January Progress Report

It's been a little over a month since posting my March quarterly goals and I feel now is a good time to reflect as a few things have shifted since then. I am still building towards the aforementioned goals, but I have since changed my approach to be less direct.

Earlier this month, I was working with a writer to brainstorm ideas for the story. This resulted in the story shifting from centering around an online forum to a friend of Rika helping out her exhibitionist journey. Having a second character opens up a lot of possibilities, both story-wise and gameplay-wise. A friend makes the story more personal and more about Rika learning to enjoy herself exposed. 

Some rough outlines were drafted for the intro/tutorial sequence, but production of it was paused when running into gameplay roadblocks. It was decided that it would be better to prioritize establishing the core mechanics before building a story around them. Since then I have shifted my priorities to better developing the game before working on the story. 

My development focus has shifted more towards research. The game is focused largely around clothing, so I have been working with an artist to explore how to best simulate a lot of properties and effects of clothing. 

Some effects I would love to have include (but not limited to): physically removing and putting on clothes; lifting up shirts/skirts to flash underneath; wet and see-through clothes; damaged and torn clothes; and loose fitting clothes that can fall off.

None of these are impossible to do; most games don't do them because that level of detail isn't necessary. Roshutsu has a large emphasis on clothing, so I feel it's important to explore these effects and learn how to do them. Once I learn what's possible, I can design gameplay elements around them. The more pertinent question is: how feasible is it? It's already looking that it won't but cheap or easy, but I do absolutely think they're worth having. 

The artist I've been working with is very experience with sex models and animations and has been helping with improving Rika. They have been making significant improvements to better model her genitals and add support for sexual elements such as toys. While the game won't feature human penis penetration, dildos and vibrators will still be going inside her.

Gameplay development has hit a bit of a pause as I have been researching all these technical hurdles. I am looking to do an overhaul of the character controller in the near future, which would require fairly extensive changes. The new character controller should provide a lot more extensibility for improving the stealth and movement. I want to get the movement feeling really solid before anything else. 

On another topic, I have become a Steamworks Partner as of last week, so the work for a Steam version is now in progress. There is a lot of paperwork and red tape, so it may be some time until it appears. More information about it will be announced as it happens.

I hope to do posts like this towards the end of each month to recap the progress made. I hope this helps paint an image where your money is going. I would not be able to continue working on this full-time without your support!

Thank you again for supporting Roshutsu!