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It's 2023, which I keep forgetting. I wish I could say time flies, but developing games makes you feel like time really drags. The constant development cycle certainly makes for a "Groundhog Day" feeling.
I enjoyed my limited time off and feel very good about how development is going. I did a bit of prioritization and punted a few things to Chapter 12 that I had on my Chapter 11 to do list. Figuring out what you can reasonably get done in a development cycle is half the "fun."
As far as progress, we are still very early, and Chapter 11 is going to be at least as big as Chapter 10. Add in my attempts at animations, and we are looking at a longer than normal development cycle. I'm going to avoid promising any release dates until we are very close to the end. Release dates are tough enough to predict when you are doing what you've always done. Add in a lot of new things, and release dates are near impossible to project. My promise to you is that, if animations are the only thing holding back Chapter 11 significantly, and there is no quick end in sight, I won't hold the release up further by continuing work on animations for this chapter. The good news is that, for the time being and despite some additions to the to do list, I'm ahead of schedule. Animations and a couple of other things are going to determine if that can be maintained.
Other than all the planning, there has been a ton of refinement for character outfits (for characters both old and upcoming). Each character now has a specific set of outfits, and there is, surprisingly, little overlap (except for the men. Just not a lot of options there). I went through all the outfits I had from the different marketplaces, matched them up to characters, and then culled that list down. There will still be some custom outfits, but those may take a few more chapters before I have them ready. Some of the ladies have amassed quite the wardrobe. Looking at you, Estrid.
In addition to that, I've expanded my own custom pose presets and fixed ALL of my existing ones that had some issues (clipping, etc.). The pose library is quite robust, and it saves me a lot of time with each release. I had planned to add about 40 new presets, but I ended up going WAY over that number for new additions. It was so many that I just bit the bullet and finally did my custom lewd poses that I've been wanting to do for several chapters. So many new poses, but so very nice to drastically reduce my setup time even more.
The final thing I completed are the new environments for Chapter 11. There were some updates to some existing environments also, and I tried a few new things with the new environments. Very happy with how things turned out, even if render times are a bit longer than I'd like for some. Oh, and my render rigs got fixed up, as some had some issues or had old hardware that needed replacing. Always good to do that work when I'm not needing to setup renders for a few weeks.
Nothing to show off yet, as the prep and script work continues for now. I will have an announcement to make on the upcoming livestream (this Saturday), so you'll want to tune in to that, if you can (I promise it is a very good announcement). Link will be posted for Patrons later on for that livestream. Have an enjoyable January, and I'll be back with another dev update soon.
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