Development Update

Hey guys,

So the update is nearly finished and I’ll be aiming to release the beta version on April 3rd, with the main release on April 10th. So just in time for Easter.

This update is going to be quite different from the last one. As I mentioned previously, after figuring out a new way to make animations I changed my plans for the update slightly to focus on some animation heavy scenes. I did this as a way to train myself and also to figure out what was possible with the new method. This means that the update is probably a little shorter than the last one, as the animations are a lot more work to make than still frames. However, the quality of the scenes more than makes up for a slightly lower word count. There is also a much bigger focus on choice in this update, with several scenes playing out very differently depending on your decisions, some of which will affect your relationship with various characters over the course of the game.

Looking back over my last few month's work I can confidently say that all the new animations (around 80 of them) are looking fantastic. You guys are in for a treat. Not only are they a huge improvement visually, but they are also a lot less stressful to make. No more weeks worth of painstakingly rendering and labelling individual still frames then coding them all into animations. Now I can do everything by simply capturing video directly from the studio software. Some of the pain has moved to the video editing software but it’s nothing compared to what I previously had to deal with. So although the switch to the new method slowed me down a little this update, it should start to speed up development overall.

The problem I’ve created for myself now is that all my old animations are going to look bad by comparison. I'm considering going back and redoing a few of my very early ones. Given the advances I've made with the graphics software over the last couple of years, I think it would be a significant improvement to the game for a relatively low investment of time. Obviously, my priority should always be new content but I'll see if I can't find a few days here or there for updating old scenes with better animations.

I'm still figuring a few things out in terms of the red butt effect for the spankings. I've used two different approaches to the butt reddening in version 0.10. One that works the same as the old ones (where you can control the speed of the spanking and the software remembers how many spanks you’ve given when changing the view). However, I’ve found that this method has some minor graphical glitches when using videos instead of still frames. It also requires four separate video files playing at the same time in order to create the effect which could slow down some older computers/phones. The other method works seamlessly and looks amazing but does not allow you to directly control the speed of the spanking by clicking the mouse. The redness also resets every time you change the view. This might be a trade-off worth making though and I’ll be asking people which they prefer after they’ve seen the new animations in action.

So all in all a great update is just around the corner. It does not have everything that I planned to do in my list of goals from back in November. However, there are lots of really high-quality scenes with loads of animations and certainly enough content for a satisfying release (pun intended). Assuming everything goes to plan this will be the last development update before version 0.10 comes out. However, if there are any unforeseen delays I will let you all know as early as possible.

Altos