It's the "Update" update...

Hello!

A mix of news this week but let's start with the important one. I'm pausing Patreon again. No, not because I'm ill again or anything like that it's more I need to do a bit of re-work on the GUI, which I'll talk about more in a moment, and it's not something I think you should pay for. With the headline done, onwards!

News the first - Poker

I've been talking about the poker for a bit now but haven't really shown you that much from it other than a couple of stills. Now that's all well and good but it doesn't really give you a feel of just how ambitious I've been with it. So I thought it might be useful to show the first few minutes of gameplay to give you an idea of the scope of this one.

Now the clip below is a bit grainy, but that's less to do with the quality of the actual in-game footage and more to do with having to record the clip smaller than full screen which, when it's then blown back up to full screen, then introduces a lack of sharpness. But that aside it will serve it's purpose in giving you a bit of a taster.

Each level of Chadder's undress is animated in the same format and the entire module is fully animated - including the all important bit when she loses her clothes :) Some seventy animations and 24,000 renders. A lot of work but I think a lot of you will really enjoy this one.

https://youtu.be/KTPLWWXnomI

News the second - The GUI

The GUI refresh has been the nightmare of this chapter. As usual I was perhaps a tad ambitious with this one (think of a cross between the info GUI used on Witcher 3 with a dash of Mass Effect) and I'm afraid to report that despite throwing hours at it, it's still causing the game to crash with a stability ratio of about 4 in 5. In other words it crashes the game 20 per cent of the time which is just not acceptable.

I've tried the game without the GUI and it works fine (finding those other errors early probably helps) and I've tried a stripped down version of the game with more or less just the GUI in - and that works fine. Put them together however and it just keeps falling over.

In theory it shouldn't, but in practice it is and, despite the hours sweated over it, I'm aware I'm going to become the living dictionary definition of the "sunk cost" fallacy if I keep hacking away at it with still nothing to show for it.

However, I'm loathe to just stick with what we've currently got, if only because it looks dreadful compared to the new version and the existing one isn't as helpful to the player as it could be. Since I have all the image assets already done I'm going to strip out the revised unstable GUI and implement a simpler, but still improved, version. So what you will see will be better, crisper, and more useful than the old version - but also won't crash the game.

This one is on me. It's my mistake for aiming too high. With the best intentions certainly, but good intentions "butter no parsnips" as we say in my neck of the woods. So, since I feel I screwed up a bit, the patreonage is turned off while I sort this one out.

Sorry.

Otherwise...things are looking pretty good. I'm able to get the hours back in again, which is a massive relief after the past few months, and now it really feels like the finish line is in sight and it's just polishing and testing. So, there's that at least.

Alrighties, that's it for now. Take care and keep safe.

Notty