Hello everyone!
I know there has been a lot of disappointment with the main game being officially declared Abandoned on F95's thread for it. My own included.
As I still haven't heard anything official from Saddog on his site or Patreon or anywhere, I'm still not officially counting him down and out for good yet. But I do know that there is certainly a chance that this is it. There may not be anymore official updates to the game.
Many of you and others have asked if I'll be taking over for Saddog now, officially or not, in updating the game. I would say the answer to that is both, no and yes. I'll try to explain. I'm pretty sure not everyone will agree with my reasoning. But I'll just throw it out there so you at least know where I'm coming from. It's the best I can do.
I have no intention right now in trying to take the place of, or even temporary place of, Saddog in updating the game for full updates. If you looked at the rendering outputs alone of Saddog vs my own, it was many hundred of renders vs my dozens (at most). And his were considered by some to be smaller updates at times. I have no way to keep up with the rendering capabilities of an actual developer with both equipment capability and more importantly time. And honestly, that is my biggest restraint and why you wouldn't want me to take over for full updates on this game.
My time is still severely limited for actual development on my mod. So being able to work from Saddog's updates and renders allowed me a chance to build on his foundation, which I grateful for. I love Saddog's game. That's why I created my mod. I just wanted to expand on and build up something I already respected and enjoyed immensely. So I'm really hoping Saddog returns. He inspired me to learn how to use Ren'Py, to learn how to use Daz Studio and render my own fan arts.
What I do plan on doing right now is working on the long list of things I have been wanting to do with this mod. This includes things like reactive dialogue changes, like Saddog hinted to, but I had already started on, so I see no reason not to continue on that now. Clothing options where there girls are the ones that decide to go buy their outfits based on relationship stats as you corrupt them or they fall more in love with you as an alternate to you buying their outfits for them, it was a fun suggestion that I wanted to add in a while ago. Adding in the special renders Saddog made into the game somehow. I've been working on a number of possible ways to make that work that I would love to try out. I have some more plans with the hidden camera system I'd like to work out. And not to mention the prequel story. This would likely be presented a bit more like a classic VN in that I would use rendered character models placed over static backgrounds. It's something that I could render much faster for the story content but then save the full scene renders just for the sex scenes. Again, nothing set into stone, but probably what I'm looking at doing. But these are just some of the things from the list we've built over time together for this mod and just those things I listed here alone could take me many months if not a year or so to do (and totally an estimate, which we know never goes well for me).
Anyway, so yes, I'll be working on the mod, but not on updating the game itself in a true update sense. I don't even have all of the assets to be able to render all of the locations or characters for the game. But while I'm working on the mod and hopefully still giving you something to enjoy in the world of The Tyrant from time to time. I will be working on gathering more and more of those assets while I work.
Because I need an ending to this game too! We need to see what happens, even if I do eventually have to make it myself. Hopefully, Saddog will re-emerge in time and we won't have to rely on my own attempt to do it justice. But if Saddog does not, then eventually I'm going to come up with something myself. I don't know what it will be. I don't know if other fan artists will help out or what form it will take exactly if it comes to that. And I'm not going to make any promises as to when I might even start on something like that. The moment this stops being fun is the moment I stop working on the mod and I just don't want that to happen. That's why I refuse to make my hobby a job and take money for it and why I don't put public deadlines on myself to add more stress on top of things. My personal deadlines do that plenty on their own!
I hope this helps you understand where I'm coming from on my side of things. What I'll be working on in a general sense of things. And I'll still be keeping in touch when I can and helping out on the thread as much I can as well.
I really appreciate everyone helping each other out and I hope you all are still being safe and finding your own ways to hold on to a little sanity in a crazy world.
