TWAB: It's gonna be May

There was a lot of art posted last month, but not a single TWAB blog post... I guess that just speaks to how busy I was - mostly with game development in the second half. So it's good to touch base for a bit right now.

Upcoming Demo:

I spent the last few months adding new features to the Beaumont Engine, such as: enemies, sub-weapons, mechanics, and level design tools. I think it's about time I start work on a new demo for you to play with.

That said, I want to create new environment tiles for the new demo. The last two demos used a lot of the same tiles, so it would be nice to have a fresh coat of paint to play with.

As far as sexy illustrations go, I'm still not really sure how to best implement it in a way that respects the concept of Elayne Beaumont. While Bad Ends are the only way to get Elayne in reliably sexy encounters, I don't want to encourage players to go out of their way to trouble themselves with the process of dying just to see content. So I may not do much with that.

Patreon Updates:

(This section only concerns Patreon, but it impacts my entire career & work practices).

Epic & Apple were fighting, and a U.S. Court ruled that Apple is no longer allowed to collect fees on purchases made outside of the App Store (like on Patreon). Apple is trying to appeal this, however - so we're not out of the woods yet.

In order to operate within Apple's guidelines, Patreon was forcing ALL creators to enter the new subscription model (which results in me working an entire month before getting paid & puts more pressure on patrons due to irregular charge dates). However, due to the U.S. Court ruling, the subscription billing transition deadline is currently on hold (but not yet removed).

This means we may still be forced to transition in the future, but we won't know until Patreon has more info. Patreon is still a difficult platform to work with, but that's a positive sign.

Closing:

Beyond that, I'm not sure what the plan is this month for content. As per usual, I'll probably just focus on game dev & drawing whatever I feel like drawing at the time.

I've spent a lot of time drawing for myself lately, unconcerned with numbers or expectations. This has resulted in more interesting artworks, but I have noticed that my earnings have been slowly dropping (and Patreon does not allow me to advertise because I am a brand risk).

I'm still focusing on the game dev project, but perhaps I should begin work on another comic to sell on itch.io, to help earn a bit more monies and provide more content for my characters. This plan will only work if I'm left to my own devices, however.

Don't forget to eat & sleep.