Dev Update 9/26/22 (Patreon)

Hey, friends! Hope everyone's week is off to a good start!

First off, let me say welcome to all the new patrons that joined up this month. I hope you folks decide to stick around for a while, following and shaping the development of Friends in Need. 

To that second point, following a poll (available to $5+ patrons) to determine the future of Gabby's hairstyle, I'm happy to announce that she'll be keeping her existing look a while longer. But, with a new color! Check her out up above, and let me know what you think! I think she's just cute as a button, personally. (Just uh, ignore that floating laptop, it's not a final game render. ;P )

Onto general business! I've been busy this week with writing, but the day job remains demanding and sometimes draining. So, I haven't progressed as far as I'd have liked to. Still, I'm moving into writing the middle of this update, featuring the first big erotic event of the chapter. You've asked for it! You've demanded it! Now you'll get to see Brittani-with-an-I in all her dubious glory!

My plan is to finish the script all the way through to the midpoint (right after Brittani's event), and then start rendering it, so I can submit the first half of the game to the $15+ tier for playtesting. While I have big batches of renders processing, I'll be able to use that time to write the second half of the script. Hopefully that'll help me avoid the issue I had with Chapter Three's update, where I wound up with kind of a bottleneck towards the end of the development cycle, doing 90% of the renders in a single month while also chasing down bugs. I've also started making notes in my script, detailing exactly what kind of shot I need, to avoid making redundant renders.

My goal is really to put out smaller (but still full-featured) updates, faster. Primarily by cutting out unnecessary renders. We'll see how it goes!

On the rendering side, I'm currently building the sets I'll need for the first few scenes. Personally, I hate seeing the same settings used over and over again in visual novels, so I always try to change things up a bit. Whether through the use of shaders, rearranging furniture, adding new props from other sets, etc.

As you can see up top, I'm doing some tests for the MC's game room/guest room, which Nicki's been staying in. I've really wanted to highlight MC's dorky side ever since it was talked about so much in the first chapter. And I get to have more of Nicki and MC interacting as buddies, which is always a delight. I think they bring out an interesting side of each other. Of course, this scene will likely play out quite differently, depending on which alignment path you're on..

I still need to make some original posters for this scene, to replace some of the more girly ones in the background. But, it'll get there. I already made a screen for Nicki and MC's favorite fighting game - BEAR KNUCKLE!

And we're going to see MC make a fateful visit to a diner, where he encounters a familiar (or maybe not-so-familiar) face.

Also, I keep playing around with ideas for a full Chapter One do-over. One thing that I'd really like to push is the idea that MC underwent a bit of a physical transformation, after he became wealthy and started exercising. So, in a return to Chapter One, I think I'll highlight that by making him a little heavyset during the intro.

That's all for now! This time next week, I should have some final, in-game renders to share.