Agents of Heels v0.25 – Releases, Plans and Audibles (Oh My!)

Hey there everyone, how do you do? As you can tell form the title, this one is going to be sore post for us, but damn it if we don’t have to be upfront and honest about the situation, so here we go. We’ve got a progress post for y’all instead of a release one this weekend, despite our best efforts (in fact, we’ve been at it so much this post was supposed to be out yesterday, but there was too much to do for the game to get it covered). However, it’s not all grey clouds on the sky this weekend, far from it, but we’ll get to that after the heavy lifting. We’ve even got a bonus post for y’all! But first things first.

Let’s say it upfront and right now, we’re quite sorry about this, but it’s not for a lack of trying or best intentions. We don’t have any excuses to pull out, or fingers too point. We can’t say “if only for” either. All that we can say is we’re just not done, even as we try hard, and so we’ve got to keep going, and we will.

What’s Going On?

So then. As we told it, as recently as last week, we were aiming to get our latest Agent action out this weekend, but we now know it’s not happening. It’s not close enough to call a version, and we want more than just a standard hit with this one anyway. We’ve been working through the content in Crunch mode for a long time now, but no matter how much we push, and how many CGs we bank at the end of each day, there’s always more to do with this one… always more. If we knew what we do now last week, Hell, if we knew it when we were covering our Goals posts, it’d have been a big factor in some changes, honestly.

It's hard to give up the details without spoiling anything, but to give you an idea of what’s being dealt with here, it’s a lot of little (and some big) things, that keep us billowing back and forth between Pre-Production and Direct Render Production, stuff that we’ve not had to hand as much (or at all) in much more straightforward non-mission scenes. Things like:

- Hand placing and repositioning over 100 props and several actors in one large outdoors urban scene.

- Skinning and reskinning heavy vehicles (see our post here for some looks sees)

- Outfit changes and combat damage

- Muzzle flash and tracer effects, because our older varieties don’t work with the lighting set up

- The lighting set up as well, which has other battlefield effects in action that affect it, which can only be fully seen after time is spent rendering (and may well be rejected)

- Combat poses, and a fair bit of them too.

Here’s just one example of the efforts on just one prop and it’s effects. We’ve got to take on our base models, improve and retexture many of them manually, and cover all out bases with what may or may not happen depending on how the game goes. That, times say… 100 props, for about as many CGs… See what we mean?

And that’s all on the art side. That’s not even taking into account the fact we’ve got pathing and alternat pathing to account for during the mission, as we deal with 4 Major choice/path outcomes from the entire game and have them shape Nat’s early path through the mission (can you guess what they are?). There’s a number of Minor things to account and write for mixed in too, some cross over points common to both Good and Corrupt Nats (and plenty that don’t), plus Corrupt Nat variants for dialogues too, even in paths that are not art-distinct.

There’s a whole damn lot going on, is what we’re saying. We were even considering making an old PWP style package of all that behind the scenes work for after release so all the beWildernauts can see it, but we’ll have to check just how much we can find from the cutting room floor when we’re done, because mostly things like that which don’t work never make it as far as Spook, let alone get saved. We’ll see, though. What do y’all think, any interest?

Where Are We Now?

As it stands, we’re about 75-80% through what a normal version would be in terms of CG and word count both, so as we soldier on through those things above and what else we’ve got to do as well, we’re getting close to a unusual amount of content but all if it in a higher octane state than we often see (no more pool parties for Nat in this game!). However, by our laid out plans for what we want to get covered for a first instalment of this big mission, we’re actually looking like we’ll hit about 30-35% extra in terms of overall content (meaning a version of about 1/3rd bigger than our usual, depending how you count it), so there is still a fair bit to go before we can call this done.

We’ve already gone back over our plans and tried our hand at some discrete and careful cutting here and there, in an attempt to slim down and fit in our mission suit as well as Nat does, and it has helped prospects somewhat. However, there’s only so much a snip CG here and a cut CG there can get us. After a while we noticed we were starting to lose quality overall by doing this: certain context and pacing images were starting to be the only places left to pull out, or worse, actually removing sexy and explicit images… That is, at the end of the day, what we’re all here for and we both know it all to well, so that had to stop. We reached the limit of downsizing there, but we did try.

Honestly, this version has been really rough on us. We’re tired in body and spirit from long daws and very unsmoothed sailing. It’s not a stretch to say this has been our hardest release yet, even including the launching of two games from scratch and the few versions we made during Unshi’s big home moves where a lot of the content was made while sleeping on a couch… But Hell, we’re not complaining, we’re doing the job we love and what’s more we’re doing right by our first game’s big end game (and hopefully you all too), so it will be worth it. It’s just that it is work to do, as sexy as it may be sometimes.

It's at this point we’d like to give you all a timeline, but in reality, it’s still hard to say just what may come up or what may give way beneath our feet, or if we’re lucky, just how much o a straight shot we might get to the end. It could be another week of full court press if all goes swimmingly, or it could be 2, It might even be a bit more, we just can’t foresee as well as we’d like, and damn if we don’t want to disappoint again with a slipped target like this weekend. All we can say for sure is it’ll be in June. It has to be in June. As Unshi said on our teamwork server: “I’ll put my hand on the fire on that one” (a Catalan expression) and Spook was quick to say “As your teammate, I’ll help you put it there if it comes to that, don’t worry”. So it will be done! We’ll do our best to keep people informed on our Discord as to the progress, if they so wish to ask, as well as in upcoming posts… Which leads us to the next section.

What’s the Plans Now?

Well, in (American) Football terms, we’re going to have to call an audible on this one, and shake up our way of doing things a bit, as well as some plans.

The Bad News first: Since we’re still going to be working through AoH for more of June than we expected, it means it’s quite clear to see that Noemi’s next version will be destined for July now. It was always a tight fit if we had been able to start on it this weekend, but since we’ll be on our Heels at least a week more, it’s just not going to be possible to do it and still make it the quality you expect from Noe’s kitchen. In reality, it means that fans will have a week or two more wait there, it’s not like it’s really the difference of all of June to July, but we know it sucks nonetheless. It sucks for us too.

The Good News next: Noemi fans can rejoice in the knowledge of some things, including this little Pre-Teaser as out apology. The script is already done up and ready to set into Production as soon as we tap out on AoH, and in it there’s a lot of nice things: We’ll be sticking with mixing up the old(ish) with some new focuses. We’ll be adding a new secondary character “love interest” (echem lust interest) to the cast in what’s to come, but who of our waitresses will catch their eye, and why? We’ve got some new outfits to show off, ones that somebody never wanted to see the light of day, and we’ll even top it off with some very mischievous dinner table talk, so if you like girls being mean for sport, you’ll love this. Plus, we’ll have some small but impactful Gameplay additions that y’all are going to want to see (and demand more from us than we expect, we know it!). Best yet, none of that will take place during a city battle, so we won’t have the issue above slowing it down either!

The Better News for last: Since we’re not as “on the cusp” of release as we expected we’d be, there’s no point in us having our minimalist post routine still going on, now is there? We’ll keep working away on it all, but the silence around here is a real drag and we could use the spirit boost in some fan interaction to push us onward anyway, so we’ll be kicking up the dust with some fun pretty soon. We’ve got a sweet bonus post to start it all off again courtesy of one of the beWildernauts actually, so get your shot of Noemi content right here and now! Next week we’ll start off the Bold special edition polls so we can have some hyper around here again, and we’ll keep on going so we can have our Daring and Brave fans get some AoH content both this month still as planned, if at all possible, so it should be a lively time around here again. Sorry for the quiet last few months, y’all, sometimes we just get so focused on the games, but we do love ya!

Too Long, Didn’t Read!

Alright, so here’s the short version recap for those that don’t like the puff and the teasy jokes.

- Things just keep taking longer than we plan for, so AoH will need more time this month to complete. Our goal for this weekend just isn’t feasible. We are sorry, we are.

- On the upside, we are expecting the final version to be as much as 1/3rd bigger than usual in terms of overall content.

- We are unable to give a solid timeframe for release other than “before the end of June”, but we will endeavour to keep people informed and give out best estimates as we continue on.

- We are still aiming at this point for both a Daringand Brave Release this month.

- NTR’s next release will be pushed back accordingly. It’s not possible to get it done in June as well, so we’ll delist it and not falsely advertise to people.

- We have given some teasy details of Noe’s next version, so maybe rethink not reading the “What’s the Plans Now?” section if that’s of interest to you.

- Rather than wait on getting things done to return to our normal posting schedule, we will restart it this coming week with special edition Bold polls for some fun and hype while we wait.

- Don’t forget to check out our Bonus Post, as a beWildernautand big lover of Noemi has a story to tell us all!

And so our big release of all this weight on our chest is done! Ah… We feel a little better now, and we hope with some solid news, you all do too. It’s a disappointment to be here, sure, but it’s always nice to see a solid plan and some contrite thought, are we right? So yes, our apologies again. It’s a shame it’s come to this, but short of doing a half a job, or having gone back in time and totally cutting back on all the good stuff that’s made AoH and Nat things we just can’t help but love, this was always going to be a big job. It’s simple one we’ve just sorely underestimated. We’ll leave y’all know to digest and think on all this as much as we have, and to enjoy what else we’ve got instore this weekend for y’all. We’ll back at the drawing board and the render machine by the time you read this, so onward we go! We’ll get there and in the end we’ll love it! That’s what matters most… Well, that and…

Be working it to those sexy bones and beWilder! (Yes we just said that, see you see now how fussy our heads are?)