Update 52

tl;dr - I made small progress on lots of little things this week, and I outline below what I'm now planning for the next alpha.

This week's image

Kimiko's new kissing practice! And if you check you'll see I've also attached the audio for this scene, so you can hear her as well. Give it a listen and tell me what you think!

In the actual game the little frame in the top left corner pops up after a few lines of text, but there's nothing much in the picture behind it so I thought I'd show you the full thing now.

I don't know about you, but I think Kimiko is really sexy.

Miscellaneous progress

I was hoping to be able to announce that I had finished the new night service responses this week, but unfortunately a few of them are still giving me a little trouble. I have, however, done most of them already, including writing them and making pictures for them. I think they're turning out pretty well - the one in the image above is good, I feel, and you'll be seeing some more examples in the coming weeks.

I wrote and illustrated a new, short, Masami scene for the harem victory suite. I wasn't sure whether or not to use it in the main game, but I think it's probably best put in the victory suite just because it might disrupt the telling of the story in the spot where it would crop up in the game.

I've worked on the 'talk to' system a little bit - just the technical side. This is a super boring thing to update, but it's a feature that I really want to have in the game so I've got to do it sooner or later. Might as well work on it now.

I tested doing an animation in Iray rendering but it took about 8 hours

to render! So I won't be doing that again, I'm afraid. There will only

be the one Iray animation in the game (but there will be other

animations rendered more traditionally).

I also did some other odd, small, miscellaneous changes that you probably won't notice in the game next time you play it. Things like little Easter eggs, a small feature of the harem mode, and some small object puzzle stuff.

What am I working on right now?/My plans for the next alpha

I admit I've been kind of scatter-shot recently. When I make progress it's not on the same, consistent thing; it's generally just whatever's been taking my mood at the time. Hence the 'miscellaneous progress' section above. I don't like this - I want to be making steadier, more focused progress on individual features, getting them finished and then moving on to the next thing. I'll try to focus myself like that from now on, but that said I've been trying to do that throughout.

What I actually plan to have done in the next alpha is:

a) The Rio/Ai threesome scene (needs me to add VA and text to the game, then test it)

b) The level 5 night service responses (needs me to program it and write and illustrate 3 more responses)

c) The 'talk to' system (needs programming and a little bit of writing)

d) A few extra puzzles/Easter eggs (mostly done already)

I had been planning to include the Iku sex scene but her 'stripping' stage is quite complexly structured and I am fuzzy on how best to implement it. I might have to change it a little bit, and it will take a little while to do. I do, however, have most of the material for that scene ready to go so when I finally get around to it (probably the alpha after next) it will hopefully not take too long to finalize.

So when will I be done with all this? I'd like to say soon, but probably it will take several weeks because I'm about to have a holiday that will delay me for two weeks. Considering my lack of focus recently I'm starting to think this is an even better idea than I had thought it was. I need to get into a completely different mind-set for a couple of weeks and then get back to work when I come home.

I kind of didn't answer the question there. Basically, I will TRY to get it done before the 24th, but that's very likely to be a pipe dream. If I don't achieve that, expect it sometime more like mid-April. (Trying to be as transparent as possible here.)

Do you have anything to say? I'd love to hear it in the comments below!