Progress Report

Greetings everyone!

I'm working again after taking a little time off to celebrate the release of Long Live the Princess. I'm returning to a new reality: I can now focus entirely on Supermodel's development. It's going to take a while for my mind to fully accept this change in circumstances after all these years, but I'm glad to finally be able to move on.

Actually, moving on isn't entirely on the table just yet. There have been some reports about minor bugs and inconsistencies in LLtP that will eventually need a patch. I'm holding off on that for a while, though. I want to make it as unlikely as possible that more issues pop up after LLtP 1.0.1. Therefore, I'd rather wait a while to make sure everyone has had a chance to discover any problems that need fixing. 

Only one of the bugs discovered in LLtP can be considered critical, but I'm not sure it can even be fixed on my end. Still, I'll give it a try. That bug only seems to affect a rare few players, and it causes the achievement popup window to stay on the screen forever. Once you run into this bug, it doesn't matter if you save and restart the game, and you need to load a save from before the popup to get rid of it. An annoying issue for sure, but I have received indications that it is caused by an internal bug in Ren'py that I might be unable to fix.

As for Supermodel, I'm still focused on the card game. There are plenty of fun things to discuss, so let's get started!

• I added 8 new cards this week, 6 of them challenge cards that are played by the AI against you. The purpose of all these new cards was to add unpredictability and sudden twists to the card game, forcing you to stay on your toes and be ready for anything. Based on early testing, these additions are fun as hell.
• All cards now have artwork of some kind. Until now, I have been rendering the art for these cards using Daz Studio, but the results were a bit bleak and uninspiring. To make things worse, many cards that needed art were vague and difficult to represent without endlessly repeating myself in my renders. As a result, I went in a new direction: AI art. I'm sure most of you have already come across AI-generated images online recently, seeing as the concept has taken off in a massive way these past few months. Suffice it to say, I have been experimenting with various AI engines for a while now and have gotten quite good at prompt engineering. The results can already be seen in Supermodel. Several cards feature colorful AI-generated artwork (using NovelAI for now) that both look damn good and add a touch of sexiness that was much needed. With this new art as a reference, I went back and touched up my 3D art, increasing brightness and contrast while adding backgrounds and dashes of color. This has brought all the art together into something that feels a least somewhat coherent, and it looks exceptionally pleasing. I can't wait to show off these cards in the coming months. For now, I have included a preview below.
• The more I playtest the game, the more I realize that calling it a card game might be misleading to some of you, particularly if you have limited exposure to the genre. Many of you might be thinking about games like Magic: The Gathering or Marvel Snap, but this is an entirely different thing. Based on my testing, I feel like the Supermodel card game mechanic feels more like a puzzle game than anything else. The puzzle pieces are cards, and each puzzle is randomly generated within certain boundaries, but it's a puzzle nonetheless. If you have no interest in or experience with card games, think of this as a puzzle game instead, and you won't be all that wrong.
• I made a small but significant change to a central game mechanic, and the early results are highly promising. During testing, I found that while cards start out as initially expensive to play, card costs are meaningless by midway through a match since you are swimming in resources by that time. The change I made fixes this issue and significantly tightens your ability to play expensive cards. You will have multiple ways to deal with this challenge, precisely what I wanted to achieve. After this change, choosing which cards to play has already gotten much more involved and rewarding than it used to be.

Above: An in-game capture of one of the cards. The art is AI-generated.

My plan going forward is to create a prototype of the card game that you can all playtest and have some fun with before we move on to the complete visual novel experience of Supermodel itself. For the prototype to be ready, however, the following things need to be added:

• Simple visual effects and highlights to clearly illustrate when things are happening in the game, which cards are involved, and why.
• Background images and renders showing the photo shoot. After all, the card game is all about taking pictures during a photo shoot, so it needs to be represented in a way that makes sense.
• Mechanics that handle winning or losing the game. Right now, I keep track of these states myself.
• A main menu and a preview of upcoming Supermodel content.
• One or two tracks of music.
• UI elements specially made for this game. Right now, most of the UI is placeholder.

Getting these things into the game is my top priority since I want to get the prototype out as quickly as humanly possible. There won't be a massive gap in time between the release of LLtP 1.0.0 and the Supermodel prototype. In fact, it's entirely possible (but somewhat unlikely) that you will get to play it in 2022. The game is already at an advanced stage of development and is fully playable (and fun!), so the critical work is done. 

I expect to release multiple versions of the prototype before Supermodel's first release, allowing us to knock our collective heads together to perfect the gameplay mechanics. You will be able to break the game in ways I won't anticipate, which is part of the fun. Tweaking cards and mechanics based on feedback is a central part of developing a card game like this. I can't wait to see you all invent horribly broken strategies that trivialize the game (followed by me nerfing your strategies in new versions). 

But for now, I'd like to return to work. Supermodel calls; for once, LLtP won't get in the way.

Until next time!