Update - Masami and Fumi in the hot springs

tl;dr - I've been working on PAT's writing and image design; I've redone the Kumi design a bit and I'm planning a Megumi cameo in PAT as well.

This week's image

Bath time! Fumi and Masami know how to have fun and get clean at the same time. This scene is from one of the new scenes coming in the next PAL update. I think it turned out quite nicely, do you agree? :) Obviously, if you've played the game recently you'll know there's already a bunch of bathing scenes in there, but I felt that they were one of the most interesting elements of Masami and Fumi's existing relationship, so it would make sense to develop them a little for their combo ending.

PAT work

This week has pretty much been all on Pervert Action: Timelapse. I did some rendering, some character redesigns and (importantly) some writing. Among the rendering work, I did the last of my time-lapse images for the opening credits of PAT, although I still haven't worked out how to make it work properly in the engine just yet. I've got to track down some help about that at some point.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the chance to write location and object descriptions again and I'm hoping you're going to like the way I've designed that system. I actually think it's pretty good - somewhat similar to an adventure game, I guess, but it brings out that old 'interactive fiction' feel that I kept in the previous installments of the series and which I don't want to lose.

This gives me the chance to talk about the setting quite a bit, which is good fun from a writing perspective. Also, giving small bits of information in tiny bite sized chunks (which is how I like to write this stuff - I don't want to be giving you huge text dumps) is an art unto itself and at the same time doesn't actually take too long when I'm feeling inspired, so I can make progress quickly. This system is, in some respects, better than examining objects in an Adrift game, because I don't have to give a description to unimportant stuff any more, I can just talk about interesting things.

Below I'll discuss a couple of character designs/ideas I've been working on, but this actually isn't exhaustive. I've got another character design I've developed recently, but I don't want to talk about her right now; I'll save that for another time.

New Kumi design

Kumi is a minor character in PAT, although one with an important role (that I can't go into right now. I've shown a previous design of her before which is pretty similar to this one but with different hair. I thought the previous hairdo had a nice "high fashion" feel to it, but I have used it before for Hidemi in PAC and it's also a little awkward for posing, so I thought this one might work out nicely. I recently tried it out for Nobuko, but I found on her it made her proportions look uncanny; it's still a good style, though, and it kind of matches Kumi's retro-inspired look here. As for the outfit, I wanted it to look a bit "haute couture". I don't know if it's really just come out as 1960s retro, but, well, I think it still looks nice.

In response to a question earlier in the week I clarified this point: there will be some different outfits for characters through the course of the story. For game design reasons, though, I kind of need most of the characters to have a "main outfit", because certain events can happen on various different days, so if they suddenly change costumes when the scene starts up then it would be a continuity error. Imagine if you were disciplining Kimiko and a conversation started up in which she was suddenly wearing her lingerie. Fun, perhaps, but it wouldn't make much sense.

Megumi cameo in PAT

Recognise this lady? Well, I already spoiled who she is in the sub-heading. This is a newly tweaked design for Megumi, based on some improvements I thought I could make and with a new outfit that actually harkens back to the original 2D sprite I had for her and the basic look I wanted for her all along.

There's a scene early in PAT in which the MC talks to a doctor, which I feel is a necessary moment in the story but not one I want to spend a whole lot of time on. I was planning to just have a fairly boring character in there, but I thought that instead I could have a Megumi cameo in there instead. It actually does make some sense for the story (I won't explain why here) but I was concerned that a cutesy cameo wouldn't be a good choice, particularly early in the game and particularly as there are likely to be a lot of new players to the series who haven't tried PAC before.

My thinking now is this: giving the doctor a bit of personality doesn't hurt, even for a minor character. Sure, players might think she's a main character or that it's a bit gratuitous that even a minor character is a busty babe, but that's probably not a significant problem. Meanwhile, the scene will only feel excessively fan-servicey if it doesn't actually make sense to players who don't know the character, but if I write it well that won't actually be a problem, it'll be more like General Ross turning up in Infinity War  - you don't need to know he's an enemy of the Hulk to understand his role in the movie.

I know I'm kind of spoiling what could have been a nice surprise here (sorry about that), but I already spoiled it on the Discord server anyway because I wanted to make sure that this wasn't a dumb idea. I normally stop myself from announcing things publicly when I'm chewing them over in my head, but this time I didn't, so I might as well ask you guys for your feedback - do you like the idea? Would you have got the reference if you'd encountered her in the game?

Am I planning more cameos? No, probably not. This one was organic, but I don't think any others would be. Of course, never say never, but it's not likely.

Do you like the look of the bathing scene above? What do you think of Kumi's new look? I can still make changes. What about the Megumi cameo idea and her new look? Would you have immediately recognised her? And are you glad there'll be some IF/adventure game style examining of things in PAT, or is that just boring for you? Let me know in the comments!