Good morning!

With the next update finally right around the corner I wanted to take a moment to refresh everyone on what to expect from it!

So first we are expanding the number of scenes (as every update will do). I am also completely reworking the dominance and submission system. Moving forward you will only ever gain dominance or submission. Previously you could lose and gain each stat depending on your actions. Now you will only gain one or the other and you'll need a minimum amount of points in or the other to perform specific actions. (If you've played any of mass effect, think renegade and paragon points.) So the ideal balancing goal will be that if you have an even number of each you will be able to do most things regarding one or the other but more difficult events might be out of your reach. Whereas if you're full dominant you'll always have access to every dominant option and the same for submissive but be practically fully locked out of the opposite choices. I am enabling an easy mode for this system for those who don't want to choose which is replacing the "neutral" option from previous versions. With the easy mode you will automatically have max values for both submission and domination so both options will always be available.

Next, the main focus of this update is the combat system. While I am super excited about what we've made, it is incredibly complex, which some of you will love and some of you will hate (if you'd like to see small sample of what I mean by that you can check the sneak peaks channel in the discord for enthusiasts and higher, I will be posting the classes for the player character shortly after I launch this post). Not to worry if it is not your thing, combat has 3 modes, normal, hard and disabled. (Hard mode will not yet be available on first release. I'll have it up and running a few updates later!) Normal is not intended to be difficult at all but will require you to do more than just press the attack button like in most RPG games. Hard will be a challenge which will require you to properly utilize your party structure, builds and items but is not intended to be an "unfair" experience where the only way to win is to cheese the system. And finally, disabled is pretty straight forward. You can disable combat entirely and skip it. You'll still get any relevant story dialogue that would normally occur during the fight and the relevant defeat scene will get unlocked in the gallery.

Now, all of this will be in the release announcement and patch notes, so why am I talking about it right now? Well, with the complexity and number of parts to this system, I want to make it clear that on this first release THERE WILL BE BUGS, along with some placeholders for artwork. Some bugs may even be game breaking. But at the very least there will be some annoyances. We won't release the update so long as there are bugs we are aware of, but the honest truth is that there are so many options, fringe cases, and interactions that we simply can't test all of them. As for the missing art or placeholders, I am still not sure about the animated 2D sprites as of now. But Ari is working on the still assets so hopefully the only thing we'll be missing is the sprites as far as the combat system goes. As for shops and the player inventory, as of right now there are already 85 unique items being added to the game and they will each need art for their store and inventory page so there's no possible way we will have all of those items as well as environments and the gui for the combat system done since Ari is also working on redoing old scenes for the changes in player penis size and making art for new scenes. We will continue to add art for these items as time goes on.

So I just wanted everyone to know what to expect! This next update is going to be like a public test release as far as the combat system goes and I hope I can rely on you all to post about any bugs you find!

Good evening degens! This first part is just to let everyone know that I plan on having the update out sometime between the end of January and mid February! There are still going to be incomplete areas and some placeholders but the very core will be done and we'll continue to update those missing pieces as time goes on.

The second part of this is still likely a long ways off but in the event I hit the next subscriber goal I was curious what most people would like me to prioritize with the new funds. I have a few ideas in mind:
1) Hire an artist for backgrounds so I can replace the AI ones.
2) Hire a sound designer and start replacing the royalty free music and character songs with custom made tracks.
3) Hire an action artist. I was thinking of having the action (but not actual turn based combat) scenes in the game done comic book style. So scenes like the bar fight near the start of the game. This would be less detailed image panels, possibly in black and white or very basic color. Honestly I don't even know if this one is realistic or not but if it's something the majority of people think is important I will start looking into it.

Vote in the poll down below which you think is the most important for the next step!

Good morning my furrys, closet furrys, and those still in denial (you will join us soon), it's time for another progress update! Amongst (very justified) growing impatience and skepticism I have decided to include a detailed breakdown of what has been happening since the previous update. So V0.5.0 was first released at the end of February. There was meant to be another update in April that was mostly finished. I decided to delay that update and wrap it up into the next one for a few reasons. First, there was a bug with a new Live2D model that took a lot of scouring to remedy all instances of, second it was a fairly small update to begin with and third I was entering the final stages of a home remodel but most of March and April were spent working on that update. The following months of May and June were spent working on that remodel, moving and actually writing down in detail what would need to be done for the combat system.

Before I progress with the breakdown I want to make it clear that I do not blame any of the below mentioned people for any delays that have happened, shit happens and we are all doing our best. Every one of the freelancers I am about to mention has been nothing but wonderful to work with and the delays are due to no fault of their own.

By the end of June I had finished writing down all of the combat system details (this is a 34 page document so it took quite some time) I then contacted the team that had previously done the GUI design for Broken Sky to inquire about starting work on coding this system for me as it was well above my coding skills. They accepted the task but the member assigned to me was unable to start for about a month and a half due to previous contracts. Once they did begin work on it, they worked for about 2 weeks before personal issues arose that caused them to hand the project off to a different team member (It is not my place to discuss their personal troubles, so I will leave it at that.) The new team member also needed time to finish other projects before they could start on this one so we were waiting again. The next bit of this process took a lot of hammering out details, making tweaks to improve gameplay and so on. When everything was nailed down they started work from scratch and have been working on it since then, but like I said, this is an incredibly complex system so it has taken time. As of now most of the coding will be finished up as early as tomorrow. We are still working on the inventory system but the core systems will be ready. I still have to actually get the files, learn how to use them, and make small tweaks for things that sounded good on paper but didn't work in practice (since instances like that are always inevitable).

Now, rewinding in time a bit, I started looking for a 2D pixel sprite animator around the same time I contacted the coding team. This process took much longer than I was expecting and I was rejected by more than 20 artists over the course of about 2.5 months before I finally found someone willing to work with me. (As it turns out, working on adult content is against Fiverrs ToS so I was kind of looking in the wrong place, my fault.) So the pixel sprite artist did not even get the details of the project until the start of September. As of now, the pixel sprites for this update are supposed to be done by the end of this month. As soon as they are finished, inserting them should be a simple task of just naming the files properly and putting them in since the code currently has place holders for where they will go.

So where does that put us for the next update actually releasing? Well, soon is the answer. I am really really hoping to have it out the first of the year. If the 2D sprites aren't done in time, but everything else is I will simply release it with placeholders and put out a patch when the sprites are done. So the things that could happen to make the release later than that would be game breaking bugs we can't identify, or it taking me a very long time to learn how to use the code that has been written for me. The programmer has done an amazing job of making it very versatile and will be helping me during the learning process but I will be making and balancing every combat encounter by hand (no random encounters in this game). The attacks, attack descriptions, numbers to hit and for damage, NPC stat sheets and so on will still need to be created and uploaded. It's largely busy work since I already have all of these numbers ready to go but putting it all into a system I will be unfamiliar with...I really can't say how long it will take. So for now I am cautiously optimistic about early January.

Now, enough about development woes. Let me officially announce that with the new update we will be adding a much requested feature (well, sort of requested.) I have heard since launch the doms saying the MC's penis is too small and subs wishing it was smaller. You have prayed, and I have answered. With this update you will officially be able to select your characters penis size during character customization with a choice of small and large. This choice will be reflected in all dialogues where applicable in this next update. Graphically, the change will only show in one new scene for now. Ari will be going back and editing the previous scenes to reflect the change while myself and the programmer fix bugs with the combat systems you all might find during initial launch. All future scenes will reflect the change going forward. With this addition, we have now set the ground work for the addition of playable anthro characters as well. Ari and I have learned how to construct scenes from multiple sets of layered images based on variable choices, so one of the new scenes for this update is six frames in length but each frame has a potential of 6 different versions depending on your choices! Doing layered images in this way allows us to make incredibly modular scenes without destroying your computer storage space.

Now for a touch of bad news for several of you. I have officially made the decision to move the female MC variant to a post 1.0 expansion. While adding playable male anthros just requires re-texturing the current human male model and changing a bit of dialogue, adding a female MC requires the creation of entirely new scenes (if I don't want it to feel...cheaply done at least) and entirely new romance routes since the female mc would be able to romance a few characters that male MC cannot and vice versa, in addition to re-texturing all of the scenes that would work as a female. It's simply one stretch too far for only one artist. On that same note, the addition of playable male anthro characters will be coming at the end of Act 1 (of four acts). That is still a very long ways out but it's a sight closer than a full 1.0 release.

I think that's about everything. If I missed something, or you have questions you can post about it in the game discussion channel of the Broken Sky discord! 
https://discord.gg/9YF5W6dE6q