Update - 3 October 2016

tl;dr - I worked on the endings (for the next alpha release) and some pictures, both re-renders and new ones. I've also done some testing and bought new 3D assets.

This week's image

This picture actually represents significant progress in my technical skills because I just wasn't able to make the orb look like that until now. This is what I pictured in my head when I conceived the idea, so that's cool. If you're interested, it was inspired partly by the movie Sleeper, partly by those glowing spheres people put on pools and partly by a porno in which the girls put squishy toy globes up their butts. (It was a good one.)

The latest alpha doesn't have the Orb of Ecstasy scenes because I didn't have the capacity to make the pictures, so I kind of just set that aside for a while. I plan to finish those up at some point - I don't know if it will be this alpha or the next one, or maybe even a loose end I tie up in the beta phase.

Man, these endings take a lot of work

No surprise here, the main objective for the next alpha is finishing the endings, so I've been working on that goal. I've actually really been going on some intense deep-dives on these endings. I normally have a pretty unfocused work style where I will jump from task to task, but since there's one main thing to complete for the next alpha I've really just been singularly focusing on that.

The task has involved a little bit of voice acting and programming, but not much when compared to other parts of the game design. No, primarily the endings require writing and picture design. As I've said before I find writing the endings the hardest part of the writing, since it combines sex (which is hard to write) with trying to give a satisfactory conclusion to the characters' stories. Still, I have been making good progress. I was for a while very pleased with how well I was taking these down, but then I realised that even some of the ones I thought were done actually needed more work.

To give you a sense of what to expect from the endings, I am putting at least 3 pictures in each ending (probably at least 4, but I can't be sure) and sometimes more. They are long in terms of writing and every one has some new voice acting. There are nine of them, plus the bad endings (which are different again). It's a surprisingly large amount of work.

Re-rendering pics

I re-rendered some of Rio's pictures this week (I showed one for you) because I have recently come up with a better idea of how to set her skin settings and how to do lighting generally. You probably won't notice all the changes because they're pretty subtle in some cases, but in some cases there is a clear improvement. Rio worked really well in the original rendering software but she didn't look as good when I shifted to the more advanced Iray software, so it's taken me a while to really get a hang of how to make her look good. I do think I've got a hold of that now. I also redid a couple of other pics from other characters.

Testing

I spent a day and did a full test, start to finish, of the game. It doesn't take that long necessarily to play it if you know what you're doing, but I was stopping to make tweaks and changes along the way. It's definitely viable and largely bug-free, at least from what I saw. I finished getting all three maids, as well as one of the threesomes, then I tested the relevant endings. I think the threesome ending I got was quite good.

If you're interested in my strategy, I actually did a lot of combat to get Kenji's skills up to 9 across the board, then bought items from Hiroshi to get them all to 10. Along the way I kept an eye out for times when the maids had a mood that encouraged the right flirting action. I got all three girls with one day to spare.

Bought a bunch of new 3D assets

I haven't really spoken about this, but after the last month or so I've bought a bunch of new 3D assets so that I can make higher quality renders. Just this morning, in fact, I bought a bundle. I always try to wait until the stuff comes up on sale before I buy them because, well, obviously I need to save money! That said, I am in a very different position now to when I started PAL and I can now justify investing some money in order to make the games better (as opposed to before, when I really couldn't spare much money and I wasn't expecting to get anything in return).

Longer update this week, making up for last week. :) So what's up with you guys? I hope everything's going well! Let me know in the comments!