It's the "Besties forever" update...

Hello, and how the devil are you? Hope you a had great week.

I seem to be fair whizzing along right now, and so without further ado, here's the progress update.

Chapter Two

Nothing much, as you'd expect really, except for another head-desk rapid interface as, in rummaging around to collect all the Annie animations to have a crack at restoring her scene to it's full glory for Five, I noted a little pile of redone stills for a variety of scenes in Chapter Two that hadn't gone into the hastily rebuilt and released version.  The panicked attempt to get a build out after the overwrite really wasn't a smart idea. A cup of tea and a bit of acceptance of the situation would have been wiser. Still, they're in the build for Four now but even so, sorry about that.

Chapter Three

I gave this a little while longer to see if any other bugs got reported but, nope. None. So the ones that were reported have now all been fixed. So that's that  off the list.

Chapter Four

I nailed it. I only went and actually hit my marks of getting the thing done. Well, mostly. At the start of last week there were only three things left to do and one of those is really down to me just being picky.

The most challenging piece of work since my last post was filling a thumping great big hole in the script. After amending the old Channel 7 content in Sarah's room, her script then went on to explain the combat in VR. The old combat that is. This is now already covered in the refreshed Three (which is were it should have really been anyway) and so that had to come out as well. I confess it took me a little while to come up with something for this that wouldn't clash with anything else already done. It's ended up a rather fun scene with some multiple layers and a rather decent hidden gag...

The "picky" one I mentioned above is Annie's revised dance. Technically, it's very good. She moves fluidly, there's no clipping, the lighting is great and she's obviously having a ball. But...it seems rather flat to me and I can't put my finger on why. It might be, and most likely is, due to me having seen it so often that it now leaves no impression on me. It also could be due to it being silent at the moment, and perhaps all it needs is a banging sound track - after all I can't imagine too many pole dancing establishments are silent. Or it could just be it needs a bit of camera angle chopping around. I'm not sure, but I want to play with it a bit more to see if I can nudge it from "That's pretty good, Notty" to "Bloody hell....", because it certainly has "Bloody hell" potential.

The main piece of work not touched was revamping the evening module with Chris. The work here involves adding back a pile of content that I'd taken out from the original release. This in itself is a simple enough task but I wasn't quite in the right "space" to do it justice. The script I did was a bit lacking, in part because I think I was gunning for the deadline and ultimately I wasn't happy with it. It needs a clear day and the right frame of mind. So not a major obstacle but still something to do.

The third and final piece of outstanding work is for Voice Acting for the lewd scenes. This is in progress. Work has been commissioned and, due to the sheer volume (and not just for Chapter Four), additional actresses have been approached. I should stress at this point that this is no fault of the VA's. I left this far, far too late and quality VA's are always pretty busy. But it is in hand. 

Chapter Five

Having reached a point at the start of last week of spinning my wheels a bit, I put Four aside and piled into Five. There's still quite a bit of this chapter not tested and it seemed a good opportunity to wrap up some of the modules of the game and push them out to the testers sooner rather than later.

I picked on Bobes win module in VR first mainly due to it having a high element of gameplay and I was keen to get views on that. It needed a little bit of polish. Some of the animations were a bit dated and one asset in particular just didn't look or work very well. A fellow dev has come to my rescue however and it seems we'll have a custom rigged asset to play with which should resolve that issue.

On the subject of VR in Five, I also had a small play around with an additional optional scene following the main scene on a Gloria/Babe loss. This was a scene I always wanted to do but lacked the skills at the time. Technically I can now, however, do it. It's probably the most unusual scene I've attempted and it won't be to everyone's taste. But that is why we have our local bestie vampire to run the somewhat wilder content past you before you see it. And it is unusual. I seriously doubt it's been done before, or if it has, not animated like this. With it now set up and three machines on hand, I'm going for it. I want this in if only because I can't see another opportunity in the game for this scene to happen.

Chapter Six

This was a bit of a palette cleanser at the start of the week and involved setting up and testing a a scene I have planned. It worked really well. Very happy with it and, by chance, it solved a small problem I had with a gap in Five as well. So expect to see a new location.

And that's it for now. My goals this week are to wrap up Chris and Annie on Four, and also to get "Dinner with Amanda" in Five to the guys. It's a complex scene and merits some standalone testing.

Patreon charging, as usual, remains off until Five is released.

Stay, or be, lucky,

Notty

Number of car accidents since October: Nil!