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So first of all, Merry Christmas everyone!
Be it if you're celebrating, just enjoying the holidays, or just waiting for the end of this year and 2026 to begin, I hope you enjoy the last week of it
Here's a little render from the monthly wallpapers, with Raiko's best wishes
I was thinking on what to include here, but might as well combine it with a current progress report, and also a yearly overview of things. Will be a long ass post, probably best to just accept the nice wishes and skip
Since last report, some good stuff but also bad stuff. As mentioned there, I was a bit busier during this time of the year, as family always wants to do "few last things before the year ends", and I am tbh same-minded as them.
Besides that, there was unfortunately another major bottleneck. I've mentioned in the last report I've been dealing with character designs and updated most of them. And I thought I was done with them, but I kept seeing some things that bothered me and did another 2 full resaves of all their cards till now. The other major thing was Hs2 itself, as it has received some updates that I tested, but it changed way more than I thought so had to bugtest (ofc it has issues) and decide if I will be using the updated version or not. I also lost my mind with a certain individual that does those updates, but thats on me.
Honestly? There are some decent benefits to updating, but its more of speedup of animations results and some new flashy features rather than anything noticeable to players. In a way, spent way more time on that then I'll save on animations in the next half a year at least.
Besides those holdups, I did manage to get 280 renders done + monthly wallpapers, which is okay. Not enough to push any sneak peeks obviously, so you'll have to wait for late January for those. Without the small/multiple character resaves, really happy so far with the characters designs on screen, so far the 4+ mc all worked within expected results.
And with the regular report out of the way, I kind of wanted to look at the year as a whole. The year started quite strong, with me finishing Episode 2(finally) and getting it tested by my team in middle February. Quite a bit of typos etc. fixes and all, and preparation for Ep3 began around early March. About here I got hit with the medical stuff, as I had to do so many tests and back and forth visits to a specialist for my situation, which kept getting dragged on and on and on. Here I also decided to focus on script stuff afterwards, so I did ep3 and most of ep4 script and shared ideas with Scooter so there are no plotholes left. May was the start of ep3 renders, which looking at it was such a huge gap since ep2 alpha test (two and a half months till first proper renders is horrendous, even with all the script/doctor/maps/npcs work). May+June+early July seemed quite strong, with okayish ~1300 or so renders done then. Then the 2nd bad period came, with
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banning adult content (to which I'll get back), but also me struggling mentally due to not being able to produce the animations I planned. I remember wasting so much time just looking at my screen, refusing to give up on running animations but also realizing how futile it was...
Well, after that one bad period, I had some really strong pace to finish ep3 during late August-September-October, with some audio stuff pushing me a bit over my goals and Ep3 being finally tested at the start of November. Decent initially with a lot of prep work done, but then the shitstorm of hs2 chara editor + hs2 updates came crushing, before it finally settled last 2 weeks a bit in December.
While there have been some good moments, and some good month to month progresses, it's just evident that I struggled quite a bit as well. Obviously, I still don't consider Rework to be a bad idea or failure in itself, as evident by comments I got from testers, but I once again just can't stress enough how bad of an effect it makes when you month by month just see yourself fizzle out of relevance, earn less and less and barely receive any big dopamine rushes from releases anymore. It's gotten to the point where I barely even play other Vn's, as it often makes me feel worse about myself seeing other regular updates while I am still stuck where I am. With
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also doing what they did, and me losing about 10-15% of any profit forever due to them still blocking me from any revenue, alongside the general current doomposting online? Yeah... It's been rough.
And this is where I realize I've been extremely negative for Christmas, but after letting a bit of my inner depression out, lets change for some slight positives? R-right?
First of all, thank you to all here, be it just reading the post, maybe saving the render, and especially those that still support me financially. It's obvious I wouldn't be able to continue without the support I still have, both financially and mentally. Same for the Discord people, as it's thankfully still an active place and it brings me great joy to see people still excited about my work. And obviously I get excited banning a scammer here and there
With ep4 underway (at the moment, 360 renders done), we are genuinely close-ish to rework getting to the finish line. My decision to go through and reshot even the good renders (Koko/Avis/Raiko bits) obviously greatly hinders the progress, but even so I can slowly see the sun somewhere in the distance. Although the easiest, day 1 is done and I am currently on day 2/6. Episode 4 has and will have by far the most renders (previously it had 2430), but I plan to reuse the shit out of the poses I liked/maps I liked which will make those areas much easier once I reach them, as I am currently doing brand new content for the first 2 days. Besides 1-2 small items, there is also nothing else to port so no major outfit/map holdups either on the horizon. Obviously, I cannot give any kind of dates, as we've seen I struggle at times. But I will do my best to try hit the testing in March, if nothing major happens and I keep an eye on myself.
What a long ass post.
To the TLDR enjoyers, Merry Christmas, 2025 has been a struggle, but I continue moving onwards. Hoping for a good surprise news around March, but time will tell.
To Anyone reading it fully, thank you ❤
And with that, may your and ours 2026 finally be brighter than 2025!
Love you all,
Kat <3
