May Dev Blog (Patreon)

I went into details last month regarding how we deliver our game, versus others and how you the fans respond via supporting people like us. It's been made clear that the majority of you prefer idea complete updates, over deadline focused updates. This last cycle was a tough one and I will highlight a bunch of the problems it had.

Design, Design, Design

SR7 has been doing what he does solo for a few decades. With art there rarely is a team. When we ventured into games he remained sol. Then you add our deadline focus (Patreon billing) and planning was never expanded beyond a napkin. Ideas rapidly were implemented the day they were conceived, no prototyping, just implementing. By progressing in this fashion your mistakes are always behind you, but are always nagging you of their presence. For every situation you conceive bears the debt of completion in this system. Nothing becomes more evident of that than Themysicra. It was born prior to sweeping changes in direction and focus last July. It reeks of the of poor planning. However the debt has to be paid, and within that payment comes grind and burnout. Themyscira is not fun, it's a brutal environment, and were happy it's where it is now. But we must push on and finish what we started. So you all can expect more content for Themyscira in the near future.

Production as a role

It become extraordinarily evident that a production role was needed on our team. Implementing so many moving parts and trying to keep long term planning on track was impossible without oversight. The role really blossomed during this last cycle, and we are more confident than ever that we can achieve both idea completion and external deadlines. The team is now looking at every month as a potential release window, and that is very promising for everyone.

Investment In The Future

AI is a hot topic right now, for good of for bad. Some hate it, and think its a scourge, and others will toss $$ to people issuing prompts to a computer. We're left with no choice but to start and look at ways AI can help streamline our processes. We must preface that we will always be open in what tools we use in our processes, in fact using AI in general puts us in a precarious position. So with that in mind our two main objectives currently will be: alternative angled backgrounds, concept art, and prototyping. Let me explain below:

- For alternative angled backgrounds: It's difficult to plan time for these BG's. They come up during implementation/art finishing, take roughly 2-4hrs to complete (not including the idea phase). There is roughly 10 or per update. By having AI potentially generate something that can be touched up and used, we achieve massive time savings to spend on core art that matters. We will be creating an internal proprietary model for this.

- Concept art: If you play SU long enough you will eventually see the same pose from the same angle. If we can generate images that are close enough to SR7's style we can generate 1000s of images and pick several that have interesting angles. From there SR7 can use those images as references when creating scenes.

-Prototyping: We're actively creating a test bed right now to start testing out new mechanics and features. In this environment we do not want to steal time from art creation to create art for something you may never see. By using AI to generate concept art, it will help us rapidly prototype many things.

We're looking at AI as a tool, to be utilized in appropriate manners. In the coming months we're certain more and more creators will be utilizing AI in some form. It's our duty to you to acknowledge our usage prior to us implementing it, rather than be exposed later.