Update 37

tl;dr - The Fumi sex scene is almost complete so the alpha will be out in the next couple of days; my image design work is improving, but also getting more expensive; I've done some design work for a future project (that you will like); I'm working extra hard right now.

Today's image:

Kim knows how to wake her Master in the morning. I made this image this week for the morning wake-up blowjob that Kimiko gives Kenji after their sex scene. That scene was already in the alpha version of the game, but this image will go with it in the next version.

Fumi scene almost finished (next alpha coming soon!):

After focussing on the Fumi sex scene writing and image design this week, and with some writing help from AW, the Fumi sex scene is almost done. I will have the next alpha done pretty soon - I really just need to test the game at this point, and I also may try to add a couple more paragraphs so that I can include the 'orb of ecstasy' part of the Fumi sex scene. That's one of only two bits of the Fumi sex scene that are unfinished at the moment.

This is particularly good because the Fumi sex scene was probably the scene that was (of all of them) the least complete. Now, thanks to the work we've put in, I think it's the most complete - it's almost totally finished. Expect the next alpha in the next couple of days.

Image work, 3D assets and the $1000 goal:

If you were paying close attention you might have noticed that we (briefly) passed the $1000 fundraising goal this month before dropping down again. That's fine - patrons will inevitably come and go, and it's not a big problem so long as I'm not dropping patrons really fast. I thought I would talk a little about this goal, however, as it's relevant to what I've been doing this week.

I've had my computer back from the shop for several days (it's still not fixed, I'll be taking it back to them) and in that time I've been doing some image rendering. I can now announce, although it may not be a surprise to you at this point, that I am not going to be making images for PAL with 'blank' backgrounds like I did for PAC and PAF. In past I did this because my 3D asset library and general skill with the rendering software was so limited that I found the pictures actually looked better in the sex scenes if I just left the backgrounds blank and left the focus on the characters. That was fine at the time, but I have always hoped to get past that necessity, and now I feel that I have. (There will still be a few blank backgrounds in the harem victory suite bonus pics, but not in the main game.) Also, it may go without saying, but I'm pretty much always rendering in Iray now.

The problem that this creates is that I need quite a lot of 3D assets to populate the backgrounds of scenes. I have quite a few already, but not enough for everything. Wherever possible I avoid spending money on them (for obvious reasons), and this has paid off before. Once I was about to buy an old-timey clothes washing set just to get a washbasin for PAL until I found, at the last minute, a washbasin in a free set of old-timey kitchen props. So by working with the free stuff I was not only able to save money, I also found a bunch of stuff to put in the kitchen set.

This doesn't always work, however, so I do need to go with the paid stuff sometimes. My requirements have actually increased recently, because Phinn was taking care of a lot of the mansion sets for me, and now that he's had to drop out for health reasons I need to acquire a couple of things for myself. Some of the existing pictures seem to take place in fairly empty rooms - those need to be reshot with more props in the background. Also, I had to buy a lobby set this week for all the scenes that take place in the mansion's lobby. I am, at least, excited to try it out; hopefully you'll be seeing some great lobby shots soon!

Long term design work:

I did a little bit of character design work for the long term this week as well; what I mean by that is that I'll be doing games after PAL, and when the mood strikes me I like to prepare the character models for future projects. I've got most of the characters read for the next one and I think (hope) you'll like what you see when I reveal my plans. I won't go into it yet because I want to make sure I'm not splitting focus or acting distracted; I'll start talking about it in more detail once I've got a feature-complete beta version of PAL finished. Also, to be honest, this future game idea is still pretty half-formed; I don't quite know what the gameplay is going to be like and I don't have a lot of the plot worked out. I want to get a lot of this planned before I'm finished PAL, ideally, so that I can start up work on it without having any major delays... we'll see how that works out.

Working even harder:

I do always work hard on the game - normally I do a bit of work every day, even if I don't have time for much - but at the moment my day job is less demanding. Therefore I am devoting extra time and effort to getting PAL done, and completing it ASAP to the highest quality level I can is my primary life goal right now. I can't really say how long it will take, but there aren't too many major hurdles still left in front of me - the largest share of things I have to do now is a bunch of image design, as well as some remaining programming tasks. I'm hoping to see major progress on those over the next couple of months (slightly contingent on how much time I have to work with my rendering computer).

P.S. I was thinking this week about what kind of progress I've made, and while it's felt slow ultimately PAL has been developing faster than PAF did (and MUCH faster than PAC did) despite being a larger and more complex project than either of them. I think that's pretty comforting.

Any comments/questions/suggestions this week? Are you happy with what you're seeing at the moment? Let me know in the comments section below. :)