uncleartie

April Progress Report

I figure I'd get this out quickly this morning before I end up being several days late with it. On Friday, I tested positive for Covid so I guess it's my turn to do the dance with Corona-chan. It's been...fun...

These monthly post will be coming to an end soon anyhow. With the game's production ramping up, I'm posting all the news and previews for art whenever I get them so a once a month post isn't going to contain anything useful. I'll save public posts for more significant news.

Meanwhile, the $5-$10 crowd has started to get a pretty good set of images as we've completed 4 backgrounds and have the basic layout for 4 of the characters and the possible clothing and armour designs. So don't be afraid to sign up for one of the tiers and get a look at those previews, it will go a long way to helping fund the start of the game here.

My end is the only one lacking haha Work has been rough and I honestly can't remember the last day I sat down and actually wrote anything for the story. Once the rush passes I'll get going again. The summer should be really productive at least.

That's pretty much it or at least all I can remember right now. Take it easy and enjoy that spring.

Patreon and Server Update

I've begun switching everything over to the system that will be used for the new game. I'm a little behind in this because work has been a pain this month so bear with me. I'll be posting art previews for the $5 and $10 tiers in a similar manner to the last game.

Update Schedule and Patreon's Role in the New Game

I said back in my February update that I would be working on a schedule on how I want to upload the game and how patreon should fit into all of this.

My plan is to release a couple of builds of the game as public demos and then release individual "chapters" as patreon exclusive until the game is complete. Afterwards, I will sell to the game to the public ($10-$15 probably depending on the final budget) with the patreon supporters getting a free copy of the final game.

The strategy is an obvious one as it will be used to help pay for the art in the game.  As stated before, the game is much larger so careful planning and pacing is important. The first update of this game will have 12 backgrounds and 12 characters. The second will add another 8 backgrounds and 8 characters. And there will still be more after that.

In comparison: My Catgirl Maid had 22 backgrounds and 4 characters throughout the entire game.

Update 1 will focus on the story intro and a couple of other smaller chapters to test out the "gameplay" for this VN of moving between cities and getting to choose what chapter you want to read next. 

This will serve as a test to see how the system works and if we need to make an changes to the format for general user-friendly purposes or just to make it feel more polished.

Update 2 will be the basis for the Official Demo. It'll be missing a few features (like music) but will have enough content to it to see how it will branch into different subplots and introduce all the main cast. 

As further polish (gui, music, etc) get done, the update will be updated until it fully achieves "Official Demo" status but will serve as the final public release until completion.

After this, I will be hosting polls for patreons with a list of potential chapters and then patreons can vote on the next chapter.

With the first two public release, I should have the majority of the art together and be able to put out stuff faster.

With any luck, we can go through the process of Vote->Write->Release all within a month or less.

Voting will be open to each tier and the releases of the chapters will follow the system from My Catgirl Maid. $10 tier first, $5 tier second and $1 last.

Art will be similar with the $5 and $10 tiers getting concept art for characters and backgrounds and the $1 and $5 tiers getting the teaser screenshots as they wait for their release.

To make the patreon chapter releasing and polls fair, I will be switching patreon to charge upfront to prevent people signing up and dropping out in the same day to get the privileges.

I hope all this makes sense. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

(The Real) Update on the Art Situation

With April Fool's Day done, I can share the actual news concerning art.

Finding artists has been going really well. Two that worked on My Catgirl Maid have returned to work on the new project and I have a third helping with the work load on backgrounds. I'm just scouting for one more to help with sprites and everything should be moving along well.

So, here's the current credits list for Open Road:

Backgrounds:

Tanuma-san (Backgrounds for My Catgirl Maid)

Foxeleos

Sprites:

Toxicguest@DA (Some CGs for My Catgirl Maid and Extra Fluffy Edition)

Editor:

Margo Sinclaire (Editor for My Catgirl Maid and The Rest of Our Lives)

The Rest:

Ya boi, Big Bad Uncie A

Background Art and Tony's Design

Now, I'll admit that these are a bit rough but I think after I use the "Fill Tool" in Paint, it should really bring it together. I'll keep all the tags on what stuff is so there isn't any confusion though. I kind of like the hovering words tbh.

Update on the Art Situation

Some bad news here. Unfortunately, the artists I had lined up said they were too busy so I'm back to square one again. I'll keep looking because there has to be someone out there.

In the meantime, it looks like I'll have to do the first round of art just so we can get this project moving forward again.

Now, I know you're excited to see my triumphant return to art after the masterful performance in The Rest of Our Lives and I have good news there... Thanks to some "performance enhancing drugs" I have been up all night working on the first wave of backgrounds and a sample design for the main character, Tony.

I will be posting them after this so keep those eyes peeled!

Original Chapter 1 Release

In my "A Look Back" for "My Catgirl Maid" I had talked about the release of the first chapter as a bit of a Hail Mary pass for me and that it was pretty bare bones to see what type of reaction it would get. I also said it was lost in time.

Apparently not! Haha

Thanks to Bridget for finding this copy buried on her computer while she was cleaning up.

This is it. This is the original first release of "My Catgirl Maid Thinks She Runs the Place" that appear on Newgrounds and F95Zone back in March 2020.

Features:

Original GUI, soundtrack, sprites, title screen, spelling mistakes.

The story doing it's best to not mention the MC's gender but there still being a couple of "they" in there that pissed some people off.

No CG artwork.

AND

A messed up sprite that was off centre so if you speed through the dialogue Cynthia will bob back and forth.

If you want the laugh or the trip down memory lane, give it a shot. It's a good example of how messy projects and ideas can start and how far they come before you can say "it's complete".

The only copy is the PC one so don't try to mobile this. I'll just laugh at you.

Take care!

Progress Report - March

I hope everyone's March went well.

Over-planning was successful. The game's story is really starting to take shape in my head and I have a few lists going of what background and sprite work I will need to get done.

It's safe to say that with art being the main focus that any news regarding music will be put off for awhile. It's also safe to bet that music won't be in the first few updates. I really don't want to do another royalty free music game so I'm delaying the decision for now. 

You're just going to have to sing all the dialogue and make the game feel like a musical for now haha

I've begun hunting for artists, just waiting to hear back from a couple to see if they will be on board and then we can get started. Unsurprisingly, finding someone who can draw historical garb AND cat ears and tail is pretty hard. Who knew such a combo was so niche haha

I've started writing in between all the other stuff. I had a fantastic debate with myself about which perspective to write the story in. 

In short, it was a 2nd person perspective about whether to use 1st or 3rd person perspective for the story. Good fun. 3rd perspective won because it will feels more versatile in the joke telling and story direction. Think Cynthia's sections in My Catgirl Maid.

I'm hoping to hear back from the artists today so I should have some news shortly on that. In the meantime, I'll just be continuing to get a feel for these new characters.

Thank you for reading. See you in the next post.

My Catgirl Maid - A Look Back - Part 3

Part 3: The Quest for Chemistry

This is Part 3 in the series. If you’re reading this first, you will want to go back and find Part 1. I’m releasing them all at the same time so they should all be close together.

***

After the production of “My Catgirl Maid” and finally getting Chapter 12 out, I was feeling considerably burnt out and I was in need of a break. I thought about delaying the DLC a bit to take a break but knew if I did that, then I probably wouldn’t have come back to it. So, I took a week where I focused more on brainstorming than actual planning and it helped a little.

There was a huge hurdle with the DLC that took some time to figure out but I’m glad it worked out in the end.

Can you guess what it was?

If you guessed that I had designed all the side characters to have 0 romantic chemistry with the MC but now needed to write a romance story with them. Then you guessed correctly! Haha

Kind of hard to build a romance story around 0 chemistry but some people find success with it so it’s not impossible. Not really what I wanted to do though so it was a lot of back and forthing with myself about how I wanted to handle each character.

Luckily, Maddie was a good starting point as, of the 3, she had the most time with the MC and I had just finished their “buddy cop” adventure through Katulinia in the last couple of chapters.

Still, what to build off of? Their relationship in the main story is built off a mutual love for Cynthia, mutual dislike for their workplace and a playful sense of hostility between them. I really had to dig into Maddie and think about how she would act if the MC wasn’t “the enemy” at the beginning because Cynthia was living with him.

In the end, I went back to thinking about people like cats and building a relationship from there. It worked in the main story after all haha

Maddie is the stray alley cat in the neighbourhood you happen to befriend one day. Puts up the hard front to survive in the world but just a big old softy when she falls for you.

From there it was writing their usual banter just with more of a physical presence to things as she’s not afraid to invade people’s personal space. Cynthia can attest to that haha It didn’t take long to find the chemistry for them that worked and it was a fun chapter to write.

Miyu, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. I seriously had no idea what to do with this chick and it took until about 2/3 of the way through her chapter before it stopped feeling awkward to have the two of them talk to each other.

The problem with Miyu is that she had less interaction with the MC than Angelica had, if you can believe it. Aside from the beach scene where they pretend to be announcers for the sand castle game, they don’t really say much to each other. All of the scenes that make Miyu a character and have all the chemistry are with Cynthia.

I had actually thought of doing her chapter as if she was the one to find Cynthia instead of the MC. To me, it made the most sense as they already had the established chemistry from the main story and they walk a very similar road in life. They could easily help each other with their problems and resolve things together, growing their bond very naturally. Their chapter would just be the main story but Miyu as the MC.

I had to scrap that idea quickly because I was liking it way too much and it wasn’t the reason people would get the DLC. People like Miyu and would want to be with her so the MC was needed as the Player Avatar. Just had to figure out a way to get them to work.

Like I said, it was a struggle. Shrank the MC’s purpose and personality in the chapter as small as possible and just focused on Miyu, telling more of her backstory that wouldn’t have come out in the main story. I was nervous about it but Margo gave it the seal of approval in the editing phase so it did something right haha

After that, I had saved Angelica for last simply because she was the one I was looking forward to writing the most.

I had already been working on some elements to her story before finishing Chapter 12. I already knew the angle I would take because while working on the final 2 chapters, I knew there was going to be some stuff I couldn’t show for her so I just took notes and used the DLC to build off of it.

Plus, I’ve been wanting to do a romance story based on codependency for a little while now, it just didn’t come up in the previous projects I was working on.

Most people would want to go full Yandere with the idea but I wanted to do something a little more subtle and grounded. Good thing I had a character who no one cared about just sitting off to the side, right? Perfect chance to experiment.

It worked out beautifully and the entire DLC did end up helping the project feel fully complete to me. I had said and done everything I wanted to with the characters and the story.

I know people wanted it longer but slice of life stories are tough to gauge their length. At any point and time, without warning, they can feel like they are too bloated and lacking direction.

The story ended right where it needed to.

And with that, my look back at “My Catgirl Maid Thinks She Runs the Place” comes to a close.

As always, thank you very much for supporting me. If you have questions, please ask, I’m always around somewhere.

See you in the next project.

My Catgirl Maid - A Look Back - Part 2

Part 2: Building a Game After You’ve Released the First Chapter

This is Part 2 in the series. If you’re reading this first, you will want to go back and find Part 1. I’m releasing them all at the same time so they should all be close together.

***

Chapter 1 released on March 6th, 2020 on Newgrounds to…alright reception. Newgrounds is still Newgrounds at the end of the day so you can’t expect much from them. A few days later, thanks to Bridget, I got “My Catgirl Maid” released on F95Zone (March 10th) and saw some more encouraging results.

The complaints were the usual you would expect for slapping out a game with the minimum art assets needed to test a reaction. The funniest complaints were about 1 of the royalty free songs I had chosen.

Apparently, the song was Hitler incarnate or something according to these people so I just swapped it out. Kevin MacLeod has a 1000 songs, what’s swapping one out for another after all?

It’s a shame I don’t still have a copy of the song or its name anywhere as it would be a pretty funny little trivia thing at this point. There might be a single copy of the original Chapter 1 release out there somewhere so maybe we’ll see it surface one day.

Despite that, it was a promising release and I had quickly fallen in love with writing for Cynthia so I was willing to continue and start work on Chapter 2. First step though… catch up on art by actually adding some CG artwork to Chapter 1.

Of course, as soon as all this was decided, the Covid lockdowns began so not only was I laid off but so was everyone else. So planning the budget while trying to figure out if people would be willing to sign up for patreon around this time was a bit of a challenge.

I ultimately decided to take it one month at a time and just focus on what art I could get and build around that.

With the art for Chapters 1 and 2 looking to take some time, it gave me the chance to actually build upon the bare bones world I had put into the game. I left myself some little ideas to build off if needed but it was time to actually start figuring this stuff out.

Who was Cynthia going to be? What other characters were going to appear? What would their roles be? How many locations was this going to have in total?

Who the fuck knew? Haha

Chapter 2 and 3 were released at a steady rate and I had some answers but not all of them as we headed in Chapter 4 needing to do 2 important things: Introduce a new character and add the first sexy time scene.

The lack of sexy times was starting to become a gripe amongst the comment sections and I was still a little unsure when I wanted to add the first scene. There were a couple reasons for my hesitation. The first simply being that their relationship hadn’t progressed to the point where it wouldn’t feel forced.

Chapter 4 felt way too soon but we had to start moving forward a little bit. Adult content is adult content so it’s not like the relationships are supposed to be 100% realistic after all.

We were going to have to put it in eventually if we were hoping to try and keep people interested as the game started to enter the mid chapters so… now or never, am I right? haha

Oh! Also, funny side note. One person on Newgrounds made me laugh so hard about this. They were rating and commenting each chapter, giving it 5 stars and talking about how much they loved the story and then when they reached Chapter 4, it was a 0 star review and them freaking out because the characters didn’t kiss first. Then that was it. Their name didn’t pop up in my news feed anymore haha Everyone fews adult content differently I guess.

The second reason for the delay to any sexy content was answering the question on what gender the MC was.

I had walked into this project with the idea of the MC being female but left it open as I thought it would be fun to have the game work for both genders. It’d be a nice way to make getting the other endings a little more interesting because you could play it male and get a good ending then play it female, unlock a bunch of new CG artwork and get a different ending. It felt a little more rewarding to go through multiple playthroughs like that.

For financial and time reasons, we couldn’t do both genders at the same time so I looked through the comment sections and saw that most people were playing male MCs anyhow so we went with that to start with.

The gender debate would continue until before Chapter 8 was released, I think. It was quickly becoming obvious at that point that the game wasn’t going to be a big enough patreon hit to get the funding to do everything I had planned so I posted a poll to determine the future of that idea and it was overwhelmly in favour of dropping the female MC idea.

I took the content I had written for the female MC and made a post of it on patreon and just continued forward with it being a male MC only game.

Looking back at that Pre-Chapter 8 poll, I kind of have to chuckle about it. It was the poll that pretty much determined everything about the game and the reason it looks like what it is today. And it was decided by 10 people haha

“My Catgirl Maid" and by extension all my work, has always been a really small production. I think our top patron count during 2020 was like 25-30 people. The server was about 30-40 people and mainly just me posting my thoughts on the anime I was watching during my A-Z challenge.

We really didn’t see any major growth until after Chapter 9 or 10. Which was December 2020 - January 2021. Until then, it was a pretty small group of people.

So when I posted the poll to ask how the money should be distributed amongst the remaining features. It was the “My Catgirl Maid” version of The Council of Nicaea haha Just a bunch of bearded dudes trying to determine if the MC should be a girl or if we should do a bonus DLC instead haha

It worked though. Custom soundtrack and female MC were out. Bonus DLC, the fancy chapter screens and additional CG artwork like the Purito were in.

We had decided on what we wanted to have happen, we started to execute the plan and then the game randomly started getting more notice and a bunch of new people showed up saying they wanted it longer or more routes haha All I could do was laugh at that point. Everyone missed the bus by like 1-2 months on all that haha

It worked out that the game was going to end soon anyhow as the start of 2021 was a little turbulent. I had just started working again (part-time but it was something) so I could get the art assets for the new backgrounds together quicker but then we started to have delays with the CG artwork in Chapter 10.

It didn’t get any better by the final chapter as more delays resulted in the artist ghosting me after doing half the assignment and needing to be replaced.

In January, I had hired another artist to do some of the extra CG artwork so when it was needed to do a rush order to get Chapter 12 out, it was them that I called.

It wasn’t the smooth ending to things that I wanted to do but looking back, “smoothness” wasn’t in the games vocabulary haha

And that was the production of “My Catgirl Maid Thinks She Runs the Place”.

Considering the origin story for the game in Part 1, when the game was complete, I was quite happy with how it came out and where I stood in terms of my writing abilities. I didn’t “win” in adult content but I didn’t “lose” either. I could walk away happy knowing I just didn’t give up and I made a few people laugh.

Who knows how the next project will go and if it finds an audience or not but if the name “Uncle Artie” has proven anything to me, it’s to not count the old man out.

Maybe there’s a little more magic left in the tank.

***

I couldn’t touch on everything here as I realised after my first draft that it was way too long for a simple little blog post like this.

If you want to hear more stories or simply you were hoping to hear some behind the scenes stories on events like the Market Challenge or the origins of the beach events, you can find me in the server or just message me here.

It’s hard to condense a year’s worth of events into a single blog post and I do tend to ramble on if I’m not careful so it’s best that I don’t subject people to that unwillingly haha

Part 3 will be about the short production of the DLC and it was much more relaxed to produce so enjoy that.

My Catgirl Maid - A Look Back - Part 1

Part 1 - Pre-Production to the First Release

To celebrate the one year anniversary of the completion of “My Catgirl Maid Thinks She Runs the Place”, I am returning to my “A Look Back” series to talk about the behind the scenes moments that went into the production of the story.

If you haven’t read the last “A Look Back” I did, or are just completely new to the patreon and didn’t know it was a thing, the series is a good chance to have some raw, introspection of the story and can be a little brutally honest about my thoughts and events.

If you are the type that thinks a VTuber revealing their face is “breaking your immersion”, you may want to not read any further as you are just going to have a bad time.

***

The story of My Catgirl Maid’s beginning isn’t a happy one. If you’ve read the “A Look Back” for “The Rest of Our Lives” you know things weren’t going well for me.

TL;DR My idea I was working on with the whole “Uncle Artie Virtual Studio” thing tanked and I was back to square one trying to figure out if I wanted to continue to make games or not.

In the end, it was more that I was just done with trying to be a project lead, I started looking for freelance jobs again. It was definitely the right move as I ended up on a project that really helped change my direction on how I approach writing.

The project is called “Messy Academy”. It’s a dating sim/VN for people in the ABDL (Adult Baby Diaper Lovers) community. I was originally going to join on as a co-writer and help out with some of the “free time” events where you had brief encounters with the girls but ended up becoming the main writer as we slowly worked on building the characters and world up..

Working with Bridget (the Project Lead) was amazing as it had been a long time since I had sat down and brainstormed with someone like this. Usually with freelance jobs, you’re lucky if anyone wants to actually work on the project or not. It was nice to work with someone who was so involved and could offer feedback on ideas.

Despite knowing nothing about the fetish, I went forward trying to make it work as we spent some time trying to figure out how to make this little world of hers work. The first version of the game was a little rough, but we got some chapters out there, though the initial reception wasn’t what we were hoping for.

It became quickly obvious that we needed to go into another direction with the project as nothing seemed to be landing with the crowd. Also, it was fairly obvious that my lack of knowledge about the fetish wasn’t sitting well with the fans of that fetish.

So as quickly as I had found the project, I was stepping away from it. Even though it wasn’t, it felt like another failure because of my writing abilities.

A little overdramatic, yes, but considering the path that led up to that… You can forgive me for feeling that. In 2019, I released 2 projects that were failures resulting in me being “out of a job” so to speak in August. In September I found a new project but by the end of December, I’m stepping away from that project and starting 2020 with no direction, no project ideas, and an identity crisis. Where would your head be after all that?

Now, me stepping away from the main writer of “Messy Academy” was the right call for everyone involved. Bridget took over the main writing position again and the project has found steadily growing support for years. She asked me to stay on as an editor/mentor and that was a great chance to slowly rebuild my confidence again while I worked with her behind the scenes.

It was nothing but a win…in hindsight. That first January though… That was rough. What was I going to do next? Hell, what could I do next?

I had ultimately decided that it was time to step away from adult content and the Uncle Artie name. It was just another pen name that needed to be burned and I could think of another one easily enough.

I had some new ideas, but I just couldn’t figure out what genre to focus on next. However, it didn’t matter because I kept drifting back to my previous failures. I’m a stubborn old bastard and couldn’t shake this feeling that I had “lost” in the world of adult content.

I had spent a total of 4 years in the field and all I could show for it was a string of failed freelance adventures and 2 ill received games. I didn’t want to go out like that so I told myself I’d do 1 more attempt. Something small and simple so that if it didn’t work out, I wouldn’t be at a loss for money and I could leave satisfied knowing I’ve tried everything.

I developed the most quick and generic premise I could think of using the ideas of “Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid” and “The Helpful Fox Senko-san” and kept funding to an absolute minimum. 1 character, 4 backgrounds, simple gui and royalty free music.

If it failed, it failed. It wouldn’t have mattered at that point. I was just being spiteful. You want pointless choices? Fine. You want professional looking art? Fine. You want naked people for no reason in the first 30 seconds? Fine.

It was: “Uncle Artie: Unchained”.

Hell, I had only decided to keep the “Uncle Artie” name because I didn’t see a point in coming up with a new one for this game.

It was a throwaway name for a throwaway game.

So, of course people would end up liking it.

Sweet lady irony wouldn’t have it any other way.

***

Continues in Part 2 with the story of its production.

New Project Announcement

This will be a much bigger project than the last and will serve as game #2 in what will, hopefully, be a long running series spanning the history of the kingdom of Katulinia. I had posted a little about it in another post but this will be the big one with all the info.

It will be called "It's All Fun and Games On The Open Road" or "Open Road" for short. It will be a VN game with some adventure game elements too it, but mostly just be following the stories of the cast.

Premise 

On his 18th birthday, Tony has signed up with a caravan to begin his life travelling the roads of Katulinia.

Shortly after leaving his small town, the caravan comes under attack by a large bandit force. Tony is forced to defend the wagons while the caravan leader tries to rally his guards. 

When the dust settles, Tony, Edmund, a grizzled mercenary, and Eleanor, a knight who had stumble by the fight, are the only survivors. They limp into Katulinia with the remaining supplies and part ways.

Unsure what to do next, Tony tries to continue the caravan company but the massive debt the previous owner left means that Tony is out of luck. That is until Eleanor returns and agrees to pay off the debt in return for becoming a partner in the caravan.

With no other options, Tony agrees but the questions remain: why is this knight interested in Tony? Will the two inexperienced owners be able to survive the business world? Hell, can they survive making it to the next town in this tough world?

Meh. We'll see. It's all fun and games on the open road after all. Anything can happen.

Setting

175 years before the events of "My Catgirl Maid Thinks She Runs the Place" in the Kingdom of Katulinia (Cynthia's home).

Genres

Comedy, Adventure, Action, Historical Fantasy, Maybe a little Drama

Gameplay

As you can expect from a visual novel, reading is the name of the game. It's going to be broken down into chapters but I'm going to set it up so you can choose which chapter you want to read next as you explore all the various sub plots and character arcs as the main story unfolds.

The order of events and which events you follow will be up to you. You'll also be able to choose to recruit additional people into the caravan or not though you can expect to not be able to do some chapters without additional people.

So, it short: hub based, chapter selection, adventure game format. In Katulinia? Here's the chapters you can do. Want to go to another city? Select it from the list. Go to that hub. New chapters there. Want to talk to a companion? Go to the Camp Hub and hang out there.

Make sense?

Questions

Choices Matter?

I'm not going to pretend they will and neither should you. A big thing I want to do as I go further into the past with this world is focus on the hero's stories and how they shaped the history of the people. As such, my vision for the main character's require them to follow a stable, consistent path in their personality and decision making. Which isn't something you can do by assigning choices to the player. 

If there is a way to make some scenes more interesting without it affecting the main character's personality than I will explore it but you still shouldn't expect much. I'll be running multiple story lines at the same time in this game. Alternate realities on top of that will just make it too hard for me to plan and create scenes.

Romance the Companions?

No. There's not going to be much romance at all as far as I can tell. I want to focus on other things. Just call it a standard harem anime to simplify it if you want haha

Adult Content?

No. I'm still semi-retired/on break/non-commited to my future on that. Besides, this game is going to have a lot of art assets and it's going to be nice to not have 80% of my budget tied up in a couple of CG scenes. A couple extra character and backgrounds sound way nicer.

Length of Story?

Who the fuck knows? haha Long. I have a lot of ideas already and won't be worried about how long a chapter is word count wise. I'm just going to put these characters through a lot and let everyone just enjoy the ride.

I think that's it. If I'm forgetting anything I'll add it. Feel free to ask about anything if it is unclear too.

Progress Report - February

I said that the plan was to get this story on track and moving forward again and I can sit here today and say: Mission Accomplished.

At this point, I'm going to be over-planning the story a little bit because I wanted to figure out budget, update schedules and patreon's role in this. By the end of the month though, I should be commissioning art and writing chapters.

I should also have all the answers for the update schedule and patreon's role too so I'll make a post about it after my next usual monthly post.

After this post, I'll be posting the official game announcement page so you'll finally get to figure out what this whole thing will be about haha

I've also been working on doing a "A Look Back" segment for "My Catgirl Maid" and should have that posted in the next couple of days. Just need to finish the last section.

So, in short... Should get a little busier around here. I look forward to seeing your thoughts on this new project now that we can start moving forward again.

Thank you very much for your patience.

Progress Report - January

I hope the start of 2022 has been treating everyone well. Let's dive right into this because I'm sure it's going to be long. 

The experiment with RPG Maker is over. I will not be continuing to develop the game with that engine moving forward.

Simply put, I wasn't enjoying using the program and just trying to force myself to keep going. It's kind of boring to work with for me and I kept telling myself it will get better soon and trying to stay hype but no dice. I'm too much of a writer, not enough of a game developer it seems haha It sucks to lose 5 months worth of work but it will be right move in the long run.

I'll be continuing the same game idea and I've already begun reformatting the ideas into a new direction. For the sake of not taking any longer than needed by playing game engine Russian roulette, I'll be working on it in Ren'py in the VN format again.

My hope is to steer it away from it being too "booky" and linear though. A lot of what I had developed for this idea is in telling a bunch of different stories through different quests and plot lines. You know, the standard rpg shitck. I don't want to lose that. 

Ren'py is pretty solid with adventure game formats so it shouldn't be too hard to continue the game's progress into what I envisioned, just minus the player control. Which is a shame because I wanted to see if I could get a turn based pike and shoot battle system into the game. Might not fit in moving forward.

A couple positives to take away from this though is that: 1) I'll have to find some artists so there'll be custom art for the game instead of the generic RPG Maker art (I can post previews much easier. And 2) It's probably smart to return to a couple things from My Catgirl Maid to create an overall series identity better. 

Building around the VN format and some ecchi artwork/jokes will keep the series consistent feeling from game to game as oppose to me just pissing into the wind using a different engines depending on the game and pretending like I don't want to make perverted jokes for the sake of a wider audience. I should probably have learned this lesson by now from previous mistakes of my past but... Can't be afraid to try and fail sometimes.

So...yeah... That's the plan and if I can be serious for a second. I'm not too happy with how this all played out. It's not the best way to start the new year, but it's been quite frustrating for some time. 

I'm salvaging what I can so it doesn't feel like the 5 months was a total waste and at least I'm happy to be working on the story aspect of the game again. The last week has already felt a little bit better with the project than the past few months. 

So, new goal:

February is a short month so a good chance to change direction and race to get this story moving forward again. March will be the 1 year anniversary of My Catgirl Maid's release. Let's do it proud by getting the next game in the right direction.

At the end of the day, it's all we can do. I still have a story to tell and you guys are interested to see what these catgirls are up too. Let's get back to having fun with this again.

Thank you for reading and I'll keep you informed with the progress at the end of February.

Artie outski!

Game Jolt Update

I have received news this week that Game Jolt will no longer be hosting "My Catgirl Maid" on their site as they plan to move away from adult/explicit content.

They have said that if you have already purchased the dlc or downloaded the game, you can continue to access the page until the end of the year (Dec 31, 2022).

This will apply to any other adult game you got from the site so if Game Jolt was your go to for adult gaming, you might want to find a new site haha

End of 2021 Post and Goals for 2022

I figure we'll get this out before all the New Year's Eve parties start. We've made it to the end of the year and it still blows me away what we were able to accomplish.

We saw the amazing rise of support for "My Catgirl Maid" in January after Chapter 10's release and it steadily grew right up to the completion of the story in March. 

After last year, I figure we would wrap up quietly and move on to the next thing but I was pleasantly surprised and very grateful for all the support and kind words of encouragement people left in the comment sections. It really meant a lot to me.

The support continued to the release of the "Extra Fluffy Edition" DLC in July which was also pleasantly surprising to see people rally behind.

 It was a lot of fun to create this story and the DLC was an excellent challenge as I had to take characters I specifically designed with no romantic intentions and make a romance story out of it. I'm glad to see people enjoyed it so much. 

The rest of the year has been pretty quiet on my end and I'm still thankful that you guys continue to hang around and support me while I stumble through the initial stages of my next project.

My goal for 2022 is pretty simple. Get out a demo of the new project. Even if it is an early alpha and it's just a quiet release on patreon, I still want to share this little world of catgirls I've been working on and give people a chance to see what adventure I have planned next.

I'll thank you now for your patience in 2022 as I really don't want to underestimate how much work there is into getting an RPG world created, especially in comparison to a VN. I'm sorry it will be a little slow through the first couple of stages and I thank you for patience.

Patreon's status will remain the same as it is still fulfilling its purpose for these news updates. If you'd prefer a different area for me to post about updates so it will be easier to follow along, let me know. I know patreon isn't really a "check it often" site.

The discord server will be reformed this year back into a similar model as when I was updating "My Catgirl Maid". I figure that an RPG will require a little more tech support and walkthrough help though so the focus will be more heavily on that aspect. I'll post more details about the changes in the server as to not make this section too long.

Other than that, it's just trying to figure out what would be a nice looking screenshot in the game so I can share it. I'm not sure how exciting overhead shots of towns can be though haha

Take it easy tonight. I'll see you in the next year.

Progress Report - November

If you recall, back in my August report, I had mentioned that I was breaking up the game duties based on "phases".  This month, I would say I have finished Phase 1, which was the creation and population of minor settlements.

To make the progress of the game easier to follow, I'm going to create a pinned message on patreon that has all the info in one spot and I'll update it as I complete things.

Patreon only allows one pinned message at a time so the gallery will lose its place and be pushed to the bottom of the pile. You can find it by searching either "pinned" or "gallery" in the tags.

The next step is to continue doing the same thing but for the major settlements. So that should be fun and not getting repetitive at all haha I think I'm doing too much and creating too large a world for this game. Who knows. We'll see when it's all said and done.

Other than that. Usual work stuff blah blah blah. See you next month!

Progress Report - October

Happy Halloween everyone. Going to be a short one this time.

Work has been stepping up this month so it has been my main focus as I try to get all the personal life stuff straightened out. So game progress was pretty slow. 

I continue to populate the villages when I can and if I have a spare moment at work, I try to write some in-game books and make notes about the history of the areas. In terms of progress though...small potatoes for now.

I'm not sure how November will go but I can imagine probably not too different from October for the most part. I should have a better idea what my schedules will be like though so I can plan around work better.

Thanks for reading and I hope you guys have a good November. See you next month.

Progress Report - September

I hope everyone has been doing well the past month. It seemed to go by quickly for me so I hope it wasn't a drag for everyone else.

Progress has been moving at a decent pace. I'm glad to have the base maps in place so I can start populating them.

Since August, at a relaxed pace, I have complete the world map, 9 villages and a... I don't know what you'd call it really, military checkpoint maybe? Either way. A world map and 10 explorable towns. With just the bare bones interior maps like shops and such, the total map count is at 57.

A pretty good starting point as it is quite possible once all the cities are in and I start actually building areas that will be used for quests, we'll probably be well over 200 maps by the time things are all said and done.

Big fucking world of catgirls.

I've also been designing some npcs and based on the character creator for RPG Maker, everyone is looking rather generic but in a lovely way haha I'm sure it won't be surprising for people that are used to these types of games but I'm doing my best to create enough different varieties so places don't feel too samey.

I'm at 64 different types of sprites and still going but there is easily going to be hundreds and hundreds of Katulinias in the game so I can only do so much.

I'm having a lot of fun using the "cotton candy hair" approach to the characters though so I hope everyone likes pink, blue and purple haired catgirls. Certainly makes some areas brighter and more cheerful haha

Other than that, there's not much else to report. The type of game I want to make is shaping up nicely in my head but not definitive enough to make an announcement on what the next game will be. I'm still kind of hoping I can pull off the stuff I want to within the RPG Maker engine but the game isn't at the stage where I can experiment with that stuff yet. So we'll just continue to have fun with world building stuff for now.

I am far enough now that if you wanted to talk about the Katulinian world and village life and culture, you know where to find me. It'd be great to see what type of questions you guys ask because it will help determine where everyone's mindset and expectations are after My Catgirl Maid.

Thanks for reading and see you next month.

Progress Report - August

August went by in a flash. But then again, I played way too much Total War and Crusader Kings to pay attention so hopefully the month went good for everyone else too.

My goal for September is to get refocused and get back into a more productive state of mind.

I did some minor work in RPG Maker to learn a few things and discovered an important thing about map making... It's tedious af haha Though world building in a more hands-on approach then just a handful of scrap papers is a lot of fun. 

I'm just working on getting the skeleton of the world in place and trying to focus on various tasks. I've group together into phases so you can follow along better.

Phase 1: Villages. Outside maps, inside maps and then populating them with catgirls. Good place to start because they will be smaller in scope so its a little bit of everything with the potential of not losing a lot if I have to restart a town to make something specific work.

Phase 2: Cities. Phase 1 but bigger. Cities should have multiple sections to them so each city will come with it's own army of maps. This will be a good way to get a scale of things moving forward.

Phase 3: Not sure yet. There's 3 major components that all play off of each other in some way so this phase may be a bit messy. I'm talking Characters, Items and the Battle System. I'll have a better idea as I wrap up Phase 2. Might take some time to pen and paper some elements of the world first and get a pile of scrap paper lying around anyhow. Old habits die hard haha

As you can see, I've got some busy months ahead of me. I'll, of course, continue to make these posts at the end of each month so you can follow along if you wish.

Also, if you are unfamiliar or just haven't played an RPG Maker game before and you wanted a better idea of how this new game will look and feel like, let me know. I have a few free 18+ games that I tried out to get a feel for the engine that you might enjoy.

I hope everyone's September is good. Thank you and take care.

Katulinia (My Catgirl Maid Universe)

I'm not much of a sequel/prequel/using the same characters more than once kind of guy. However, I do want to build a series of games around a fantasy story universe. It's probably just going to be a little different than what people want/expect from the game.

I want the universe's focus to be on two major elements. The history of the kingdom and the family dynasties of the ruling class. So they games will be mainly going backwards as it slowly details their history and how they had reached the point of My Catgirl Maid.

The reason for this is because I'm a big history fan-girl. (Most people call themselves history nerds but they also do research whereas I play a few games, watch some youtube videos say "Neat" and that just means you're a fan girl by most definitions haha) And as such, I feel like building a story universe that explores various moments in history but through the actions of anime cat people and the weird people that shaped it.

In short, I want to use anime catgirls to explain various moments in history as we go back in time to the kingdom's founding. The whole thing should feel like Memento as it will be a story told in reverse but through multiple games.

If your brain just blue screened, I don't blame you. I can't possibly be the first person to try something like this but it is still a weird idea no matter how many times you see it.

If this idea got you excited than good news! We're going to have a crazy time.

So with all this, you can see why the move to RPG Maker is a good idea. Letting the player explore around the area and various cities in an open world setting while they do side quests will make the world way more fun and engaging. Especially when you factor in different eras of history and what that could mean for how the kingdom looks and feels throughout time.

If you're looking for more lore right now, sorry but this is all I have that's concrete. Everything is just scraps of papers and vague ideas. Nothing I'd want to share because it would probably change by the time I hit "enter" and answer the questions anyhow haha

My focus right now is on learning RPG Maker and the best way to structure tasks so everything doesn't feel overwhelming. I figured the best place to start is in map making as it is a very important skill to learn for this engine as it's literally the skeleton you hang the rest of the game off of. 

So I'll be very map focused for the next little while and not really worried about characters/lore/quests/story. Any questions will just be given a "Beats me." style answer and when I have more information concerning each topic, I'll post it in my usual monthly updates anyhow so you won't feel out of the loop but it'll style feel quiet.

I can imagine this will be a little frustrating at times and I'm sorry but it's my typical creative process. I'm very easily distracted so I tend to focus on just one thing at a time and work through it. Asking questions like "How many games will be in the series?" and "How are you going to do the battle system with different eras of history?" will just net you "I don't know" answers because I'm not in the same solar system of thought right now. It's all maps all the time right now.

For those that are a little curious though, designing maps in RPG Maker feels a little like playing a city builder game, but instead of managing taxes, people and the various city services, you're just copy and pasting houses and trees everywhere. It surprisingly takes a little bit to get used too haha

Oh, one thing I can say about main characters though is that they will all be named and have personalities. The general idea is to create memorable heroes of the era that helped shape the history. Canonical people we can point to and easily identify without it being like the Fallout Universe, "The Lone Wander", "The Vault Dweller" and stuff like that. Plus, there is a very good chance I'll be mentioning people in in-game books and then later games will be about them so it'll be weird to have them named in one game than custom named in another.

Ok. I think I successfully said a lot without saying much so we'll wrap it up for now. If the idea and direction of future games interests you, I hope you'll stick around and we'll have some fun. If the idea doesn't interest you, no worries. I hope the next game you find is more your speed and thank you for supporting me during My Catgirl Maid.

To everyone, thanks for listening to my rambling. Have a good one!

Progress Report - July

It's a little early. There's still one more day in July after this for people that are always unsure if July has 31 days or not. This one will be big as there are a lot of potential questions to answer.

First off, thank you once again to everyone for continue to stick around for the release of the Extra Fluffy Edition of My Catgirl Maid. Thanks to those that picked it up as well! I hope it was a lot of fun to read those little what if scenarios.

There's a lot to cover so I'll start with each of the topics and my answer/thoughts on it.

1) What's next?

Resting for the most part. Spring and early summer were shit health wise for me (mostly weather related) so it is going to be nice to have the rest of the summer to enjoy and not worry about being behind if the migraines set in. I'm not one to sit on my hands for too long though so I'll be doing research and plotting the next project. Just at a slower rate. Plus I'm hoping that work will pick up again in the fall and I can get back to full time again. It's been a long time and it'd be nice to get the financial situation fixed again. Of course that will change how I make projects in the future but that's just figuring out a new schedule and habits. I'm glad it'll happen between projects and not, say, while I was trying to get Ch11 and Ch12 done for My Catgirl Maid. Messy shit when that happens during a key moment.

2) Next project?

I've given it some thought and I want to focus on the world from My Catgirl Maid, Katulinia, moving forward. My plan after My Catgirl Maid was to shift away from visual novels and get into RPGs. It's going to be weird to transfer from a romcom VN to a series of RPGs within the same world but, I'm hoping the familiarities and curiosity of Katulinia would be enough to help smooth the transition. I was never very good at sticking to a single genre anyhow as, even if I remained in VNs, the next idea would probably be something out of left field and not related to anything.

3) What are you going to do in Katulinia?

That deserves its own write up as this one would become way too long if I started talking about it.

4) Would you do another visual novel?

Most likely. My whole writing career has been in paperbacks, short stories and visual novels. It'll always be how I think of stories and structure things. I definitely need a break from visual novels though as spending the last 3 years dealing with the whole "this isn't a true visual novel" bullshit has really soured the format for me. Once a step away from it for a bit, I'll be fine. VNs remain a good format if you want to do character driven romances similar to My Catgirl Maid. But it would still just be novel first with minimal choices. If I was going to make an adventure game... I would just use RPG maker or Twine or literally anything else that would make a more interesting and engaging adventure game than a Renpy VN haha Being novels is what I like about VNs so that's how I'll always create them.

5) Will you continue to make adult content?

It's complicated but I still work in the industry so, technically... yeah. I work with Messy Studios on their project and have been for 2 years now. I will continue to work there as we finish the current project. If an artist/animator wanted to partner up with me to make a game, I'd hear what they have to say and probably sign up for it. I won't be doing adult content in my own projects because it is too damn expensive to make haha Trying to get the scenes to be the way I want is too expensive and I have to cut corners all the time and the content shrinks to the point it is a shadow of what it could be. In short, yes with other people taking the risk. No if I have to front the bill haha

6) The status of Patreon moving forward?

It's still my main social media area but yeah, the tiers are useless now. If you want to drop down to the lowest tier or just drop and follow the page. Go for it. I plan on selling games in the future as Patreon is more for making money off of free adult games anyhow. Not too many SFW games are given away for free with patreon support. I'll still use this as my main social media account because, let's be real, do you think Twitter's 140 character limit can handle me? haha If push comes to shove, I'll get a blogger.com account and just use twitter for links to my updates there. Oh, those that do remain a patreon, I'll still post some early maps and designs from the new project as I go so I hope those are enjoyable.

7) Changes to Discord?

Nah. That place will remain mostly the same. Probably just some channels being deleted as the patreon tier system falls out of place but that's it.

8) The status of The Rest of Our Lives

I will be removing that game moving forward. My plan is to focus on Katulinian stuff and Rest of Our Lives has now served its purpose: "I can complete games, even if they aren't well liked, so don't worry if you plan of supporting/following My Catgirl Maid. I won't abandon a project." haha With My Catgirl Maid being the better example moving forward, Rest of Our Lives can now retire. I have no set date on when it's being removed (Steam will probably take awhile to get rid of it anyhow) so don't worry if you still want a copy.

Hmm. I think this was all the major topics. I'm probably missing something though so let me know. Though, like I said in number 3, what I'm doing with the story universe will be in another write up so any questions about that will be answered there.

Thanks again for making it to the end of these. I'll get that Katulinia write up done eventually as I'm sure more than a few of you are curious as to what the shit will be happening there haha

Take care and I hope you get to enjoy some of the summer too.

Extra Fluffy Edition Release

That's right. Surprise! I've released the bonus stories today. It's confirmed on itch.io and gamejolt but Steam continues to baffle me. Might just need a minute for it to catch up.

Either way, it's still $5 like I planned and here's the links:

itch: https://uncleartie.itch.io/my-catgirl-maid-extra-fluffy-edition
gamejolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/mycatgirlmaid/545092

Thank you very much for supporting the game all the way through development. It is officially finished now. When I do my end of the month update, I'll go more into what happens next.

Until then, have fun with the new stories!

Check Your Inboxes

"My Catgirl Maid Thinks She Runs the Place - Extra Fluffy Edition" has been sent your inbox so check that shit.

Angelica Bonus #7

Pretty bold of him to be playing visual novels at work like that.

Angelica Bonus #6

Could apply to creative writing too...

Angelica Bonus #5

4 stories later and he's still trying to figure out how to be an eroge protagonist...

Angelica Bonus #4

Angelica: 1
Produce Grannies: 0

Angelica Bonus #3

You tell her, Sir Pork of Fork!

Angelica Bonus #2

Nothing like a long, boring day at home, right?