Patreon post;
I started work on Power Vacuum about eighteen months ago. My elevator pitch at the time was to make a sitcom version of the typical "house" style visual novel. I figured a tightly written comedy VN would be well received; as well as the perfect job for me to do in-between weekend gigs. The reception to the first three versions of my game were lukewarm. People enjoyed the characters and humor but were rightly critical of my erotic content. So, I started putting more time into learning how to make my erotic content better. I'm sure those of you who have made use of the gallery feature have noticed the difference in quality from the early chapters. But this increase in quality has started to take a toll. Animations, collision, dforce, water physics, lighting, geometry shells, natural looking clothing, and expressions have piled up. And when it comes to getting things exactly as you want them, DAZ Studio is a clunky piece of software. Coupled with the iray render engine being slow even on 2000 series GPUs; experimentation has been a time consuming endeavor that has specifically been eating into my writing time. I've tried to squeeze in as much writing as possible, but comedy is difficult and I have to be in the right mindset. I ended up having to force it with deadlines; resulting in writing that I'm unhappy with. Now, all of the blame can't be attributed to my stringent writing schedule. Part of the issue is that it's hard to write a comedy game during the bleakest year of my life. I'm sure many of you can empathize. I know depressed VN artist is a worrying cliché, so I will state that I'm not mentally at risk. It's just been an understandably awful year.
The reason why I bring this up is because as we approach the home stretch to version seven, I've decided to postpone the update and take November off to rewrite most of the scenes, redo renders, and get out of my head for a while. Before anyone can say the word "milking", I'll be pausing my Patreon for November since this is a borderline vanity move as I'm sure a fair amount of you don't care if my writing is up to my own personal standard. The update was originally scheduled for around the 8th-13th of November. The new date will be the same but in December. I know this is a disappointing announcement, just know that I'm not happy about it either. Again, Patreon will be free next month if you're already subscribed and today's game teasers will be posted tomorrow.
Moving forward, I've been trying to think of ways to make sure this doesn't happen again. Taking a month off for my mental health is a start as it also gets me one month closer to the long promised return to normalcy. Secondly, I've decided to invest in a new workstation PC with two RTX 3090s. It should be up and running around November 10th. It'll be four times as fast as my current PC and will significantly speed up my workflow. Other than that, I'm out of ideas. The game already dominates all of my time since the work is never done and everything can be improved. When I look at the shortcuts that other visual novels take, I don't see any that I want to copy. However, the main thing that I've noticed time and again is that the majority of VN players are completely satisfied with pedestrian dialogue. An adult visual novel written like a sitcom was an interesting concept, but I think this is the wrong medium. Most people don't look at these games as adult visual novels. They look at them as porn games. And porn games don't need wordplay, characterization, or proper use of any literary device.
Part of the problem could be that a considerable amount of people that play VNs aren't from the USA and presumably know English as a second language. Comedy is the hardest thing to translate and there's just no way the numerous people messaging me things like "Why Hunter no sex lady?" are going to appreciate the joke I'm writing about a commercial from forty years ago. So, again, for my edification, I've included a poll asking your opinion on my writing. I have no plans to change how Power Vacuum is written but the results will influence any future games I may make.
I'll appreciate any ideas you may want to offer in the comments.
Thanks for supporting Power Vacuum, sorry about the delay, and Happy Halloween
. ....Keep up the great work 
