Dev Team Expansion 2.0: Major Announcement

Hey all,

So for those who subscribe, I recently alluded to an upcoming "Major Announcement" post but didn't really give much context. So here it comes...

Back in January, I took arguably the biggest step in the game's history and doubled the size of the team by adding Blayke as my wingman. For those in the Discord, you've probably gotten a chance to meet him and the community response was very encouraging to both of us. 

Part of building a team is understanding your own shortcomings and either making the decision to try and develop those individually or tap in other people with pre-existing talents and fresh ideas to add to our virtual arsenal.

Today, I take the stage a second time and shift an uncomfortably bright spotlight at our newest edition as the team grows its ranks officially by one more person. 

Lazy-Jayke

So this addition has probably been in the works since Christmas but I don't really know if either of us realized it for awhile. One of the most important aspects to team building to me is personality and trust. When working on an adult game like this, you have to be comfortable and you really have to trust the guys you work with. They also have to be open to the litany of inappropriate humor that occurs in our virtual gaming office. While he tends to be on the quieter side, Lazy is a fantastic fit! I can honestly say that I can be in a terrible mood and completely stressed out with development and pop into chat with these guys and be laughing my ass off within a few minutes. 

I first met Lazy back before Christmas in 2018. He was an ongoing Patreon supporter and hit me up one day out of the blue on a private message with a video that pretty much changed the course of the game, made me fucking cry, and Spartan kicked a bunch of doors open for what we could accomplish. The video was a 60 second clip of the dorm room, the animation that later became the Main Menu screen that was previously showcased in v0.14. For anyone who missed that animation, you probably hastily clicked on New Game to quickly and missed one of the best aspects to that last update imo. If you haven't done that 1) shame on you, and 2) go boot the game up real quick and check it out. While this was originally just his version of a "fan art," I simply couldn't pass up the opportunity to share the work with others and even include it in the actual game. 

After meeting, we talked pretty regularly and I started to whisper to Blayke that I was really digging this guy and Blayke agreed, feeling he would be a substantially unique asset to the team. Blayke, being his typical direct self, suggested that I stop being a wuss and ask him to join rather than miss a fantastic opportunity. Well... I finally got the balls to ask him and here he is officially.

Lazy is well-versed in Blender, another 3D art program similar to the one that I've been using and he's skilled at animation and set design. In short, this now gives us the ability to custom build sets and items. Prior to this, we were somewhat limited to what was already pre-made with me spending time browsing the Daz3D art store to try and find things close to my vision for the story. While the Main Menu animation is his biggest visual contribution thus far, you'll see a new animation in v0.15 that is subtle but really adds to the scene. Small projects like this show our continued goal of constantly evolving to increase player immersion.

Additionally, v0.16 (2 updates from now) will showcase a brand new location he built from scratch as well as ongoing textures we're working on to improve the quality of things up in this bitch. He's also working on some massive plans/projects that we won't see for awhile that are literally game-changing and will blow everything you've seen thus far out of the water. 

Expect this little project to grow up a bit more over the next few updates and moving forward.

 If you're on Discord, come say hey and chat to us for abit! (and if you're not on discord what are you doing? Join now . We'll all be there to answer any questions and have fun with you guys. He's a great dude and we already luv having him. 

-Aaryn