$5+ reward: Update #2 March 2015

Okay, second patron update! Images Phinn's submitted a big batch of Kimiko images this month. I've included one of them with this update to show it off. I don't think I can really show anything else from these images yet, because they would give too much away – either of the plot or just outright sex content. Writing I always find the hardest bit to write is the last bits of sex for a character. That's because I've already been through a whole lot of writing about that character already and it's very tough to come up with anything new by that point. It's important, however, to give a wide variety of options in the sex scene for a player, because that allows you to get that interactive feeling when directing the flow of the sex scenes which is what makes AIF worthwhile in the first place. I have kind of got to the point where I'm struggling through the "Ugh, I have to write more sex scenes?" stage, but don't worry I'll stick with it. Fortunately most of the work is done anyway, and I'm still pretty happy with what I'm churning out. That said, I tackled most of the Ai sex scene this month, and that was probably the most vanilla and maybe the hardest to write, so that's pretty good work, I think. It's probably about 90-95% done, I would say, and I'm currently working on the Rio scene which is less developed, but I'm getting there and I'm probably about 45% done on that. Obviously since the last update my main focus has been Rio and Ai, neither of whom I had quite tackled until this month. Another Wannabe and I discussed quite a bit about the 'voice' for Rio during the development process (by 'voice' I mean, how does she talk? What kinds of things does she have to say? Etc.), and some ideas that sounded good at the start never made it into the final character. Eventually I settled on a reasonably simple approach that suited her role as a dominant woman; she tends to talk in declarative statements telling people what "will" happen, rather than making suggestions as people normally do. It's a subtle thing and you may not even notice it, but where normally someone would say "You might enjoy a stroll in the park," Rio would say, "You will enjoy a stroll in the park." Combine this with a lot of confident sexuality and you've got Rio's voice. Programming Boy howdy, the combat system in PAF was even more complicated than I remembered! Just making little things work like setting the hit points at the start of a battle was surprisingly complex. For PAL I'm re-using this structure (with some changes) so setting Iku's HP at the start of a fight means setting the %IkuMaxHP% variable to equal %IkuBaseHP%+(3*%IkuHand%). Then %IkuHP% is set to equal %IkuMaxHP%. Basically that means her hit points are 3 times her hand score, plus her "base HP", which is 10 plus any modifiers you might have picked up through items, and I have to make her max HP separate to her HP so that if she gets healed over her maximum then the game can correct it back down. So why did I just bore you with all that? Well, I don't know, I guess it's just to show that I'm working hard on getting all this nonsense functional :) I'm trying to make this combat system into a 'module' that I can modify and re-use for future projects, so that I don't have to rebuild this kind of thing from scratch again. I'll also be able to share this with other game designers so they can modify it and use it themselves, if they should want to. I haven't ultimately got all that far in making it functional yet – it's best if I mostly keep my mind on the job of writing right now, but I've made a small start. Voice acting This month I cast Sacci Salt as Iku! I'm happy with this casting – I did consider playing her audition for you guys, but she didn't send that for everyone to hear, so I don't think it would be proper to share it. I will post some stuff once she's had more time to work with the character. Sacci may end up playing another character in time, but I'll try to cast other actresses first, and it's best to see whom I have available. I can't do a full casting until I have the scripts ready, though, which requires the writing to be mostly done. So it's still a little while before I do a casting call. Future plans So... I shouldn't say anything detailed yet, but I always like to start the brainstorming stage of my future projects while I'm in the main production stage of my current project, and I've been doing that this month. I have some ideas that I think are cool and innovative that I hope you'll enjoy, and I'll reveal more about them when it's more realistic to talk about them as stuff I'm working on. I just wanted to let you know that I have plans for the future. 2010-2013 Erin Awards I'll finish up with a bit of community news; if you haven't seen already you can vote for the Pervert Action games for the retrospective Erin Awards here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15IfYJl3bnrIWl0eW5NQWrBar0CnUR0coiTZ44QStUJQ/viewform It only takes a moment to vote, and you don't need to vote in every category. I'm not telling you who to vote for (except I guess I just did...) but it would be good to have a nice turn-out. Even a very small amount of votes can make a big difference in this community. Well, thanks so much for your support this month, and it's time for me to get back to work!