Captain's Log #12 - October2023 (Patreon)

Greetings Seekers!

It's been long 12 months since opening this Patreon page and we wanted to say THANK YOU!

Thank you for joining us in this adventure and thank you for supporting the project so far!

It's taking long, we know, but for a good reason!! The demo, which was meant to be half hour to one hour long originally, ended up falling too short in our eyes and, after a lot of thinking and discussing, we wanted to bring an experience that would be memorable for all our Seekers and Sailors! Four to Five hours long demo (whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy).

As such, the development updates seem to get longer and longer every month 🙈! So, without further ado, let's have a look, shall we? 😍

Yet before getting further into each of the main areas of development, allow me to introduce this month's Asset tracker which, now that we have every single asset required for the game counted, listed and described, it is more than accurate than before, accurately making it HYPERaccurate!

🔧 Technical Update

Another busy month of heavy development - things are taking shape nicely:

• We improved our core functionality: the dialogue system. After quite a lot of back and forth, we have devised a UX solution that will enhance the reading process and cater to both slow and fast readers.
• Additionally, we have added support for all the fancy text effects! Fades, shakes and typewriters - expect them all. To go with the flow, we applied the same system to the erotic scenes, for that extra oomph to go with all the aaahs.
• Our lovely location backgrounds now scale properly, providing our conversations with the proper backdrop to all that saucy dialogue. Along that - a couple fixes to positioning characters and camera movements. We experimented with blur shaders for that sweet depth of field, but we’re not there yet. Cap has no mercy for half-measures and we all lovehate our hatwearer for it 😭🏴‍☠️🙈
• Implemented mechanics and level design tools for two of our minigames - Tarot and Engineering. Logic puzzle alert! Now waiting for final art 👀
• VFXXX - a whole new visual effects system was implemented to handle all the fireworks of our most heated scenes. We’re still in the process of designing the visuals themselves, but the system is there - waiting for the art to roll in.
• Aforementioned scenes also went through some improvements - the math behind the thrusting and bouncing was due for a recalculation 💦
• A new part of the dev pipeline was installed - with the help of the Parrot, we’re getting a lot more dialogue into the game (almost everything is already ported!).
• Improved our game state manager to handle quitters (so you can leave the event and not leave a lady blueballed!) 😩
• Small fixes and updates to the menu buttons, layouts and functionalities. We’re polishing the experience every day whenever we see something needs improvement.
• We also survived the Unity-related emotional rollercoaster, which is an achievement on it’s own! 🙃

📝 Writing

Almost all the dialogues are now in the game. We are so far in this regards that we have started the proofreading the whole demo!

While going again through the dialogs and events, we begun to rework a few of them that needed some extra heat, but apart from that, the whole writing is SO close to be finished!!

In the meantime we are preparing side writing tasks; extra lore, puzzles, backstories, items descriptions, listing locations, objects, artworks and events that happen in the story to make the development assembly easier.

Last but not least, we are preparing a survey for November! So expect the unexpected!! 🙈

🎵 Music

We FINALLY started composing! Our composer is currently working on the main opening theme and background music (for the map and main menu). The next step is the character main themes, as a base for all the future pieces and conversations. Hope to share it soon! 🎷

Apart from music: sound, sound everywhere. We have laid foundations for all our audio needs by plugging in hooks to each of our scenes, menus and popups. All that’s left is to pick the right sounds (and our lovely sound wizard is already on the job)! You know, it's for all those small things that make it feel whole, sounds of clicks, events and achievements! 🔔

🎨Art

We are currently working on the assets for the minigames and slides for the Visual Novel part. We currently have over 50 additional artworks sketched and waiting for colors. But before we render, we are trying to plan and sketch up all the artworks required for the Soulgasm demo so that we can put it together and see if it works well. You have to believe me when I tell you we are working day and night 😅

Wait--what's that?--

Oh--the Cap'n says 'POLLY SPEAKS TRUE! 🎨😩👌'

As always, we continue work on multiple fronts:

🔽 Adding colors to already sketched bits:

🔽 Adding EVEN MORE sketches:

🔽And I mean A LOT MORE :

🔽 Preparing more advanced files for further processing (Not the Cap'n polishing 476 individual layers) 👀👀👀

🔽 Wasting time creating endless levels [because its just so much fun]:

🧠 Final Thoughts

It seems we've picked up the pace after a somewhat shy summer. Many things aren't final, but instead of perfecting each artwork, we're trying to make progress on multiple fronts simultaneously to cover the whole demo. The main reason for the extended timeline is our commitment to providing you with a truly exceptional experience as soon as possible. We intentionally expanded the scope, and the Soulgasm demo is now larger than a typical game demo (or, in some cases, longer than full games without their grinding--NO GRINDING WELCOME HERE SHOO SHOO!).

We appreciate your unwavering support on this journey. Together, we're creating an unforgettable gaming experience that's worth the wait. Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the coming weeks! 🚀

See you very soon!!

--Polly💌

🔎TL;DR

• 🔧VFX, sound effects and text effects implemented,
• 🔧Minigames and sexy games finetuning and calibrating in progress,
• 🔧Camera fixes, Dialogue System improvements,
• 🎵Music production started,
• 📝Game Demo dialogues almost ported to Unity,
• 🎨Final artworks production at full speed 🖼️,
• 🎨Moruga's scene in the rigging 🧯