It's the "Here is the news" update...

Hello!

Alrighties, so a couple of weeks since I last posted and how is progress going?

Chapter One

I've been continuing a "supah sekret" release of this, incorporating feedback in respect of the GUI structure and usability each time and then shipping out a fresh version to someone else. The general feedback I'm pleased to say remains consistent, in that there's no dissent over this being a far superior product to what went before. It is, to paraphrase one set of feedback, the version of Heavy Five that they've always wanted to play.

On specific feedback, I did have some technical issues reported in respect of sound and animations that seemed to be impacting on those with very high quality rigs or those with very large monitors. These, with some help, have now been resolved. But, if nothing else, picking up errors like these (which weren't visible to me) justified the partial secret release of One to ensure the version that goes out generally is completely fault free. But I think that's it for One now. Twenty copies out and nothing else has cropped up so I can call that one done.

Chapter Two

The good news here is that re-wiring the new GUI and putting in the new achievements and events etc only took a week. The time spent earlier on the structural work has paid dividends at this stage making updating further chapters an absolute breeze. Especially so, when you consider Two required three new characters adding with all their component parts along with the engineering database.

On the downside there was some additional unplanned work. Although I had a sneaky feeling two scenes would need some polish, I found that two others needed a redo due to graphical errors I was unaware of.

Firstly, Chris had been flying too close to the sun at some point and was a vague orange colour at the start of Two and so looked different to her appearance at the end of One. It took me a little while to work out but turned out it was purely due to her being so far from the zero point of the scene that Daz was throwing a bit of a tantrum. In the end all it needed to rectify it was moving her (and the entire scene!) so she was at zero and re-running the renders.

The second error that cropped up was dear old Mike who, somehow had changed skin shader between Chapters Two and Three and Four and Five. Since he has fewer scenes and renders in Two and Three, those were the scenes that needed the later skin shader applied and re-running again.

Damn it, Mike!

As to the two scenes I thought would need some polish. Well, they did. Trisha in the plant room looked bloody awful and Annie's lewd was...not good. Not good at all. Given the quality of the refreshed animations in One and the later animations in Five it looked, comparatively, like the Gif of Sarah in the snowball game. 

Did it really matter? Well, yes. Both of these scenes are the entry to two major pathlines and if they're not enticing enough then no one will go down those routes. I mean, why would they? Besides, lewds should always be high quality else what's the point of them being there? So Trisha got redone (and looks much better) and Annie is, as I type, about 4,000 frames in on a new set of animations. One of the joys of having more than one PC is I can afford, timewise, to dedicate a machine to doing this sort of thing whilst cracking on with other work (Thank you all so much, once again. The difference it makes being able to do this is incredible). Once the new lewd is done I'll pass the chapter over to the boys for testing.

As to the rest of the chapter, it's had sound and incidental music added throughout as per One and VR got a bit of a polish. Nothing too major, mainly the front end where I really wanted to underline to the player that they are now in a game as opposed to real H5 life.

The plant room "work" mechanic also got a bit of a buff and some restructuring done. It's now more informative and yet also briefer. Not entirely sure how I pulled that one off but the player has a much better idea of what's going on and can make more informed choices all within a simpler framework. There was also a a small bit of GUI work to distinguish between order types.

The only significant piece of GUI work that came out of Two was an oversight in respect of the achievements in which I hadn't really thought about making it easy for you to check the various chapters as the game progressed. A simple menu when you open the achievements tab was all it needed,

Still, overall, I don't regard that as being too shabby for a couple of weeks work.

Chapter Three and releases

I've already started on the re-wiring for Three and, other than Mike and a bit of VR polish, I'm not expecting much in the way of additional work. The only thing really not play tested at this point is the engineering database which, although it makes an appearance in Two, doesn't really come into play until this chapter.

Obviously I'm bloody keen to start shipping  but I can't afford to mess this up and I do want the testers and some players views on this mechanic, just in case it needs any retrospective adjustments (for example to the tutorial etc).

So I think my plan is get Three to the guys and, once we're happy with that, release One out into the wild. Given the now known time for re-wiring a chapter and, even allowing for any polish or unexpected errors, that should allow me to drop a refreshed chapter all the way to Five every couple of weeks.

Of course, Patreon remains paused until Five comes out. 

Other things not related to Heavy Five at all!

Well you can tell I've had my head down as a quite major event completely passed me by. The game, Long Live the Princess got completed a few months ago. 

Why do I mention this? Well, LLTP was the first adult game I really enjoyed. It was an eye opener to me in terms of what an adult game could be and, although there's been a few other games subsequently (one in particular that I'll mention in a later post) that have also scratched this itch, LLTP was the first. Not only that, it's the reason Heavy Five exists.

It showed me that a game could be sexy, funny and smart. That a game could be thoughtful and entertaining, and that an adult game could treat its audience intelligently. Without LLTP, I would have never have made H5.

If you enjoy my work, I'd suggest (if you haven't already) that you check it out.*

https://www.patreon.com/longlivetheprincess 

And that's it for this week.

I'm starting to get way behind on my post and messages again but I'll try to catch up once the testers have been fed :)

I'll keep cracking on and in the meantime stay, or be, lucky.

Notty

*Nope, this isn't a commercial arrangement. Belle has no idea I was going to recommend the game. I genuinely mean the above and recommend it heartily.