Progress update - February

Hello everyone, I meant to post this in January but I missed a week of work due to illness (I'm fine now). 

If we ignore the lost week, I think the progress has been good, if I wasn't so busy with finals I would be way ahead of schedule. I'm currently overwhelmed by the exams, and if I want to meet the goal I set for myself (release v0.4.1 in early March), I'm going to have to make some cuts.

In gray is what I have not touched, I added some things, completed others and I am also thinking of cutting parts to meet the target.

CUTS

• Explorable section: I haven't decided if I will do it yet, but in order to complete the update on time, I will probably postpone the explorable part for this update (it will be available in v0.4.2 or when I complete v0.5). I'm afraid that removing this will make the update feel a bit empty and linear, but since it's not vital, I'll probably cut it.
• Gallery: I don't have the time nor the brain power to do it right now, I'll probably release it in v0.5.
• Encounter sprite: I've cut out some CGs from Lena's scene and written it in such a way that it doesn't require the use of new sprites (the ones that appear along with the HUD) for Lena's new sports outfit. (I would like to add this if I can squeeze it, I think it's something unique to AL, but it's true that it takes too much work and for the moment I'm prioritizing advancing with the release.)

PROGRESS

Don't fact-check this.

The first part of the update is almost finished, I would like to add a couple more CGs but I'm still in doubt about adding them due to time issues. The class scene is not that complicated to make, but still, they are CGs that I have to draw, unfortunately, my attempt to use AI-generated images for the graphics that appear on the blackboard didn't work... maybe I'm just bad at using stable diffusion, if I manage to make some time I'll check out midjourney, it seems much simpler, it might save me some time for that kind of work, at least for inspiration (graphics that appear on the blackboard). This is extra, you can ignore it: I made some changes to the lore in terms of dates to make the time periods realistic, there are many world events I'd like to expand on through "extra classes" taught by Luna, but that's for when I have the new explorable sections ready (the extra classes are not vital to the story, you can skip them if you want).

This Ruri scene is something I had planned to do some time ago, now that the MC knows the importance of having his own credits to enter the Self-Control mode, I plan to add replayable mini-games so that the player can get credits during the free roam segments. In the future, I would like to add more content and options within the mini-game that would lead to scenes for the girl in question (I want to make specific mini-games for each girl too). You can't see it in the image, but it's already sectioned to be animated, I just need more facial expressions to finish with the assets of that animation set.

Although I said that I cut some CGs of Lena's scene, the truth is that I just ended up moving the resources to more important parts, this image you see here is actually sectioned (some parts of the body are reused in other CGs). The hours of work that I would dedicate to make the sprites will be used to expand the foreplay before the animation.

I can't show more of this because I haven't completed all the assets for this animation set, maybe I need support CGs to complement the climax of the scene, since I don't know yet the capabilities of spinePro, I hope when I learn to use it properly it will open a lot more possibilities in terms of what I can animate, the truth is that I always aim high and end up limited by the software (for example: Luna's scene also included a BJ but I couldn't animate the assets), but everything depends on how fast I get familiar with the program.

That's all for now, I have to focus on the finals (but I'm still working on the game!), if I fail them I will have to retake some courses and it will affect future development times, so even with the cuts the update may be delayed to the middle or the end of march. Sorry for the inconvenience...

Bye!


PS: I just noticed that I didn't post anything for the COG tier last month, that's why this post is now available for all patrons, sorry.