It's the "It's the 20th!" update...

Hello!

The big news for today is that a playable build has gone to the primary tester. This build excludes the big three main modules (VR, CoC and Chris domme) largely as I'm still tweaking all three of them a bit but the main game is now out for gameplay tests. (Annie's pool game, although big, is just a one off and so I don't count it as main module despite it's size)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with my testing process it goes in two stages. The primary tester is looking for that "does the chapter work" sense. So they are less concerned with bugs and glitches and more focussed on how the chapter works from a player's perspective. So do any new mechanics work OK , do the storylines make sense, is there enough to do etc etc.

Once we're through that gate, then I pass to the path testers. I'm lucky enough to have four of these and so they take a character option each and then play those paths to death to try and ensure you have a bug free, glitch free experience.

With something on the scale and complexity of H5, of course, I can never guarantee we'll catch everything but, as you'll note, it's not for want of trying.

And the scale for this one is big. 18,000 renders. 2,000 of those are stills with the other 16,000 being animations and, incredibly, only one for a mere 60 frames is of a door opening ;)

I mentioned at the start some tweaking. CoC is fine btw, but VR less so. Oh, there's nothing wrong with it. It's fine. But I don't really want "fine" if I can help it. I want Chapter Four to make you all go "Bloody hell..." when you play it :)  So the tweaking is really just editing the animations a bit. The naughty ones. The important ones.  I had this in Three for the VR lewd there where I ended up cutting out a few hundred frames and dropping a few hundred fresh ones in and I think I'll have to do the same this time around to get them where I want them quality and impact wise.

Other than that there isn't a lot of fresh news. Largely as it has just been head down and getting a build out, which although important doesn't make for a lively read.

So this coming week will be dealing with testing and doing the commission renders. Again, I'm afraid I'll want to be largely quiet for focus. This, in many ways, is the worse part of the process. The labour has been done and now it's subjecting it to that critical review. Seeing if it stands up. That sort of thing. But although it is a grind, it's important quality wise. So once again, I'll trust you'll understand if I'm not very chatty whilst we get through these bits. (Although try stopping me from being chatty once you have Four in your hands....)

Anyhoo. I'm going to let the primary tester bash away and see what they think. I'll update again on Monday but in the meantime, have a lovely weekend.

Notty