I'll cut right to the chase since I'm sure you're wondering why the numbers suck. Suffice it to say, it's been a really tough week for me. I can't get into too many details for privacy reasons, but I've unfortunately lost my job this past week. I'm thankful that it was at least through no fault of my own, but I've still been in a state of panic ever since. As you can imagine, losing most of my income and all my benefits so suddenly has been extremely stressful, and made it extremely hard to concentrate on much apart from trying to plan out how I'm going to survive on a shoestring budget.
I suppose it's a bit of a good news, bad news situation for you. Since I suddenly have much more time to work on the game, but I don't have a lot of savings, and as it is, Homelander doesn't quite pay the bills. Still, I have a little tucked away, and if I'm careful and productive, I might be able to survive just long enough to get the next update out. If I can release more regular updates, it's conceivably possible that Homelander could sustain me. Anyway, I'm rambling too much, and I definitely won't survive off of anything if I don't get to work.
The situation is still very fresh, and I'm not even sure if I've fully come to terms with everything yet, but I felt that you all deserve to be aware of my situation. At least, as aware as I can make you without blasting my personal info everywhere.
I'll leave it here for tonight. I hope you all have a better week. Much love! JB
Maryn is having some trouble sleeping tonight as well. Her mind races, worrying about you and your squad. She wonders if perhaps she should check in on you... to relieve some of her stress.
Hey all,
I apologize for the late post. It's been a hectic week. I'll get into it more in tomorrow's report. I also meant to make more renders for this post, but given the aforementioned hectic week, it will have to wait for another time.
Maryn is having some trouble sleeping tonight as well. Her mind races, worrying about you and your squad. She wonders if perhaps she should check in on you...
Hey all,
I apologize for the late post. It's been a hectic week. I'll get into it more in tomorrow's report. I also meant to make more renders for this post, but given the aforementioned hectic week, it will have to wait for another time. The gold version of this post will be posted shortly.
We're on to round 3 of the At-Home Check-ins, and Maryn is taking her shot on the poll, but we'll see if Gloria or Sheila will finally get the victory. So I once again ask...
Who should we visit this week?
The follow-up post should be up on Saturday. See you then! Much love! JB
This week wasn't as productive as I would have hoped because I was visiting with family on the weekend. So while I lost nearly a full day of dev time, it was at least for a good cause. Thankfully, I don't have any plans this coming week, so I intend to make up for the lost time.
As for what I've been working on, I won't spoil anything, but as I mentioned in the previous poll, there are two possible paths you can take in S7, and I've nearly finished with the first. I lost a bit of time from my family visit, but it shouldn't take as long to finish the second possible path now that I have a lot of the framework in place. Thankfully, the second half of S7 has so much less going on, and I'm hoping I can knock that half out in a week or two.
I also gave S8 some much-needed framework and plotted out a few of the scene's highlights. I'm still a little ways off from starting any significant work on it, but given that it may be even more work than S7 after all is said and done, I wanted to get a head start on the storyboarding so that I wasn't going in blind.
Subscribers can expect another 'Chapter 5 Check-in' Poll to vote on who we're going to visit back home. We've already checked in on both Kaela and Abigail on separate occasions, and someone needs to fill their open spot on the poll. Check back on Wednesday to find out who will be stepping up against the returning contenders, Gloria and Sheila.
That's all for today, Homies. Have another great week! Much love! JB
Today's poll is mostly to gauge people's expectations. I'll do my best to avoid any spoilers, but the very question itself could potentially spoil some very minor parts of what's to come, so proceed at your own risk.
As many surely know, Scene 7 is going to have some interesting content. While I won't go into detail about the 'who, what, where, or when' of it all, there is a small bit of the 'how' that you might be able to help me with.
I originally wanted to have 3 paths, but for the sake of time, I've only fully planned out two different paths for the player to choose from. I've nearly finished with the first path, but I'm becoming increasingly aware of how difficult it is to render these scenes. As much fun as I'm having with them, they're extremely complex, and they take a lot of work to finish. I suppose my question is...
How many choices would you like for S7?
Before you vote, keep in mind that I've been working on just one of these paths for the past two weeks. The other paths would likely each take around the same amount of time to finish.
I'm definitely leaning towards the two options I already have mapped out. Thematically, it makes sense to have at least two options. However, I could push for a third path if there's an overwhelming majority of people who prefer the extra choice rather than a faster release. Of course, I could also cut the second option if a majority of people preferred a faster, but smaller and more kinetic release.
I look forward to seeing how people feel about it, but for now, I'll leave it here. I hope you all have a great weekend! Much love! JB
Miranda prepares your squad for the eventful morning. You have to admit, you're becoming quite excited as she explains the wargames in greater detail.
Hey all,
As promised, I wanted to give you all some idea of how many people I'm working with in this scene. As you'll see in time, these are BY FAR some of the least populated scenes in S7, but I didn't want to show the actual event because I would rather keep as much of it as a surprise for the actual update.
For now, I hope you enjoyed the sneak peek, and I'll see you again later this week for the player development poll. Much love! JB
Believe it or not, this week has been pretty damn good! It might not seem like it from the numbers, but it's only because S7 is such a slog to get through, so the numbers are actually impressive by my standards. I'm glad that I'm only doing S7 and S8 in the next release, because they're both going to be upping the ante over previous scenes, and I hope I can do them justice.
I'll be posting a teaser for S7 this week to give you an idea of just how many characters I'm dealing with in some of the busier renders. It's been a lot of fun, but it's so time-consuming when you need to pose each part of every character, right down to the individual finger knuckle in some cases. There are obviously some shortcuts, but they usually cost money, they don't always work, and I often need to do a bunch of reposing anyway, so the time saved can be minimal.
Anyway, as I mentioned, I'll be making a teaser post for S7, and I also have the first Chapter 5 Player Development Poll planned for this week as well. I can't spoil anything, and I'm pretty sure I already know what the answer is going to be. Still, I've been surprised by the results of these polls in the past. I could potentially be swayed away from madness by a majority vote. Or even swayed deeper into madness, perhaps... I'm looking forward to seeing those results.
It seems that Abigail wasn't the only one having trouble sleeping tonight. Kaela, however, knows a few ways to help herself get back to sleep a little quicker.
Hey all,
I hope you enjoy the renders and have a safe weekend!
I usually prefer to split up these kinds of posts a little, but my brain feels like a pinball today, so I just need to get something out so that I can try to use my limited brain function to get back to work.
The last 'Check-in poll' winner was Abigail, and I hope everyone enjoyed visiting her. Now, we're on to the next roster, adding the fiery little Kaela into the mix, as she was another person we haven't seen since Chapter 4 Part 1.
Note to newer followers: Progress bars are very rough estimates that will get more accurate as time passes.
It was another relatively productive week, though, admittedly, I've been running in circles for a few days while trying to figure out how to execute scene 7. With so many characters to manage, it's bound to be a slog one way or another, but I'm hoping that some careful planning might shave some time off in the long run. I won't spoil any specifics, but players will have a choice in how to handle the scene, so while there's more work for me, hopefully, there's more fun for you.
I'm surprised that I don't have more to ramble about this week, given how focused I've been on the game, but I suppose a short report is a win-win. Less reading for you and less typing for me.
Oh, yeah! While it's still too early to say for sure, I'm reasonably certain that I'll be releasing the rest of this chapter in two separate parts. Scenes 7 and 8 will likely be the heftiest of the bunch, so those two will be next, with the last four to follow in another release later. As I've mentioned, I have no intentions of letting this game go another year without a release!
I guess I'll leave it here for today. I hope you all have a good one! Another poll/pin-up combo later this week, though it will likely be a Gold-Tier post this time, so keep your eyes peeled!
It's been quite some time since we've heard from a lot of the characters, and we all deserve to check in on them to see how they're doing. The real question is...
Who should we check up on first?
I know there are many characters that you might prefer to check on before these three, but given that these are three of the characters we haven't seen since way back in Chapter 4 Part 1, I thought they deserved a chance on the poll first!
Everyone back home will get a chance in the polls, and even if your favorite doesn't win this time, they'll have another chance on the poll before long. This particular check-in poll will have a Silver-tier follow-up post later this week.
Looking forward to seeing who I get to work with for some bonus content! Much love! JB
Note: I'm trying something new by underlining the highlights of my ramblings so that people can skim the reports a little more easily, and so I don't feel as bad when I talk a little too much. Let me know what you think.
First progress report for the new content, and although the numbers don't show it, I spent a lot of time this week planning out the game's next major event. It's funny that for all the world-building and planning I've done for each chapter, I honestly had no idea what I was going to do for this event until this past week. I have practically everything else thoroughly planned and plotted for this chapter, but this event kept being pushed back in my head. Thankfully, when the time came to buckle down and figure it out, I'm quite happy with what I managed to cook up.
Very much in conjunction with the planning of the event, I also spent my render time this week designing and testing out various scene options before landing on one that I liked, so I didn't get a lot of time to start rendering out content. There's the bonus of having lots of characters to manage, which makes things take a little longer as well. Thankfully, now that I have the setting, the characters, and the event all ready to go, I can spend the rest of the week grinding out as much of this scene as possible.
I'm surprisingly locked in with this update, and to be honest, I can't wait to finish writing this report so I can dive back into setting this event up. That being said, I think I'll leave the report here for today. See you all later this week for the 2 subscriber posts (1 poll, and a silver or gold tier follow-up).
This isn't exactly an unfamiliar image to anyone who's watched the credits, but for all the years it's been there, I never released a 4k version of it for subscribers. This was the first Goddess-tier commission I ever made, and frankly, the first version was pretty bad imo, but after a few reworks a while back, I was happy enough with where it landed.
Even though the subscriber is long gone, I still want to reshoot this one more time, if only for some better framing. Since I'll likely have done that by the next release, I figured I may as well release the OG in 4k first.
I hope you all enjoy the unobscured, full 4k definition version of this image! Much love! JB
We're finally back with another Player Choice Poll!
While this is technically a repeat of an older poll, now that the decision has some actual bearing on the story, I wanted to repeat it to see how opinions might have changed since then.
I imagine the result will stay similar, as I'm not sure how many people play multiple times to see all the variations of the content. However, maybe seeing all the weapon variations above will encourage some of you to explore some alternative options in your next playthrough.
For those who don't know, every update gives the player at least one exclusive scene based on previous choices.
Either way, now that you've been given a shiny new weapon, and you've seen some exclusive scenes associated with said weapon, I'm curious to know what you think.
If you only played once, what did you choose, and are you happy with that choice? (Comment below)
If you played multiple times, which is your favorite route so far, and are you happy with the available choices? (Comment below)
Also, in unrelated news: To all the new members, I've only just realized that the old content isn't currently unlocked for some of you, so I'll be spending the evening unlocking as much of it as I can. It was a major oversight on my part, and I'm sorry. I promise there's more content on my page than just my progress reports!
EDIT:Every past post should now be unlocked for all corresponding member tiers!
I don't really have a progress report for you this week, since I spent launch week taking it easy and being ready to work on any quick patches that might be required. Thankfully, apart from my usual spelling errors, there doesn't appear to be any major issues with this release, so I was able to recharge this week.
Now that the update has been released and we're finally moving forward again, there are some things I'd like to address:
1. The next update WILL NOT take another year to release! Even though my time is often limited, if I have to start releasing quarter-chapters or even individual scenes, whatever it takes, I will make sure this next release is quicker!
2. The subscriber rewards are returning this week! I know I've apologized many times already for the lack of rewards recently, so instead of apologizing again, I'm just going to stop failing you. I'm starting to plan my rewards out in advance, and I already have this week's rewards lined up and ready to go (Gold-tier 4k image post, and a poll). Hopefully, I can keep that momentum moving forward.
I don't have much else for this week's "report", so I'll leave it here for today. I hope you all enjoyed the new content, and thank you all for another great release week! Much love! JB
I'm sorry that it took so long, but Chapter 5: Part 1 has finally arrived! Since I've already kept you waiting long enough, I'll jump right into the links and add whatever other commentary I can think of underneath.
Patch instructions: Unzip the contents into your existing Homelander game folder and overwrite all files when prompted.
I hope you all enjoy this next leg of the adventure, and I look forward to any feedback you have once you're finished. Although make sure you don't comment spoilers under this post, or I may have to delete them to spare ruining any surprises for others.
I'm sorry that my next post wasn't the update, as I had hoped, but regardless, I didn't want a Monday to pass by without some kind of update for you.
As the image suggests, the update will start rolling out tomorrow afternoon/evening (EST). I was originally aiming to release it today, but with all the drastic changes across the internet over this past week, I wanted to give all the recent Itch refugees an extra day to see my recent post there and jump over to one of my sub-sites before rates go up.
On a brighter note, the beta testers seem to have weeded out the few minor errors and grammatical mistakes that I missed, and everything else seems to be working perfectly! So after a few last-minute additions to the credits, everything will be ready to upload!
I'll see you all in the next post for the update release! Much love! JB
After I received some slight pushback regarding moving the game's unlock to a higher tier, I sought some advice from other, more experienced developers. As they've recommended, I've decided against going ahead with that plan. Sort of.
The current plan is to keep all existing memberships as they are, but slightly increase the price of new memberships.
I'm not sure if this is enough time for a change like this, but I would like to make the change when the update is dropped. I would always prefer to give people a little more notice for big shake-ups like this, but as some of you may know, there's been some shake-ups in my game's industry in recent days, so I would prefer to get the update out as soon as possible.
The price increases are below:
Again, no existing memberships should be affected! This will only be for new memberships starting after the update is released. Please let me know what you think!
It's been a hectic week, but as far as I can tell, I can count the things I have left to do on a single hand. I've just been crossing my t's, dotting my i's, and wrapping everything else up.
I only need to: -Finish updating the menu screens (will be done tonight) -Finish remaining subscriber rewards (will also hopefully be done tonight) -Update credits (possibly finished tonight, if the above can be finished) -process and test final build (hopefully tomorrow) -Send to beta testers and fix any potential errors (I've done extensive testing already, so I hope this step won't take long, but people's schedules may vary)
After that, I should be able to start rolling the update out to everyone!
In other, slightly less awesome news, I think I'm going to have to raise the game's price to $10(CND) (gold-tier) once the update starts rolling out. Unfortunately, the cost of living in my country was already out of hand, but then certain world events have been exacerbating things to a dangerous degree, at least in my case. You aren't my therapist, so I'm not going to bother you with a sob story for sympathy, but, sadly, I think this is something I need to do if I'm going to justify continuing to work on the game instead of getting a second job.
Alright, I'm going to get back to wrapping this release up. If all goes well, the next post you see will be the update getting released! I hope you're all ready, and I very much hope I don't disappoint! Much love! JB
I'm still heavily in the post-production phase of the update, and while it's seemingly the slowest moving, I promise it's one of the most essential. This is where I finally get a chance to see how the scenes flow together, if they need any additions or cuts, and it's one more chance for any last-minute inspirations.
I could list all the tiny things I've been doing, but it sounds exhausting to list them all, and doubly so when I consider that I would have to be vague with most of them to avoid spoilers. So instead, I'll list a few of them to give you a general idea of some of the things I've worked on this week:
-Timing out scenes to sync up with audio/visual cues -Scripted and shot a small addition to S6 -Testing various splitting paths, but primarily the Axe/hammer/sword variants -Photoshopping (fix clipping clothes, apply noise masking, add motion blur, etc...) -General script/code polishing (Often, obsessively...)
Hmm... Turns out I'm full of shit, and I was able to list most of them, and keep them fairly vague lol! Sorry, I'm tired... Anyway, I'm leaving the above lines in because I think it's funny.
I'm still trying desperately to start rolling the update out before we hit the 52nd week, but I find it incredibly hard to imagine that it will take me another 2 weeks to finish all the testing and polishing. I mean, never say never, because I'm a known fuck-up, but ideally, I should be able to start sending beta builds out to testers this weekend/early next week. The people I have in mind will also get messages soon. I've just been juggling a lot and haven't found the time to write up any DMs yet.
It took a lot longer to get the report posted tonight because I wanted to be able to announce that I've finished with the script and coding for this release! Or at least the beta version... There's still a lot of testing and polishing that I need to complete. On top of testing, I have 2 pages of notes for edits, photoshops, and SFX/songs, etc... that I need to integrate into the chapter as well.
However, as you might imagine, testing is probably the easiest step in the entire development process. So, if I'm a good Bonk, then I can start sending test copies to the testers sometime next week, and then I can start rolling the update out for subscribers soon after that.
So I still won't make any promises, because as soon as I do, something will inevitably mess everything up... But ideally, this update will be fully released before the anniversary of the last update. I really don't want this update to have taken me a full year, even if I'm only a week or two short.
Also, for those who read the rules on the last report about the beta tester requirements, you can disregard those requirements until further notice. After some helpful comments and a little reflecting on the problem, I decided that for the time being, I'm just going to choose the people that I think want/deserve it, without any specific requirements. I'll be changing the Mithril subscriber tier to remove 'Beta tester eligibility' from its description as soon as I can.
Alright, that's all for this report, folks! Much love! JB
As some of you may have noticed, I made some more animations. Although, in my defense, one was a reshoot, but I eventually decided that the original wasn't scuffed enough to be excluded from the game, so I added both versions for people to switch between. If I've learned anything this week, it's that I'm going to stop claiming to be "done with all the animations" until I'm 100%, without a doubt, finished with them!
Still, I was able to get some large chunks of scripting finished, I added another big lore section for people to peruse, and I've been testing and refining all the scenes I could get my hands on. Mainly scenes 2 and 6, but I was able to make a quick run through 4 and 5 as well.
As far as development, that's all there is to report this week; however, I've been giving a lot of thought to the beta testing process, and I think that, at least for this release, I have a plan that should work for me without being too complicated. There are a couple of basic qualifiers for those who are interested, but these are things that people should think about going forward, rather than trying to rush to complete them before this release.
1. You must be/have been a Mithril tier member for at least one month since the last release. -The longer the better, but I'm not trying to milk people for money, so one month is enough. 2. Must be (relatively) active and engaged with the community and post. -I don't expect social butterflies, but if I don't even recognize your screen name...
There are more qualifiers, but those are for me to know. I already have a shortlist in mind for this release, and those people will be getting messages when the time comes. However, the list may expand if needed.
I'm sorry that my life is a mess and this release is taking so much longer than I'd like, but we're in the final stretch and you won't have to wait much longer at all! Hang in there!
Another week down, and I can confidently say that I've finished the bulk of this update's rendering. I wrapped up what I hope are the last two animations early last week and started diving heavily into the testing and coding. You'll probably notice progress seemingly slow down over the next couple of reports, but it's because most of my time will be spent testing every possible route combination, spell-checking, and coding all the dumb, complicated stuff I want to add.
It's always funny to me how much I dread the coding half of things until an idea pops into my head and I happily spend several days slaving over code to try and make it work. Honestly, it's probably pretty simple stuff for most other developers, but when you often go 6-12 months between coding, things tend to feel more difficult.
I'm in the middle of one of these coding mini projects right now, so I'll leave the report here for today. Although I'd like to apologize again for the lack of subscriber content. I don't have any excuses, I'm just too focused on trying to finish this update as soon as possible. Any time I've tried sitting down to render some bonus content, I always feel like I should be spending that time on the game.
Anyway, I hope you all have a great week. If you're also in an area experiencing extreme weather, please stay safe! Much love! JB
It's been a hectic week since I've had to reshoot 3 of my existing animations. Unfortunately, I made a mistake and rendered them at too high a frame rate, so most of them felt like they were in fast-forward. One of them wasn't too fast, so I was able to keep it in the game and extend the scene a little bit, but I rendered a slower version as well, so that things flowed a little better.
I've finally been forced into scripting/coding, which had been going smoothly enough. Of course, as soon as I discovered the need for reshoots, the script fell to the wayside. Still, I had a couple of days to spend on nothing but testing/scripting/coding and I made some good progress as far as I'm concerned.
I have a new animation rendering as we speak, but it only just started, so it didn't feel right to add it to this week's numbers. After the one rendering, I should only have one more animation left for this half-chapter, maybe two if I really feel like the scene needs a little more, but it'll be hard to figure that out until I can finally test the full scene. Which should be possible right after these 2 animations.
Please stay safe out there! It feels like the world is getting crazier by the day, and I hope we all make it safely through to the other side! Much love! JB
Hey all, Here's part 2 of the previous post. I wanted to get another render done for this miniseries, but unfortunately, I had to reshoot
Hey all,
Here's part 2 of the previous post. I wanted to get another render done for this miniseries, but unfortunately, I had to reshoot some animations this week, so I didn't want to spend any more time on bonus content than I had to. The 4Ks are in the attachments below.
Hey all, I have at least one more of these Olivia renders in my queue, but I'll have to release it/them later this week when I have more ti
Hey all,
I have at least one more of these Olivia renders in my queue, but I'll have to release it/them later this week when I have more time to set aside for bonus content. Getting this update wrapped up is my top priority right now.
I hope you all enjoy the renders. As usual, the 4Ks are available in the attachments.
It's been a fairly solid week of development, and I finished another decent chunk of the game. I'm still having a lot of issues when trying to dive into the script and code that I need to finish, but I know that when push comes to shove (aka when I have no excuses to work on anything else), I'll be able to buckle down and get it done.
I finished 5 animations this week, one of which is yet another S2 addition. I was able to get a little bit of testing done this week, and I just felt like S2 was missing a little bit more content for the scene to flow properly into its conclusion. I still need to test one of the major routes for S2, but since it mirrors the one I've been working on, I pray that this was the last addition it will need.
As for S6, I should only need another 4-6 animations to wrap it up. I still need a bunch of renders for it, but the scene is so easy to work with that I can't imagine a world where the bulk of this update isn't finished rendering within the next couple of weeks. After that, I can start properly testing everything! There's also a bit of UI work that I'd like to do, but that's not exactly important for the release, so it will probably be put on the back burner if it proves more difficult than I hope.
Hey all, I hope you enjoy this gold-tier version of the previous post: I'm sorry for the lack of posts recently. As mentioned in my last re
Hey all,
I hope you enjoy this gold-tier version of the previous post:
I'm sorry for the lack of posts recently. As mentioned in my last report, things have been a bit challenging for me recently, but that's no excuse. I forced myself to whip up a little Sabrina post last night/this morning, and I think they turned out quite nicely.
Unfortunately, even in your dreams, Sabrina is too nervous for a full reveal just yet.
4K versions are in the attachments below! Again, I hope you all enjoy! Much love! JB
