It's the weekly update - almost there edition :)

TLDR:

Almost there; waiting for final animations and then testing. Oh, and Two is huge. Really big.

Long version

Nearly there guys.

Four things left to do and she's finished.

• Finish two animations
• Add in the revised text box shader code
• Add in the new gallery code (a player kindly gave me some code!)
• Quality testing

If I'd been willing to settle for the original animations I did earlier we'd be -really- close to delivery now but I just couldn't  persuade myself that they were good enough and, of course, once it's out it's out and I -really- want to make an impact with the lewd animations.

To quote Shakespeare:

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,

 And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt’ring o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes  *

*Henry IV, Part One

In other words I could never do animations before and now I can, and begods I want you all to know it :)

There are seven animations in Chapter Two. Five of which are not especially lewd (although two are rather fun regardless...) and two which most certainly are, and it's these two that are getting the rework. 

Now I know that animations themselves are a somewhat divisive subject. Some like them, some not - and I understand both POV's. I think the reason a lot of people don't like animations are that they are often (not always, there are some very honourable exceptions ofc) the same off the shelf animation we've seen on other games. Since these themselves are rather mechanical they are usually about as sexy as a week old cabbage in the fridge and tend to be the same sixty frames repeated etc etc

Now don't get me wrong here. From my side of the fence I can totally understand any dev doing this and I take my hat off to any dev who has ani's in their game in the first place. They can be tricky, take an age to do and eat space and time like a black hole that's just come off a diet. But I digress.

I want animations - and I want good ones. I'd go so far as to say I want the best ones (whether I achieve that or not of course is another matter but aim for the stars etc etc). The two animations that are currently running are 240 and 930 frames respectively (one on the old machine and one on the new machine). Everything from the hair moving, the chest rising and falling, the subtle shift in movements of the body, the works. I've gone to the max to breath life into these scenes and the 930 render one will, hopefully, be so utterly natural it will be as close to lifelike as I can currently get. This is what I do with the power oomph you've given me - I give it right back to you in the best way I can. :) The lewd scenes themselves, although very standard scenarios also haven't (to the best of my knowledge) ever been done like this before either in terms of the scene design.

This is also why I'm going to see if I can get that gallery back in (and why I wanted it in the first place ofc) as if I pull this off you might want to replay that one...

Whilst on the subject of size generally, Chapter Two is close to 4,000 renders in size which isn't that shabby for six weeks work and bodes -very- well going forward.

I am however later than I would have liked, and my first reaction was to have a little despair attack but then I took a step back and thought of all the one off stuff that I've had to do this time around.

With the expansion of the game (I've added everything back in!) I had to come up with new locations for the showers, Amanda's suite of rooms, the Jones' rooms, the medical facilities and there has been major reworks of the power plant, the Scarlet Pirate assets and characters, the lounge etc. Since I  use hardly any asset off the peg and rework almost everything this did take a little time. For example the lounge required some thirty additional assets making for it to feel dressed right. Pictures, beer labels etc. And if that wasn't enough there was the gaming mechanics for Caverns and Creatures which took me a while to get the gameplay balance right as I trod that fine line between ensuring you had that feel of playing a tabletop RPG without drowning you in rules yet also getting the balance between keeping it fun and being a challenge. 

All in all, I reckon that little lot must have been two weeks easy if not slightly longer, so knock those off and I'm looking golden going forward. I must confess however I did waste a day. Now I have both the powah and, seemingly, the skills I did divert into whether I could animate the bonus materials.

Yes I can. I can make Becca poledance :) Anyhoo...

Finally, I should also add at this point that those of you who have played Two before might be in for a few surprises. Although the main plot beats are the same, your choices could end up with your story being rather different to what you've experienced before...

Very.

So that's it. I'm damned close and now waiting for the ani's to pop out. Despite their size they are coming off the machine quite quickly. One of the reasons I take so long on scene design is to ensure that scenes render as quickly as possible and these are taking around 4 minutes a frame. Again not too shabby really.

I'll be doing a separate post behind the paywall tomorrow for Patreons re the draw. Other than that, stay lucky and we're almost there. :)

Laters!