Poll Results and Updated Artwork - Seika

I am once again combining posts to cut down on clutter in the feed. Let's start with the poll results, then get to Seika's updated artwork.

Poll Results

Everyone in this poll could choose two options, so for those that only chose one, I counted that as both votes for the one character. And here's what we've got!

In terms of raw votes, it was pretty close for first place, and third place. But Angela ended up dominating with weighted votes, and The Working Girls just barely got ahead of Alicia.

Remember, patrons get weighted votes, even just the $1 tier means your vote counts as 2, and could end up deciding a poll!

I was honestly pretty surprised by the results. I thought for sure Seika would come out on top, and I thought The Working Girls would do much better. I didn't think Angela would be quite so popular. I'm definitely glad she is though! She's one of my favorite creations.

There is still the "wild card" to decide though!

I threw all the losers into a random generator and...

Madison came out the winner! I'm honestly pretty happy with this. I had initially planned on adding a second scene for Madison (that's why she only has a BJ scene right now), but decided to leave it up to the poll. So I'm glad I actually get to make it. Tbh I would've been happy with any of them though lol. I like the game's focus on variety, and like being able to create new characters all the time, but it does kind of suck that some characters only end up with the 1 scene.

Anyway, that means the final results are -

1st - Angela

2nd - Seika

3rd - The Working Girls (Sandy/Ivy/Valentine)

Wild Card - Madison

I'll be starting work on these scenes as soon as I can, and they'll be implemented into v0.1.3! I'll probably make them in order, with Angela first. I hope you look forward to the new scenes!

There is still hope for the losers! I'm putting together a second chance poll, where the options are all the losers from previous polls. So there's still a chance for Sakura or Alicia to get a new scene in a future update.

There's another poll that's been posted today that's just an opinion poll. It's not to decide anything, I'm just curious if people like certain ideas or not. I'm also considering doing 2 polls a month, with them only being 2 weeks, unlike before where it's only been one a month. It would help speed things up and be a way for everyone to shape the direction of the game more. So this is also a sort of test run.

Seika's Updated Artwork

Before the poll ended, it seemed like Seika was going to be one of the poll winners, and would be getting a new scene in v0.1.3. So I wanted to make sure her existing artwork got updated before I started work on another scene. I always hated Seika's current scene and always intended on updating it. It was one of the first scenes I made and I was under a heavy time crunch when I made it. I was transitioning from winter break and back into school for my final semester. To stay on schedule I had to just release it as it was and move on, but I honestly felt bad putting it in the game. That's one of the reasons Seika is the hardest person in the game right now, and is basically impossible. I wanted some time to update her artwork, and hoped most people wouldn't unlock her scene until a later version. I'll be making her easier now that her scene has been updated, but she's still going to be the hardest character to seduce. Because I think it's kind of funny that the "roommate" character is the hardest one to seduce right now. It makes sense narratively too, because most people in the neighborhood are helping you practice and going easy on you, which is most women in the game right now. Seika is definitely not going easy on you. She's a gold digger, so she's more than willing to give sexual favors in exchange for expensive gifts, but she's not about to do something she isn't going to at least kind of enjoy too. So if she's going to do something, she's going to make sure she's actually turned on.

Anyway, first up is her updated character CG. I didn't really change too much, I just adjusted her eyes slightly. They were just a little too far apart.

Here's the new CG.

And the old.

The difference is very slight, so I imagine most people wont really be able to tell it's different at a glance. If you flip back and forth it's a little more obvious, but really, it was mostly fine and just bothered me. It was a quick and easy fix, so I fixed it.

And now for the big one. Her scene. Her scene was so bad before. It looked nothing like her and it just looked awful. When I went in to rework it, I thought it was mostly just the eye shape that was off, and could be fixed fairly quickly, but I was so horribly wrong. The entire head was just completely wrong. Even under a time crunch, I don't know how I messed it up this bad. The jaw was too big but the head was too small, the eye's and nose weren't in the right place, the eyes and eyeballs were just the completely wrong shape, the hairline was way too high, the hair was the wrong style, and the mouth wasn't even aligned correctly. The more I worked on it, the more I realized that I should have just completely redid it, and I considered completely scrapping it more than once. But I refused to let Seika win. The body was fine. It was just the head that was off. So I knew I could fix it. I had to. I just kept playing with it and reworking it trying to get it to look right. It took so long, and I reworked it so many times, that I actually started working on it before even doing Freya's scene. I just kept either running out of time and having to work on something else to stay on schedule, or just ended up getting too frustrated with it and having to drop it for a couple days. It was a very humbling experience. I reminded me that I'm far from perfect and still improving as an artist. Up until now I was just kind of drawing because I thought I was good enough, but that's clearly not the case. I need to be doing guidelines and adding in the sort of building blocks still.

While messing with it I also noticed that the MC's body was a little too small, so I fixed that too. I've said this before but I see the guy as more of a prop, so I don't really worry about him that much. I do try a bit to at least make him consistent enough that it's not immersion breaking. Like having one scene where he's a super talk jacked dood and another where's he's super scrawny and bony. I try to keep him more in the average range. Not big and buff, but not super small either. But here it bugged me, so I adjusted it.

Anyway, here it is, the updated version.

 And here is the old one.

As you can see, vast improvement here. And while I'm still not completely satisfied with it, I don't think I'll ever be at this point, it does look way better now. At the very least, it actually looks like Seika now, and I'm losing my mind continually messing with it. So I called it done. I also really need to get back to work on new stuff.

Like I mentioned before, part of the reason I did this was because Seika was one of the front runners in the current poll. Even if there was a crazy upset at the last minute, it seemed like she's one of the more popular side characters. She's also one of my favorite designs, and she deserved better.

There's another big reason though. For anyone who has been watching the project for a long time, you may remember that when I made Seika, I made a goth version for fun, because I just like goth girls lol, and I really liked it. I just wasn't sure what to do with it so that it would make sense.

For those that weren't here, here's goth Seika (also with the adjustments) .

I had considered making which Seika you get a choice in game, where you'd walk in and be something like, "my 'roommate' Seika has a distinctive style. She's..." and then have the option of Gyaru or Goth. But I decided against it. I want there to be choices periodically, but I also want people to be able to get everything in a single save. I'm also trying to avoid adding in too many characters who are just color variations. It's a slippery slope. I love doing color variations because it can completely change a character. That's why there's so many variations for each of the collectables. And I most of those are only maybe half of the full sets I made. So going down the rabbit hole of creating color variations would add a lot of dev time. It would also make the game feel cheap if not implemented correctly. It made sense for the working girls because they're just there for bonus exp. Putting more in the game was more of a convenience thing, and having variations just made it more interesting than having literally the same character copy-pasta'd everywhere. So I ultimately decided to bench goth Seika.

But since Angela was winning the poll, that says to me that a lot of other people also like goth girls. So I decided to go back to the drawing board and try and see if I could come up with a good way to implement goth Seika. Since she's basically the two top poll winners combined.

And I've thought of a great way to implement goth Seika that makes a lot of sense. Goth Seika will be coming in v0.2 as a sort of bonus character. She'll have the same scenes as Seika, but she'll be a separate character with a narrative reason for being there. It'll make sense once you unlock her. But since I just have to do color variations of Seika's scenes, her scenes can be made and implemented quickly. This will also open the door for possible other goth versions of characters too. I'll probably hold a poll with "more goth versions of characters" as a potential option as a way to decide if more are implemented. Otherwise I'd probably end up doing that a lot, which again, would cut into dev time. And I don't want to do that unless people want them.

Implementing goth Seika is another reason reworking Seika's TJ scene was kind of a nightmare. Normally when I just need to make adjustments to a scene, I can just merged all of the layers and make the adjustments real quick. But with Seika, I had to keep everything as separate as possible so I could do the color variation without having to completely redo everything. So I had to go to the lineart layer and adjust that, then go to the color layer and adjust that, and if that ended up affecting other layers I'd have to do the same for that part. Then I had to see if that worked the way I wanted, and when it didn't, I had to do it again. It took forever, but to have goth Seika, it'll be worth it.

I originally wanted to include this in v0.1.2, but I ended up hitting the deadline for v0.1.2 before finishing this CG (v0.1.2 out NOW for early access patrons!). So it's not being implemented until v0.1.3.

As a quick update, I've also already started working on v0.1.3. Namely, implementing an HP bar. I had wanted it to be in the game from the start, but I couldn't find a free script. I'm also trying not to use too many scripts, because they can sometimes cause performance issues. I finally just broke and got Yanfly's scripts, and wanted to implement the system into v0.1.2, but for some reason it created an absurd amount of input lag. I'm talking a good 1-2 seconds between when you make a selection and when it actually works. It was super annoying. I'm currently working on modifying the script I'm using for it to get it to work. I've got it down to about half of what it was, but I'm still playing with it in hopes I can get rid of it entirely. Either way, that's coming in v0.1.3. Just wanted to let people know.

Anyway, like before, I've updated the 1080p and 4k art posts if you'd like to get the higher quality version of Seika's scene. There's just one more piece of artwork that I plan on updating for now that should be coming soon. Ms. Hartley's character CG. I'm planning on having that one done for v0.1.3, but it depends on how much trouble it gives me. I'm not sure how I feel about it looking like her leaning on a desk, so I may end up completely redoing it. That should be the last one I update, at least for a while. Everything else in the game looks alright. There's a couple that have some small parts that don't quite match with the way the style has developed, but they're not huge issues so I don't want to spend a lot of time on them right now. I want to focus more on getting v0.2 out.

I hope you like Seika's updated scene and look forward to seeing it in game in v0.1.3! As well as seeing goth Seika in game in v0.2!