Happy New Year! A Long ass post updating on everything I'm doing! (Patron Edition)

Sorry it took so long for this to get out, but last month I got held up with the Hypnolab release which wasn't supposed to happen. I ended up working all through the holidays when i expected to chill at least a little cause I REALLY wanted that done. But sadly it only got done with a mere couple days left out of the month...

So frustrated about that and also behind on a bunch of other work due to some issues in November I decided I would try to push out the release over the week before i made any further posts (I did do some client work too honestly).

But unfortunately I'm waiting for programming right now. To compensate, I burned through some needed art for you guys to preview. Initially I was going to do these in black and white, but I figured I owed you guys some color :P. I only got 3 our of the 8 planned images done. Here's 2 more of the colored paintings with sketch previews at the end of this post.

The following and above thumbnail image take place during the lovers route.

Also for those not on the discord, here's a preview of how the animations will work, this is currently without expressions implemented though. And I wouldn't call this final, but it's enough to get things working and confirm things look the way i want them to.

As of now the writing for the Lovers route is 80% complete due to an error in the writing of the ending, so that needs a rewrite then editing. For people who haven't seen the document the new content is like 3000+ words when everything is said and done.

Generally the main issue is I can't implement these things yet. I'll post updates on that as soon as i can though. 

Once again sorry there's no build yet :/ , I'll release more previews soon depending on how long I expect things to take. Even if the programming does get done over the next day or more there's still implementation which will take a while on it's own, and I have a lot of other work I need to do this month.

So whats up for this year?

Every year I have a habit of kind of rebooting things in January, normally a new job, simply quitting my job or some other manner of thing. Normally related to getting closer to my gamedev/art goals.

Since I'm already doing this work full time, there's no such need :P. But I do need to reconsider how I work. 

January last year I finally got the first build of The Couch released, and consistently had development occurring leading up to the public release which did very well! It was pretty damn consistent until the funeral which kind of threw everything into chaos for a while compounded by other stuff later...Sorry about that.

I'm honestly surprised this patron is where it is despite only two major public releases last year, and only one being The Couch. So that's why I'm really grateful to everyone supporting!

But all that said, I'd like to make The Couch and my other personal projects more of I priority like they were at the start of last year. And I also need to somewhat stabilize the income I get from this work too, as I'm currently trying to get a new PC and a new (used) Car.

So all that said here's my plans for the year leaving out a few surprises. 

Income Diversification

So when I started this patron back in 2017 it was knowing I don't trust the service. It's part of why I don't rely on this service for my work, i rely on client work...which generally relies on patreon lol. Sure the majority of what I do here is vanilla, but I look at the collection of behavior and I don't like it. Me I tend to look at a person or companies actions, not really what they say, and the behavior for me shows "unfavorable".

So I'm going to do several things, I'm aware of several "patreon like" services that are coming soon. A couple of these I know have secured payment processors and i'm aware of their rules. 

Based on the responses I've gotten from these services I'm very interested in these options. If and when these services launch, I will encourage my patrons to move to this new service, and I will focus on that service to help build it up. I won't be getting rid of patreon, but I will heavily encourage people use the alternative.

 Also small footnote I'll be looking into stuff like crypto currency too.  

Besides that, The Couch will be released on Steam either sometime after the Story release as early access, or after the core routes are added. Not sure on price yet but it will likely be cheaper going the early access route, than at release.

Then I'll be eyeing merchandise options, I have a few options at my disposal somewhat. Dakimuras, Shirts, posters and maybe 3D figures. I'm not sure what service I'll use so it depends on that, it would likely be several considering the 3D figure thing. 

But yeah, I figure doing that will give people options for supporting my work who may not want to do patreon or something. i'll post updates on this as I make progress. But if you or you know anyone good for these things let me know!

The Couch

After the Story release is finally done the next step is focusing on getting all the core routes in which is outlined in the project outline. At this point, it should only be content development, less feature development beyond some additions to free mode. But at this point releases will be less dependant on any programming. 

Once these core routes are complete, I'll need to determine if additional routes will be made, it really depends on a variety of factors. But generally i'll do what the most people are interested in, even if i'll just get some help to do it.

But still my core goal is getting the game in a "finished" state before fully jumping into the new game.

I do still intend to do 2 more The Couch style games (outside of Our Apartment), but I may set those up a bit differently than i originally intended. 

Naomi 3D & Animations

Ok so the big factor in this is Blender 2.8 having an official release, or the main assets I use to speed up development being compatible with it. Which ever comes first honestly. 

Basically, I aim to regularly release animations for Naomi and other characters I intend to make soon. This is both under real-time releases like the release in December, and pre-rendered animations using Blender Eevee. But probably both, as one may be for preview and the next is the release. 

Anyway, expect a lot of content delivery to be in the form of 3D art. I'll of course hold it to the same or higher quality standards of my 2D work. And it might not just be animations but images too. 

I have some more announcement for the 3D work too later. But for now I'll make this one. 

The next Naomi 3D animation will be based on the suggestions of one of our patrons, JRPL! :D

I'll also be trying to get things working on Newgrounds again.

What else?

I'm going to do some events this month and later. I'll make a post on this in a day or two (i spent too much time on this post).

Other than that thanks for your continued support! I'll work to start scheduling things properly again in February but for now i need to get caught up on my work and complete some client projects.

looking forward to the next year!

~sacb0y 

Also here's the rest of the preview sketches for future The Couch scenes. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The following scenes are Bonus scenes and are planned to be animated. Some of these may get a PSD release.

these are ending scenes, likely not animated but may have some variations.