nearnfar

MAJOR PATREON/LIFE UPDATE!

Hey guys!

You might have seen that I finally finished How to Grow Your Own Nymph. Be sure to check it out.

I'm making this update because there's going to be some huge changes here, and they're not really great news...

This weekend saw some big life changes for me (nothing bad, don't worry). I won't elaborate on that, but the gist is that I simply don't have the time to work on something as time consuming as the game development anymore. I was already doing my best to fit it...

Grow Your Own Nymph Release!

I had a VERY busy week working on this mini that turned out not so mini...

It's still very much a small game, but the amount of work it took to get it right was insane for the end result. And honestly, it's far from perfect. There are a few quality of life features that just would not cooperate (Java decimals strike again!), so they had to be scrapped, as much as I wanted to not do that.

The game itself is fine. I'm personally not thrilled with it. I may release a small update to...

8/16 Update

This week is going much better. Still busy in real life, but I've been able to get a lot of work done. I've already finished 3 of the six remaining endings. I'm hopeful that I can finish at least 2 more today, possibly all 3. Saturday will be a bust, but Sunday I should be able to knock out the rest of the actual work and do a fair bit of testing.

As of right now, we're on schedule for a release late Monday. Next week will certainly see a return to work on How the Breast Was Won, FINALL...

8/12 Roadmap

As I had feared, last week was still a bit bumpy getting back into the grind. What's more, I got surprised by yet another unexpected visit! I love having so many great friends and family wanting to spend time with me, but I need to get shit done!

Anyway, I've already gotten a lot of the math tweaking done, and I've finished 4 of the 10! endings to Grow Your Own Nymph.

I'm looking at another busy week of real life this week, as my day job has been recently upended and I've still go...

8/5 Roadmap

I'm back! Well, somewhat...

Turns out that a week and a half of straight family visits and drama can really beat the crap out of you. I'll be taking a few days to readjust to civilian life, so to speak, so I'm not sure exactly how productive I'll be in the long run, but it'll be WAY more than the last two weeks, for sure.

Grow Your Own Nymph is just waiting on prose for the endings (of which I had to add two, I think, due to logistics). Maybe a tiny bit of math tweaking will st...

7/25 Update

Yet more obligations got thrown my way, and try as I might, I simply couldn't finish the new mini before the visits began.

I apologize that this one is getting pushed back.

I'll be back with more info after next week.

Thank you all for your support. I will be back to normal operation in no time.

7/22 Roadmap

More visits. More real life distractions. More more more... It's already been an insanely busy month for me, and these next few weeks will be the worst of it. Luckily, it's all good things happening, but it means that I have very little free time coming up, on top of the little I've had for the past week or more. It's just that time of year, apparently.

That said, I've been able to sneak some time here and there to work on Grow Your Own Nymph. The back end of the project is almost total...

What to add to the shop?

I'm still plucking away at work on the next minigame in between the busy nightmare of these few weeks. It's good to be working on something so modest in scope during all of this, as I know How the Breast Was Won would suffer as I work with its myriad subsystems and try to add onto it with no good multi-hour sessions to really dig in.

To that end, I've got to populate the in-game shop with some fun items. You'll already be able to get things like fertilizer for your garden nymph to help ...

7/15 Roadmap

With How the Breast Was Won Version 0.1.0 released, I'm looking to the next few weeks. My schedule, as mentioned previously, is about to get pretty hectic, and my time to work on development will be sporadic. I do plan to take a few days in the coming week to finish a project I started over the weekend, which is the next Near N. Far mini. The name of this new mini is Grow Your Own Nymph!

This mini will be a small game in which you care for your very own garden nymph, helping her grow in...

How the Breast Was Won Version 0.1.0 Release!

Here we are! The initial version of How the Breast Was Won is ready to go! I've spent the past several days chasing down some (usually dumb) bugs and errors and typos. I'm SURE I've missed some. I always do. If you find anything that seems off, please don't hesitate to let me know. There are a lot more subsystems that I'm working with this time around, so there's plenty more that can get broken. Hop...

7/10 Tease

No teaser for How the Breast Was Won today, sadly. Debugging is going well, and we're getting REALLY close to a release. Likely tomorrow evening at the latest.

Instead, I wanted to offer up a tease for what I'll be working on next week. I have decided that I will take a quick break from this current project and let some things roll around in my head a bit. Instead, I'll be putting out the next Near N. Far Mini Game. I plan to give myself about 9 days to build another small game from scr...

7/8 Roadmap

Last year, in June, I released what I was calling the "demo" of Enter the Expansion Mansion. I had been unable to work on the game for nearly a year, due to health problems and personal commitments. Since then, I've put out the full game, two scenarios of a strange follow-up project, a minigame, the first chapter of a story idea I had been floating, and an April fools project. It's been a crazy year, for sure.

I say all of this, as I feel we are about to cross another major milestone: t...

7/3 Update

Quick update to say that there won't be a teaser post this week. I'm hammering away at these last few loose ends so I can hopefully get it all buttoned up for release next week.

7/1 Roadmap

Had some real life crises that crept in toward the last part of the week that slowed my progress more than I would've liked, but I made up the majority of the lost ground over the weekend. I've got all the prose for the first day of the game complete. I've also got a lot of the "preproduction" research and thinking done for how the day transition coding will work, and that has been started.

 This week is the big one. My plan is to push through the last few things that I want to com...

6/26 Tease

I mentioned on Monday that today's tease would involve a bit of nitty gritty on how the Days system will work.

I've already integrated said system into the save system. When you save a file, the Day of your playthrough will be part of the save file name, along with your character name and background.

As for how the Days will impact gameplay, you will begin each day at the place where you went to sleep. Stayed the night at the boarding house? You wake up there. Slept elsewhere? You...

6/24 Roadmap

Last week was pretty average. I got the things I wanted to do done, but a lot of real life obligations and some light illness meant I didn't get anything extra accomplished. I'm not thrilled at that, as I was hoping to really push ahead, but oh well...

This week is going to involve a lot of prose writing as I complete the current batch of stat test passages and move on to the end of what I consider the "prologue," which is Day 1 in the game terms. This week is hopefully going to see the...

6/19 Teaser

Enter the Expansion Mansion had a whopping 6 NPCs wandering the mansion (well, standing stationary in the mansion). Admittedly, only 3 of those were "true" NPCs with major interactions. The rest were mostly present for story moments.

At this time, I don't know how many NPCs will populate How the Breast Was Won, but I currently expect the game to include around 10-12 NPCs or more, all of which will be fully available for interaction at various times.

Furthermore, while I went th...

6/17 Roadmap

I stayed incredibly busy with game development last week during my available time. Unfortunately, that didn't translate into completion of my checklist, but for good reason.

I got the necessary changes made to the stats, the first few NPC stat blocks added in, the first stat test outcomes finished, and half of the "arrival" scene completed. I was unable to finish the rest of the arrival scene and add in the first primary NPC encounter.

The reason for all of this is that I spontane...

6/12 Tease

Last week, I teased two of the four character backgrounds available in How the Breast Was Won. I also worked in a reveal of two of the four stats: Wits (now replaced with Stealth) and Marksmanship.

You may have also noticed I let slip that you'll have a Seduction stat in one of the recent polls (oopsie...).

The remaining two backgrounds are the Sister and the Prospector.

If you decide to be a Sister, your character is heading to Bountiful Hills in search of your lost ...

Stat Test Preference

As I go about incorporating stat tests into How the Breast Was Won, I wanted to reach out and ask about everyone's preferences.

In an example situation, let's say that you are facing an armed bandit and you have a couple of options. You could attempt to flirt with the bandit and get them to stand down. You could run away. Or you could try to draw and shoot them down.

Your options might looks something like this:

Flirt with the bandit.

Try to get away.

Shoot at th...

6/10 Roadmap

Work has been going very well on How the Breast Was Won. I accomplished everything I planned last week, PLUS, I managed to hash out the math and code needed to implement a stat testing system (think skill checks from D&D). I can now easily write passages that give you an option that relies on a skill, then effectively rolls a die to determine whether you were successful and gives the appropriate outcome. I'm very excited by how this system is turning out. It will give some real meaning to...

Looking for Characters and Names

As I begin to get into the meat of How the Breast Was Won, I'm going to start needing some characters. My plan is to include a whole host of characters that play on the classic Spaghetti Western tropes. I've already planned out several of these, including:

The Cabaret Dancer

The Outlaw Gang

The Sheriff

The Bartender

The Rancher

The Indian Chief

The Priest

The Madam

The Gambler

The Town Drunk

The thing is, I need a pool ...

Game Update Preference?

Hey there!

As I'm now fully immersed in development of How the Breast Was Won, I wanted to reach out and ask you guys how you prefer your content to be distributed. Specifically, whether you prefer frequent, incremental updates or more sporadic, heftier updates. For reference, I consider what I did on BEAI and Enter the Expansion Mansion to be "sporadic, hefty" updates. More frequent updates would be something like once a month, maybe more often, and would include just whatever content ...

6/5 Tease

Last week, I told you about the town of Bountiful Hills and how you would be creating a character to explore this odd settlement in How the Breast Was Won. This week, I'd like to tease two of the four possible character backgrounds.

But first, what is the point of the backgrounds?

After you name your character, you'll need to choose a background. This background will determine your character's reasons for coming to Bountiful Hills, as well as provide a few extra benefits. Namely, ...

6/3 Roadmap

Last week ended up being quite the busy week for ol' Near N. Far. I managed to get everything on my checklist done for How the Breast Was Won, and that's all going wonderfully. Seriously, I'm super excited about how that's shaping up!

I also finally had my SubscribeStar page approved, so I'll be mirroring posts between the two sites moving forward. I expect a full shift will be forced at some time in the future, but we'll see how that goes. For some reason, linking from this site is bro...

Backup Plan

Hey there, everyone!

I'm in the process of getting everything set up over at SubscribeStar as a secondary place for my supporters. This place is starting to get awfully ban-happy over adult content and it looks like the new place is a better option for now.

I still plan to post the same content on both for the next while, but I do think that I'll eventually be moving there fully by the end of the year (maybe sooner depending on how things shape up here).

I know it sucks t...

BEAI Version 1.1.1 release!

Hey everyone! This is a super quick post to provide a download link for version 1.1.1 of BEAI. There was a bug that slipped past testing that has now been corrected, so hopefully we're all good. It was one that totally broke the scenario if you picked certain options, and I'm unsure how it got missed, but all fixed now!

Link: ht...

5/29 Tease

It is around the turn of the century. The American West is just now starting to settle down and become a tiny bit less wild. That said, there's still plenty going on out there.

Rumors abound about a little failed mining town by the name of Bountiful Hills. Nobody who talks about it seems to have ever been there, but it seems everyone knows someone who knows someone who went there once. Many believe it to be an urban legend.

The stories about Bountiful Hills are difficult to believ...

5/27 Roadmap

Hello patrons!

It's a new week and a new project officially begins!

This week will consist mostly of me doing some serious planning for the game and some reading/research to ensure I'm getting the setting correct. While How the Breast Was Won will draw heavy inspiration from spaghetti westerns and pop culture, I want to keep it grounded. My personal knowledge of the old west is pretty surface level, so I need to dig in before I get started.

I also want to be up...

Update: State of the Me Address

I've been wanting to make this post for a few days, but I wanted to put my energy into finishing up BEAI's update first.

I want to start by saying that everything is, overall, fine. I'm not burning out or stepping away or anything. I just feel the need to give a good update on what's going on and where the projects are going from here and (more importantly) the why of it all.

I've had a very, very busy May, which is pretty normal. I have had limited free time to work on the games....