[Progress Report]: 13th of September

Hey everyone,

What a titanic ordeal...

I've got the early build of Version 0.55 uploading to MEGA right now. Riley's appearances around the academy have been re-implemented, but her new events will need to wait for the next update. Still, I wanted something special for all of you for being so understanding throughout August. Many of you will be happy to know that there is another triple animation event in the game! Freshly added today.

For every development cycle I have, I like to mention something that I'm doing differently to improve the game overall. Once again, for version 0.55, it's animations. I usually do my animations in a 3-second loop. These take between 8 and 11 hours to finish rendering, which means I can set one up before bed, wake up in the morning to check for clipping that didn't show up in the preview, and then set it for a final render while I'm at work. This is okay, but a lot of you have requested faster renders - ones that really get the jiggle physics working. For something like that, I've been experimenting with 6 second loops. They take a lot of time, as you can imagine, but for faster animations I think they're essential. The newest H-scene in the game features one at the very end. It's not fast, but it's much more natural to move her other body parts. I'll continue experimenting with this in the future.

Overall, I'm not sure how I honestly feel about Version 0.55. I think it's good quality, but so many character arcs had just finished in the previous two updates that starting a ton of new ones was mentally exhausting. I'm happy with the outcome, but I'm definitely going to space out the climaxes from now on.

Another thing I want to work on going forward is more of a sandbox progression. Early to middle in the game you need to advance every girl's story at the same time because they affect each other's progress. Now that the protagonist has spent more time with them, I think that's less necessary, and so you'll be able to single out one girl's arc and follow it more thoroughly without doing the others at random intervals.

That's it from me this week. I'll get the early build uploaded and posted in roughly an hour (it's my upload speed), and then collapse into bed.

~Solace