Hey guys!  Sorry for the lack of transparency yesterday, I was trying to finish a certain thing so I could tell you about it in the report.

Full lifepath
Our illustrator lovely Victoria is still working very hard on lifepath assets.  (She was working and messaging me right up to 2135 yesterday.)  Please be patient because art takes time and, like I said last week, I dropped an unholy amount of wardrobe requirements on her without fully appreciating how much I was fucking her over.

Quick start version
Meanwhile, I’ve been building a test version of the quick start version of the game, allowing players to skip the full Lifepath but still set up a unique background for their heroine (this is what I couldn’t finish yesterday).

I finished it around 1930 and pushed it out to some Alpha testers.  Only a couple had time to play it straight away, here’s the immediate feedback.

It’s basically a revamp of the game’s intro section, with some new things added that I always wanted to squeeze in. 

I think we’ll probably get this version released before the full Lifepath (because there are fewer art requirements).  But it’s 2117, I think I started work at 0700 or 0800, my brain is fucking mush, let me work it out after I’ve got some sleep. I just wanted to get this report out before I rest because it was already delayed.  I love you guyzzz  🌃🛏️🦀

I’m sorry for the two skipped weeks. Two weeks ago was brutal at work, and I’m not making that Big Patreon Money that Crabman’s making.

I was planning a double-feature for you last week, but, alas, my CPU decided to give up the ghost and I didn’t want to further ruin your expectations by giving you all a shitty mobile screenshot.

Fortunately, Intel was good about my warranty claim in a way only a big corporation trying to avoid a lawsuit can be, and a replacement CPU is scheduled to arrive… on Thursday… crap. (I’m writing this on Monday night… glances at the time Tuesday morning.)

But I’m not going to leave you wanting more! And I will do that double-feature next week unless something incredibly stupid happens. So, instead, here’s a snippet from a scene that I wrote for Crush. It’s raw draft-text, and Crabman might have edited it after I sent it, but it should get the point across.

Wow, sure is teasing, huh?

This is one of the kink vignettes following up the ones I teased last time. It’s also a good instance of why V can’t easily start producing art before the writing’s mostly done. The original outline for this scene was completely different. As I hinted at last time, it was really more about masochism than submission per se. I rewrote it to focus more on power exchange and humiliation than in the original draft, but that rewrite also called for some new art.

Pic… probably unrelated… as far as you know. 😏
–DESpear

Hey guys.  Our illustrator lovely Victoria didn’t ask me to write this (she’s working non-stop, she sent me a bunch of art files on Sunday evening), but she is going to need more time to work through the massive number of art requirements I dumped on her.

(This is not her fault, it’s mine for constantly tweaking and changing the script of the Lifepath.  She can’t really start cooking until the scenes are done.)

Several people suggested last week that we release a stripped down version, with fewer clothing options, just so people can try it out, and we're doing this: V is prioritising one outfit per scene, no variations, to get out a test version faster. (We'll add in the variations later, which will improve the experience, but we know we've kept you waiting way too long already for this.)

Quickstart version
I'm currently working on the quickstart version of the game, intended for those who want to skip the Lifepath and get straight into the main story. (It uses a dialogue scene with Clark and Olivia to set some of the story flags we need for later – this was a great idea by the Lost Engineer).

If this is finished first, we'll just release it so you can play with it – it has the new skills system, character sheet and a few story tweaks to the start of the game, so you can get a feel for what the new version is going to be like.

Okay I'm fucking exhausted, straight back on it tomorrow. 🦀❤️‍🔥

Hey guys!  I know you want a clearer idea of exactly how much is left to do, so I carved out some time yesterday and today to do a full audit of all the required art assets our illustrator lovely Victoria is working on.

(She and I have been back and forth with art specs, test versions and image drafts, but we didn’t have a single online document keeping track of all the different assets required.  This is because there’s just the two of us working solidly on it right now*, and we both have huge frightening to-do lists, and the reality is that admin tasks like this get cut when tiny teams are in crunch mode.  😰)

The next episode is going to be the biggest Female Agent release so far, with five different avatar stages across the whole Lifepath.   The artwork requirements are much more ambitious than in any previous release, with more individualisation based on previous choices (e.g. if the heroine is a rock chick, she’s supposed to wear different casual clothes to college from “normies”; she can habitually be a sexy dresser or a modest dresser; etc).  As a result V is working on more art assets than ever for this next release.

I did the audit and there are currently 71 scenes still requiring art assets.  These don’t all have to be drawn from scratch – some are mostly done, some are tiny (e.g. one is literally just a thong, but it has to be drawn to fit the new age 18 body shape), and as V said in her report last week, she has built up a library of assets that can be tweaked and customised.  But each asset still is drawn by hand (with love) in Illustrator and needs to be coded into the game, so this is obviously going to take some time to work through.  We will keep you posted on progress in the weekly transparency reports.

In the meantime there are 5 scenes I’m still editing, which I’ll get back to work on now this audit is done.

Transparency is supposed to be transparent, so I’ll be honest and say I didn’t realise exactly how much fucking art I’d actually specced for the Lifepath.  I’ve done my best to keep the overall pace fast, but it’s impossible to montage through two-and-a-half decades of a girl’s life without needing a fucking lot of clothes.

V and I are planning to co-ordinate on each individual list item in advance (to reduce time spent in art versioning) and she’s going to work smart with accessories that can be reused across multiple scenes in order to get this cooked ASAP.

I’m sorry it’s not in your hands yet guys.  I feel like my vision for this was probably too big, too ambitious.  We’ll keep working on it every day as hard as we can. 🦀❤️‍🔥

__

* plus our lovely contributors and testers ❤️

Hey guys! I'm creating some detailed metrics on the amount of art remaining, so you can get a clearer idea of progress and time left, but it's taking quite a lot of time to organise and tabulate everything so I'll publish the report tomorrow. Sorry for the delay.

Our illustrator lovely Victoria asked if she could give you guys an update on her artwork. (For the authentic V experience, imagine this being read aloud by Sofia Vergara.)

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Hey guys! I’ve seen that some of you are curious about the avatar side of things, so I figured I’d share a bit about how we handle that behind the scenes.

In the next release, you might notice there’s a difference between the 16-year-old body and the adult version of our heroine. Until now, we were jumping straight to the final model, but it always felt a bit weird to me, like she skipped a whole stage. So I asked Crush to add an in-between version that makes the transition feel more natural.

I figured the younger version should look a bit softer and rounder, since your features usually get sharper as you grow up (the jaw gets more defined, for example). So I softened the face, added a touch of 'baby fat' around the thighs and made the shape slightly less hourglass. The idea was to get a clear difference without creating a ton of extra work for things like facial features or hair.

Once the new shape got crabpproved, I moved on to the outfits. For this release, a lot of the clothes were already made, so it’s mostly been about tweaking them to fit the new body and adding a few extras when a better idea pops up for a scene.

Luckily, my closet’s pretty stacked, so I save a lot of time by reusing pieces I’ve already made. Anyway, drawing clothes is honestly my favourite part of the job. (Least favourite? Hair. Always hair.)

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While V's been working on art, I've been writing and editing. I know everybody wants this to be finished but it isn't and we need more time. I'll get straight back on it tomorrow. 🦀❤️‍🔥