then we’ll start working on our “content” update 0.5.

That would be all for today, my next post will contain an update. Thank you all for your patience and support, the end is near (Thursday or Friday)!