Update 58

tl;dr - Some more programming has allowed me to release a hot fix for the alpha, making v0.8.1 hopefully work well. I have also done some writing on something I hope to show you soonish.

This week's image

A little bit of fun here, this is a scene from the harem mode victory suite! That means this is a scene that doesn't actually happen from the main game. There's a fair amount of stuff that I've made for the victory suite that I haven't been able to show, but I figure this is harmless enough. This may not be the final version, I don't know yet.

I can't give a whole lot of explanation of it without spoilers, but if you think Masami looks a little different then it's because she is a little younger in this shot. I can't go into detail about who she's having sex with. Speculation is welcome, but I won't confirm or deny any theories.

Released PAL v0.8.1

This week I tracked down the main bug (which broke the night service system) and several smaller bugs in PAL v0.8.0 and released a hot fix to address those problems. There were also some pictures that were supposed to be in v0.8.0 that weren't in there, and I added some more voice acting (discussed below).

I haven't yet got any feedback on whether the Ai/Rio threesome scene works, so I just have to assume that's functioning okay. Any feedback on it (either technical feedback or just on whether you like it) would be welcome. I still haven't really had time to test it particularly myself; I programmed it before my holiday and released it as soon as I could, and since I've been back I've been really busy with both work and game design.

I know that at the moment some of the updates probably don't seem like I've made big progress; that just happens to be the stage we're at in development. Sometimes I spend a whole day working on the game and at the end the detectable differences are kind of small. There will still be breakthroughs, of course - a lot of stuff is happening in the background - but progress is going to seem pretty incremental from here on out. Sorry if that's a little frustrating, it's a big project. Bigger than any I've ever taken on.

Added some voice acting

Also I added some voice acting for Iku to the game. It was stuff I got from Sacci a few weeks ago but haven't had time to add until now. It's in version 0.8.1, and it's her night service responses. While I didn't actually have the level 5 responses in the game when I sent out the scripts I've been trying to re-purpose some spare lines so at least some of the level 5 night service scenes do have a bit of voice acting.

Added some descriptions

During my holiday I wrote up some descriptions of the characters (because I knew they were lacking in the current version - mostly non-existent). A lot of the descriptions of the girls, therefore, were written during downtime in Europe (if that interests you at all). Implementing them is mostly a matter of transcribing my notes, but it also involves some programming to make sure that the right description comes up at the right time, and I'm creating objects so that you'll be able to examine girls' body parts. I'll probably include legs and hair as examinable objects for this game too, as that's often been requested in the past. All of this adds up to some time consuming work, of course.

It's actually always been a principle of mine to make sure that descriptions are properly detailed, even with images available. On the one hand I know that "a picture tells a thousand words" so sometimes detailed descriptions feel a little unnecessary, but on the other hand I know that a) better writing tends to include good descriptive language, and b) visually impaired people play my games and have no interest in the pictures. They want the text. Obviously my focus in recent years has shifted a little to make sure I include good art, but my design philosophy hasn't entirely changed.

Writing for a small project

This is probably something that nobody's too excited to hear (I know, I know) but I did a bit of writing for a small game project that I haven't announced yet. I'm trying not to let it prevent me from doing my work on PAL, I would just like to be able to throw this short game together as a little parallel project while I still work on PAL. I get a bit bored if I've only got one project on the go at any given time. Anyway, if you want to look at the bright side it is an AIF game that will probably be done relatively quickly and you'll all be able to play it. :) I want to experiment with just how reactive I can make it - I want it to be really responsive to player commands and, although short, to give a lot of power to the player. Maybe that will work, maybe not, but it should be good for a fap one way or another.

Thoughts? Opinions? Complaints? (What could anyone possibly have to complain about?) Please leave them in the comments below!