Update 11th May '25

Slow and careful pretty much summed up this week.

But before that, I've had a few responses to the Adopt-a-Harlot idea for commissioning spicier H-scene artwork (see previous post). Main wrinkle at the moment is sorting out a payment processor that is completely anonymous. I'm still trying to figure out how to do this. At a pinch I guess something could be worked around here by temporarily raising the subscription by +$100 per month and then immediately dropping it back to what it was before after payment. That feels a little clumsy, so I'm open to suggestions on the best way to sort out a one-shot payment to arrange a commission.

As for the weekly update. I'm still in that dilemma of I know I've been spending too much time programming, I know people would like to see some writing (or just about anything else), but I'm also conscious I need to get this done now rather than coming back later and losing a lot of progress. I don't like it, but I think the best approach is to just get it done and out of the way. It's hit my sub count a little, which is understandable as I've been bogged down for about 3 weeks longer than I would have liked. My hope is I'll get people back once I'm through the other end and HoHH is moving nicely again with the nice new notebook features.

This week I took that much needed step back to properly go over things. I removed a lot of needless complexity and fixed some problems I was having. The notebook updates on the end of scenario, so no mid-scene spoilers. I think I've solved the black rose problem and overall I've simplified a lot of clue update calls so there are less hidden "land mines" to worry about.

Because I want to get it all out of the way in one go, I'm now working on the scoring and replay mode. Scoring is pretty much done and I have ideas on how to do the replay mode. (This is the other reason I want to keep at it - I've already figured out how to do some of these things in my head and so want to actually implement them now rather than coming back in two months and realising I've forgotten how I was going to do it).

The repeated testing was eating up a lot of time, so I've cut that back to a lighter, run it and fix the obvious things blowing up. I also don't think the game as a whole is the best way to test this, so I'll be making my harlot tester program available on the houseofhellishharlots website fairly soon. That will allow people to pick harlots directly and be able to run through their scenario over and over, which is what is needed to test the notebook functionality. I'll try to get that up in the next couple of weeks as soon as I have replay mode working.

This has obviously completely blown up my initial plans for the year. I think the new features will be worth it, but it's definitely been more of a slog than I anticipated to add them. I'm really hoping the payoff is worth it!

Thank you for your continued patience and understanding.
- manyeyedhydra