November News
Added 2016-11-03 17:53:41 +0000 UTC
Greetings! We're now well into UI, and though we don't have anything to show just yet I felt this was a good time to break down my thought processes when conceptualizing the starting point for the interface, as well as plot out our roadmap for the months to come.
I had it figured out in my head for some time now to explore the aesthetics of the time period the game is set in for the interface. The exact timeline is never really explicit in the game's text, but if we had to settle on a date it would be around 2007. So, nearly a decade ago.
From the starting idea of "2007", I decided to explore exactly what was going on in that year. It's... A little surreal trying to wrap my head around it -- it's not long enough ago to be nostalgic, too long ago to be fresh in my mind. Eventually what I took away from it was that it was the year the iPhone came out, and, thinking it over, it felt like an interesting idea to play with.
To be more specific, I settled on the aesthetic of the gen 1 iPhone, with a bit of a twist added in. Again, it's a little weird because I think it's safe to say that nobody's nostalgic for anything from that time period (unless you were into guitar hero or something), but I liked how it fit into the overall theming of the game -- I mean, as much as a porn game can have themes. Corporations were always a pretty prominent fixture in the online version, and some slick product just on the cusp of science fiction felt like a compelling point to start from.
The twist is a bit of a bioshock-esque deterioration of a previously idyllic aesthetic, to align it with the prominent, post-apocalyptic theme. The general plan is to make a "pristine" version, and then, for example, scratch it up a bit -- perhaps, giving it a look as though the UI has been handled by some unearthly, bestial thing. It's possible that the pristine version will still exist, but as something patreon-exclusive; a purely cosmetic perk.
It's a... Tad ambitious coming from someone who's an amateur at graphic design, at best -- but, hey, I barely had any experience with Actionscript and I ended up pulling that off, and this is totally the same thing! What's the worst that could happen? What... Is... The. . .
--But seriously, though, we're well on track right now, for once! We're passing a super-rough mockup stage right now and starting to move into more serious design. It's very likely we'll have a full mockup by november's end.
Optimistically, we should see early implementation in december. If we were really optimistic, we could see ourselves entering final pass by the year's end. This assumes we don't encounter any hiccups along the way, though I'm certain we won't encounter instances like the content iteration where I wildly over-estimated my ability to make a lot of content.
For those unaware, final pass is basically beta -- everything is done except for our remaining goals for written content, and maybe a smattering of trivial, ancillary mechanics.
