Updateless?
Hi! just posting to let everyone know that I'm still alive, the game is still in development and I have no plans to abandon it. yet =p
The update was supposed to be released around this time, but I ended up adding more stuff :| . I think they were necessary to make the game more engaging and fun to play.
As for the animations problem... at least I'm out of the limbo of whether I'll be able to do them or not (the insertion part looked a bit clunky, I didn't know if I was gonna have to remove them from the game or not).
I wanted to make a whole playable section for that scene, with a pleasure meter for Rea and a climax meter for you, making it so the player can change the speed of the "action" and make Rea react to that.... The problem is not coding it, animating it or writing the scene (doing that just takes time), I'm worried about the size, each animation is around about 3mb, there are 3 animation sets/positions, with between 2/4 expressions each, plus the talking variables of those, so double that. Also each animation has its speed (idle, lvl1, lvl2, lvl3, pre climax, climax and post climax)with the missionary position having the option of how you want to finish (in or out). That would be over a hundred animations, not counting that if I want Rea to be really reactive to your actions, I have to add the sweat / blush variations to reflect her state. I feel like I'm doing this in a very backward and inefficient way.
In theory it could be solved by exporting each part, frame by frame as a png and then merge it in renpy, then merge the animated parts as a layered image to get the whole animation, but I fear how it will affect performance. I know some people have problems opening the HUD, and I don't know how the polygraph (a layered image composed of simple frame-by-frame animations) is going to affect players in this update.
I think I aimed too high this time.... This update represents what I want the game to be, where dialogues are meaningful and have some sort of game mechanic built into it. I would also like the lewd scenes to be "playable", at least in a simplistic way that allows the player to affect the scene, and not just be a reward for past choices.
All this has me stuck at the moment, if I make the scene as I want, I'm going to keep delaying and I want to launch this update already. Don't think I'm cutting content, the animations will be there, but I wanted the scene to be much more...
I still have some things to do, I have to draw more expressions for the talking animations, also finish more CGs and "simplify" the lewd scene (although I still want the player to have some input in it).
I feel like I'll barely make it to the end of the month, but I'll still have to fix bugs, add music and other smaller stuff like the main menu CG. If I feel I can finish the update by
the first week of October, I will not pause this month's billing (sorry), otherwise if I think I will not get there and it will take longer than that, I will pause the month of October as promised. I am currently running entirely on savings, finishing the update this month (or at least aim for it) required full time and I have not been able to tap into my other sources of income.
Believe me that I am doing everything in my power to finish this update as soon as possible, but I don't want to release something of low quality either, if I feel that I need to add more stuff, I will probably end up pausing the billing for the month of October as well... Sorry for the delays, I will keep working now. Bye!