Update 28

tl;dr - First Iray render; combat system improvements; plans for the next alpha.

Today's picture: Iray Iku!!!!!

(Click on the pic above to see the full sized version.)

What I've included above is a comparison render between a shot of Iku that I rendered with my pre-existing 3Delight rendering software that I had been using on the old computer (on the left) and the same shot on the new Iray software (on the right.

So, I have a few of thoughts on this.

• First of all, I think this is kind of amazing. It's obviously a huge difference - much more so than I expected. This is using Iray's 'photorealistic' setting, which is the main reason for this software to exist.
• Not every shot turns out this well in Iray. I've tried stuff that looks no better than it did in 3Delight, and even some things that come out all weird looking. Currently Kim looks like a shiny plastic doll in Iray, and Janey (from my Crossworlds designs that I've shown you) looks incredibly creepy - like Jeff the Killer or something.
  
• I hope I can work out how to soften the shadows a little in Iray - that's still something that 3Delight has over Iray.
• My first reaction was actually a little bit concerned - I'm worried that maybe she's now a little too realistic. Where before there was still a bit of 3D cartoonishness about the design, now she's maybe getting into uncanny valley territory? I know that's subjective, but it's a concern.
• Iray takes way more time to render with than 3Delight, and I think 3Delight is still fine for a lot of images, so I'm not planning to replace it 100% of the time. I'll be using Iray where I can get the biggest and best impact with it.  Animations, I'm afraid, will have to be exclusively 3Delight because rendering them in Iray would take enormous amounts of time.

Just to be 100% clear about this, I could not have bought the new computer (with this particular graphics card) without your support. Without that computer, I could not have rendered this image in Iray. It effectively requires an nVidia card with 4gb+ of memory, so the Geforce GTX 970 is more or less the minimum card available that I could have picked up to use this software. Anyway, what that means is that this is your investment in the game right there up on the screen. I'm really pleased to be able to show off a direct and tangible achievement for this Patreon campaign beyond the fact that it's made AIF into my second job (in a really good way). Thank you!

Oh, and this is still my first experiment with this renderer. I'm not perfect with it yet, and I would appreciate honesty in what you think of it. Frank feedback (as always) is welcome.

Changes to the combat system:

I released the latest alpha version to $10+ patrons this week and it contained the new combat system. I've been able, therefore, to finally get some feedback on balance and performance issues. The word is so far that people like it and it isn't buggy (both great pieces of news), but it's maybe a little easy. I don't want it to be super hard, but I also want you to have an actual reason to master it, so a little bit of a difficulty increase is called for. My initial attempt to scale up the difficulty this week made it way too hard, but now I've wound that right back down so it should just be a bit harder, not way, way harder.

I also had a couple of requests - firstly for damage to be displayed as you do it. I agree that this would be a good feature, so I went to quite a bit of trouble to implement that and get it working right this week.

I've also got a request to have the slime be able to dissolve the maids' clothing with its toxic goo. Then the maid will have to run away for a round to get her clothes on again. That sounds like lots of fun, so I think it's a good idea. It will take a bit of work, however, so I guess that's a chore coming my way. I *might* put in a couple of other monsters' abilities of a similar nature, like the phoenixia burning the clothes off, or the wolfor shredding them off, just to take advantage of the gameplay system once I've included it. I may not fully illustrate all those bits - I'll probably try to do images with the maids all gooey, but with the burning and shredding I can probably just show them naked after the attack.

Plan for the next alpha:

I don't know when the next version of the alpha will be ready, but it should include the following:

• Damage in combat displayed as it is done.
• Masami and Ai's flirting systems and love scenes.
• Hiroshi's shop.
• Kimiko's sex scene. (Though likely not 100% finished.)

Yes, I plan for the next version to have an actual sex scene! Rejoice!