As always, the closer we get to release, the more frequent the updates become.
This is just a brief description of where we are as of tonight April 23.
Progress this week:
Remaining:...
2023-04-24 05:16:43 +0000 UTC View Post
And here we go!
While Kent is still burning the midnight oil to fill in the last bits of art, the script is complete and the chapter is playable front to back.
With that milestone achieved, the first playable binary has been compiled and is out to proofreaders to look for errors in the narration and dialogue.
This brings us to "what's left to do."
With Spring, uh...Springing, we're tearing into the final stretch here with our development cycle.
This week I will be working on feature integration, achievements, and refining dialogue while Kent goes ham on the remaining art.
Over half of the animations are complete, and so far are turning out to be the best yet.
The three scenes with remaining art are are roughly the same size, ...
2023-03-29 21:46:37 +0000 UTC View PostAll,
This is just a quick housekeeping update: I wanted to share a bit about what to expect for content delivery when Chapter 7 goes live.
As Chasing Sunsets has met and exceeded the Mega 5GB download limit for free accounts, and pirate sites have grown increasingly unscrupulous about bandwidth theft, we've been forced to reevaluate options for content distribution that will prioritize your launch day access.
We've identified an S3 cloud host that should offer rapid do...
2023-03-28 16:58:02 +0000 UTC View Post
"Oh look Jaye...Stone Fox dropped the ball again."
Hey all, just checking back in with a quick update.
We're still stitching "all the things" together for Chapter 7, and the truth is Kent still has a couple of scenes left to pose. Not super small ones either.
The first animation work has come off the ...
2023-03-21 00:56:13 +0000 UTC View Post
It's that time again, and seeing the finish line in sight always makes it easy to forget the housekeeping and admin that goes along with development.
Kent and I are wrapping up the last few scenes now for artwork, and we've begun the animation handoff.
We're sitting at about 1400 images rendered, with five scenes of various length to go, making this by far our most ambitious update to dat...
2023-02-27 23:08:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Kent and I are starting to feel the rush as the pieces fall into place for the next instalment in our story. Rather than deal in vagaries, I'll use this update to detail a little of what you can expect.
**UPDATE** We had to move back to Discord due to multi-host limitations with Twitch. Updated link below:
Now that the holidays are behind us, along with the Chapter 6 release, Kentyrr and Stoya will host our bi-update LiveSteam this Saturday.
As he has in the past, our friend Xor from Thunderline Studios will emcee while we discuss Chapter 6, our visi...
2023-01-17 23:58:01 +0000 UTC View Post
With the holidays behind us, Kent and I are leaning into the meat of this chapter. For Kent, it's a lot of artwork, and for me it's something a lot less exciting but long overdue.
For starters, Discord Integration has been removed after the poll to do so was so decisive. Secondly, I've migrated the existing content to Ren'Py 8.0.3. This required fa...
2023-01-05 23:56:06 +0000 UTC View Post
It's that busy time of year, and between vacations and holiday celebrations, Kentyrr and I continue to plug away at Chapter 7, having achieved a heavy milestone with a scene we could barely fit in our GPU VRAM.
Unfortunately, we did find a model error on one character after rendering a depressing number of images of her that will have to be re-rendered, but this is a fairly minor speedbump, as ...
2022-12-23 03:51:11 +0000 UTC View Post
This is just a short update to let everyone know things are proceeding apace for Chapter 7.
Kent is all settled into his new digs and kicking out fresh Chapter 7 art, and that should keep him busy while I'm making up to my wife for the last two years of development in the Caribbean.
As usual, while I'm out and about, I'll be able to render remotely so Kent's PC is free for art...
2022-11-20 23:30:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Here are the links to the final content release of Chasing Sunsets.
This episode builds off the future unlocked by your choices in the main game with consequences in both the short and longer term. Our largest update to the game by a significant margin, this episode acts as closure for the origin story and sets up the shot for what's coming next.
The most recent update is v1.10 whic...
2022-11-01 01:05:24 +0000 UTC View Post
As the holidays approach, and Chapter 6 is firmly in our rearview mirror, I thought I'd take a moment to make a few announcements.
New Binary/Patch Download Approach
The first is that we'll be changing our download links to folders, so you can choose the Mac or PC version at your discretion. We'll also keep the latest patch file in there in case you don't want...
2022-11-01 01:01:48 +0000 UTC View Post
The wait is over, and just in time for Halloween!
Chapter 6 is released for all patrons and supporters on all platforms just in time for Halloween!
I'd write more, but I'm running on 45 minutes of sleep over the past 36 hours.
We sincerely hope you enjoy playing as much as we did making "Downtime."
I will post WeTransfer links after they're populated for those who have Mega c...
2022-10-28 03:05:09 +0000 UTC View Post
This is just a short update to let everyone know that Chapter 6 is in beta, and that we are tracking for release within the next week.
Beta has identified a few minor issues that we are working to adjust, and at the last minute we decided to add an additional scene for balance, which is rendering as I write this. That said, nothing has materialized out of beta that looks to endanger...
2022-10-23 16:12:01 +0000 UTC View Post
We're in crunch time now!
While I was hoping to release at the end of September, we are still plugging away at the art, with roughly 200 images to pose/render and 3 animations still cooking in the background.
That may sound like a lot, but it's not. It does mean that while we won't be out quite as early as we hoped, we've still got a couple of weeks of development time ahead o...
2022-09-30 05:19:13 +0000 UTC View Post
At Stone Fox Studios, we like our autumns hot.
It's been a while since I've made an update, and for that I deeply apologize. I've had a number of real life issues creep up that have impacted my level of engagement. One advantage of a partnership is that this also means it has NOT affected the development timeline.
Over the next four days, I will be compiling a bet...
2022-09-17 02:44:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Tonight marks a milestone of development I refer to as "Asset Collapse." Basically, the goal at this point is to combine the art, sound, dialogue, and choice matrix into a playable skeleton and flesh out what remains "until it's ready."
This is the phase where I build achievements, scene and photo gallery additions, and make any UI changes that make sense.
This phase is also a...
2022-08-18 01:42:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Normally I'd say we hit the mid point of the development cycle and it's downhill from here, but it feels like we hit that milestone a week or so back, knock on wood.
Thankfully, render times have come down in recent scenes and we've made up for some of the pain we experienced earlier in the chapter. For a visual indicator of where we are from an art perspective, the blurred page bel...
2022-07-29 05:12:29 +0000 UTC View Post
2022-07-03 07:27:52 +0000 UTC
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Things are moving along again after a bit of a workflow disruption. Kentyrr typically does the scene building and posing on his rig, and in turn, I render them since writing and coding doesn't require a ton of GPU, and leaves him free to do his bit.
Early last week, I began migrating my development rig into a bigger case with better cooling. The process has taken a bit lo...
2022-06-26 19:27:25 +0000 UTC View PostThis is just a quick note for those who are interested that an official walkthrough is now available for Chasing Sunsets thanks to the untiring efforts of Dorn and Xerus.
You can grab it here.
I'll post the walkthrough link with the official download links in the stickied post as well.
I thought I'd take a moment to update everyone on how Chapter 6 is coming along.
If you're following along in our Discord, by now you know Kent and I are particularly happy to be working on this update as it will contain some content we've been looking forward to since before we began development.
As such, we've hit the ground running, and the new chapter is fully flowcharted...
2022-06-08 04:53:21 +0000 UTC View PostThis is a fairly minor update and adds no new content, but does address a number of typos, bugs, and some continuity issues.
This also removes the rest of the media player code for players who were experiencing issues with that, as well as removes the Teamviewer executable that somehow got stuck in one of the image folders by mistake.
Saves should be mostly unaffected, other than Mallory's path adds one additional maximum trust point. This point is awarded at the end of Ch5 ...
2022-05-28 20:35:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Stone Fox Studios is pleased to announce that Chasing Sunsets Chapter 5 is now available for download to patrons of all tiers.
We hope you have as much fun playing it as we did making it.
Chapter 5 is the windup before the throw into the concluding half of the story and squarely at the intersection where several story arcs we've been following from the beginning converge: Thus...
2022-05-26 09:09:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Our first round of beta testing is complete, and final rendering and sound design is in progress now.
If all goes well, I will post a release candidate tonight, and we'll launch in the next day or so!
Thanks again to all of you for your patience as we adjusted to some industry changes that require us to rethink how we add licensed content.
Our intent is to launch as a "Pre-release" ...
2022-05-23 20:41:22 +0000 UTC View Post
After some hair loss, occasional dog punting, and several 750ml bottles of Woodford Reserve, I believe we have our music issues resolved and are preparing to move forward with our beta.
There is some supplemental art still being rendered and one animation remains in progress, but we should be able to enter beta by next weekend, and look forward to release the week after that, barring any shocki...
2022-05-13 00:14:26 +0000 UTC View Post
"If you ever want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans" --Ancient Proverb
To our surprise and shock, a fellow developer got a DMCA notice from Artlist this week. Artlist changed their Terms of Service at some point, and they are now enforcing a new obscenity clause.
Takedown notices are designed to protect the IP of an artist from being used without or in v...
2022-04-24 23:54:20 +0000 UTC View Post
We have finished principal art for Chapter 5, and animations are under way. The next post we make here should be the commencement of the beta test and solidifying our expected delivery date.
As always, keep in mind that as integration and finalization progresses, minor new art may be necessary to supplement scenes we feel underrepresented or just off. We'll also take beta feed...
2022-04-13 04:30:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Cheers!
I think this is the longest I've gone without a dev update, and for that I offer my sincerest apologies. Kent has been heads-down on the art, and I've been working on integration. As of this moment we're at about 1100 renders complete, and are most of the way through the final story scene of the chapter. To our chagrin, the render times on this last scene h...
2022-03-27 21:38:30 +0000 UTC View Post