Monthly Update Post? February 2024 – Changes on the horizon and future direction.
Yep, switching things up again, just trying to figure out exactly what works and what I can manage!
Update Post Changes and Introducing Project Posts
So, it’s been 2 months of trying the ‘weekly announcement’ style posts and while it’s been an enlightening journey, I’m not sure it’s the best route going forward. So, I’m switching to doing individual posts for releases and project updates whenever there’s something significant and having larger monthly update posts that talk about direction and the like. I believe this ‘should’ be a better experience for both me and anyone following my work, but remember I’m always looking for feedback so if you have any thoughts or ideas let me know! Let’s get into the actual new post structure (as well as how I’ll release content on here more quickly/regularly) then we’ll get into reasoning.
Update Posts are now going to be monthly instead of weekly, these posts will be slightly different however as I’m switching how I handle ‘blog’ style entries, which will post on their own instead of with the update posts. The purpose is to give a general overview of what’s being worked on and what project are planned to be worked on over the following month, and will post near the end of the month as a bit of a reflective piece. Sections will include the ‘project overview’ section which covers changes in whatever projects were updated that month, followed by a releases section similar to weekly update posts that will link to the new project posts related to the latest release of that month, then finally I’ll include a quick section answering some questions I saw over the last month I think people may find interesting (or ones that I get a lot X.x). Currently I don’t get a ‘massive’ amount of feedback or questions so this section will probably be fairly tame, but maybe if I actually grow in following it’ll become a more interesting segment? The weekly update system I had going failed to really give substantial information every week and I was regularly delaying update posts to finish something ‘interesting’ to fit into the post, while this was a strong motivational factor, it also was leading to burn out and self-doubt since I always felt I was lagging behind, which is never good. I also saw bundling everything into a single post making it more difficult to find updates on specific content, for example if you only cared about the Succubus Heart mod it was difficult to filter and find posts relevant specifically to said content. By splitting these posts and making these collective posts less frequently it should not only make it easier to find the content people are looking for, but also allow me more freedom in how I make these posts. The one fear I do have is that weekly posts was designed to help give me an extra ‘push’ and ensure I stay productive, but hopefully with the practice and methods I’ve developed over the last few years this won’t be an issue… (if I find I start lagging behind I’ll think of something to replace it ^-^)
Project Posts are going to be how I do ‘release posts’ from now on, instead of bundling them into a weekly update post every week now releases will get their own post with update information and links similar to how we handle it on Discord! I’ve gotten into the flow of these posts and I’m confident that adding these posts here should be relatively easy to do. These posts may also provide additional details that don’t normally feel fitting on Discord style posts, such as updates on what I’m currently working on or what I have planned next. Not all Project Posts will have a release either, if I feel I have a substantial update to a project to post about I’ll also be using this format to talk about it while linking to the latest release and any relevant information. I know a lot of creators just do periodic posts with updates, but given I tend to work on various projects spanning different genres even, I figure this would be a much better way to handle things and make things easier to find specific releases! ^-^
Blog Posts will be now separated from weekly posts and be their own thing, I may also reduce the amount of ‘blog’ style posting I do and instead direct some of them into full Articles with proper attention and editing. I will mostly use Blog Posts to talk about quick relevant topics or maybe answer a specific question/feedback I receive that may require an in-depth answer. One such blog posts that’s being turned into an Article is the extremist article I mentioned last week, while writing it I noticed I could go so much deeper and really the format would have flooded the regular blog entry, by splitting these off I don’t have to fear scaring people away from the Update Posts or Project Posts people may be interested in, and instead offer the article/blog entry specifically for those that wish to read it.
So yeah, this will most likely be the last post in this format, I posted the last few posts behind schedule and don’t have much to post, but let’s just pretend this first explainer bit doesn’t exist and show the new format! (In the future these will be trimmed down a lot more since I'll have proper progress updates as I do release posts ^-^)
Monthly Update Post – February 2024 – Project Sugar Cake EXISTS!
February was a bit of a dramatic month for me personally, but it didn’t get in the way of progress! Let’s go over what progress we had for this month!
Project Overviews
> Announcement - Website Redesign ( michaelpstanich.com ) <
Last month I looked into some potential new hosts for my website, one that would allow Adult content and would support more tools I’d like to use to create a proper blogging/updates platform as well as a links/downloads hub. This month I cleared up some goals about what I wanted the site to contain and exactly what needed to be done. While I’m still not sure exactly on what concepts I’m going to go with, I’ve got a much clearer vision in my head for what I ‘expect’ to have. Once I have a functioning version of the new site it’ll start hosting all these update posts and release announcements (as long as I can set up a proper posting system properly… we’ll see).
Tons of progress here this month, though I didn’t get as much done in this last week as I wanted to as I had some other projects take precedent and needed a bit of time to chill out to prevent burn out (I went a bit TOO hard with working on this project for a few weeks and was really starting to feel burn out). This month saw the first release version! Project Sugar Cake 0.0.1DEV features solo player animations fully importable and playable in-game with the full metadata system implemented! The next goal is getting multi-actor animations working correctly, technically you can already have any character play solo animations but for multi-actor animations to work properly I need to finish implementing the positioning and AI related code. I’m ‘mostly’ done with that at the time of writing, then I’ll need to do some additional validation checks, but after that I really need to focus on creating a tutorial and proper SDK. I’m also thinking of focusing on getting the string/json importer working properly next so that animations can be ported into the game easier and won’t require logic mods to work, I think this would make the process easier for animators since even blueprints can feel intimidating if you’re not familiar with them.
Current Road Map…
1 ) Finish position correction and AI systems to implement Pal x Pal and Pal x Player
2 ) Release simple pal animation tutorial with SDK
3 ) Implement basic UI with settings control
4 ) Work on string/json parser
5 ) Implement basics for the stats system
6 ) Enable persistence and mod saving (save registered animations as well?)
7 ) undetermined...
Not much progress here other than reading and interacting with bug reports, but there are some key advancements in this regard. (I can’t remember when the last release was, so it may have been this month? Don’t remember >.< if it was released this month then we got OStim support added, which is huge news! But I’ll pretend it didn’t for the rest of this post… Q.Q) OStim support is very sporadic depending on what version and mods players are running, and I don’t know exactly how to fix this, but it seems like it’s from OStim not properly calling mod events, which means I may not be able to fully fix those issues yet. If you’ve tried it with OStim please let me know about your experience! Even if you’ve found no bugs, knowing how many have had no issue vs how many have is very useful data since we can try to figure out what’s different between the different installs! Additionally, a strange bug causing players to die after any act finally got some leads, it may be caused by a specific passive? I haven’t had the time to test with my focus on Project Sugar Cake, but given how rare the issue seems it would make sense if it was a very specific combination of mods and passives. I also have a method for supporting both SL and OStim at the same time, just need to take the time to implement it .(Is an important change to get done soon since more people are using both at the same time than I originally expected, was really just an oversight on my end really. Sorry about that! >.<)
> AI Related <
Over the last few months I’ve been trying to figure out better solutions and refining ethics in how to release AI related content and how to best handle various platforms and the like. This month I made changes to how I display models on various platforms and hope my model releases will be easier to find and acquire than ever before, with one minor exception that I’ll get into in a moment (wasn’t my choice, but one I’m indifferent to.).
The future of Image Releases :
I’m changing Demi-God AI packs, originally the idea was to release AI images as part of these collections to ensure the content couldn’t be taken down forever/censored by available platforms, since I saw them as volatile and inconsistent, but I’ve found a couple of solutions that would ensure these packs can exist in a better place without the need for any ‘exclusivity’ specifically. Well, mostly, I’ve started releasing AI images on both Pixiv and Deviant Art, for Pixiv I’ll only release touch-ups and polished images while I may start releasing raw gens that go over the quality barrier onto DeviantArt along with the polished up ones. I’m going to make a greater effort in only ‘officially’ releasing higher quality gens and have started to ‘archive’ older gens, even ditching the old releases system. There’s a problem however, both Pixiv and DeviantArt have restrictions on R18+ content (Pixiv requires genitals to be censored to comply with Japan’s censorship laws, DeviantArt paywalls R18+ content with sexual contexts though nudity is allowed it seems?). So, my solution? I’m going to host stuff… yeah, seems crazy, but I’ve done the math and as long as I only ‘officially’ release more polished content then I should be able to stay low enough in data usage that it won’t matter. This will be part of my new website re-design and integrate into michaelpstanich.com, though I may make it part of a new domain (which would include some other AI related stuff). I think for raw and in-progress stuff this will be posted over in our Discord – The Broken Chatbox -
https://discord.gg/h3vB7S4FEw – but I may also include WIP stuff in the new packs system just as a small preview perk with what I’m doing. Still finalizing stuff here, but hopefully it works out better and I won’t have that constant nagging feeling of ‘ethics’ regarding AI. It sucks I won’t be able to fully implement solutions to R18+ content yet, but we’re making progress one step at a time!
Model Release Changes :
Part of my website re-design will also include model preview pages with alt. download links, this should ensure there’s always a place to view the models and how to use them with whatever formatting/content I see fit and also avoid having to play around each platform’s specific rules. I’m also going to be making a better effort to update other platforms where I’ve uploaded my models, one major change is all preview images from now on will exclude R18+ content and instead have that separated to better comply with various platforms and avoid associations between the NSFW and cute portions of the models. I covered why better in a previous post -
https://subscribestar.adult/posts/1176446 - if you’re interested in reading about it. Sadly, there will be an exception here and that is CivitAI, which I will no longer be uploading or interacting with in any way. If you’ve spoken to me recently about it over the last few months, you’d know CivitAI was sending me a large amount of harassment and threats, even from CivitAI staff themselves. Unfortunately, the CivitAI staff decided to ban me for speaking out about the platform not only allowing targeted harassment, but outright encouraging and engaging in it. I tried my best over the last few months to try and make a positive change, but it’s clear that CivitAI does not have any respect for creators and actively wants people to target others they do not like on the platform. I had already expressed my plans to potentially leave the platform before, so really this just makes those plans concrete, but it’s still sad to see that CivitAI has made such massive regressions while the rest of the industry has been making huge positive changes. Thankfully CivitAI is the only platform and community around that’s been hostile, all the other communities have made huge strides in improving how they treat users and creators, and while many still have huge ethical concerns and their own slew of issues, they’ve shown willingness to improve while CivitAI has explicitly shown intent to do the opposite. I can now see why so many creators do not view CivitAI as a safe platform and often have so little respect for the site, because CivitAI has no respect for its users or creators and wishes us harm. It pains me to agree after trying to improve things for so long, but it is what it is. I use to think their toxic actions were born from incompetence, but once ‘accidents’ become patterns, it’s clearly intentional. (Can still find my models and Articles elsewhere, like here or hosted on my new website redesign when it’s up! ^-^ Also, with the changes other platforms have made I can now safely enable downloads on those platforms, so, just like on HuggingFace, PixAI / TensorArt / SeaArt all have downloads for my models enabled! Plenty of choices! ^-^)
Releases
Questions and Answers (and Feedback Responses)
Got a few questions around that may be worth outlining here, hopefully I remember to keep things brief!
Question : Succubus Heart Related – “Will you be dropping SexLab when OStim support is finished?”
Answer : NO, absolutely NOT! OStim support is just an optional framework choice since many requested I make a version to support it, however main development is still fully focused on SexLab. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to fully support OStim either, I would prefer both to work with the same level of functionality so people can choose whatever framework they prefer (if you hadn’t noticed, I like giving users options ^-^) and I have no intention dropping either one as long as they remain functional. SexLab also has a lot more features than OStim and allows content (like creatures) which OStim does not; because of this SexLab will still be the preferred way to experience Succubus Heart. Choices, however, I never a bad thing! If you’re a player that never uses those specific features SexLab enables, then I hope to make it so you would lose nothing by using OStim, it’s just going to take some time to get there! ^-^
Question : Project Sugar Cake Related – “Are you concerned with people stealing your work?” “Will you be releasing source code?”
Answer : This is tricky to answer and I still don’t have a solid answer on either of these really. I have received concerns that if I share to many specifics about how SCake works then others could steal that work and try to gate it off and use it for monetary gain. This DOES concern me, and it’s why I’ve certainly been a bit more quiet about some of my methods and not directly sharing a lot of code with the project. However it does eat away at me a little bit since I am generally open to sharing methods and even direct code snippets (all my mods so far have been completely open). Even with that said though, the modding community for Palworld has been a really mixed bag with a lot of really shady figures and practices, so I think for now I’m going to work ‘mostly’ closed source style while sharing methods used for official release versions if it feels appropriate, such as if a modder is trying to get something working and I know a method to get it working. Methods I get from other sources will also be shared freely, I’m not trying to ‘acquire and hide’ information, I will share what I get and then some, I just have to be very careful of malicious actors for now. (I also don’t really know a proper way to release ‘source code’ since it’s all in blueprints and blend files, and releasing those full stop is basically distributing my full dev environment, which I’ve never done before and don’t feel comfortable doing, so I’d need a different method similar to Skyrim where I just include the source to the mod itself without the rest.)
Question : Project Sugar Cake Related – “Will Project Sugar Cake support [insert fetish here]?”
Answer : The hope is that the framework is open enough that anyone could implement any type of content they desire. There are limits to my own interest and content I may not personally put as high priority, but if you would like to make a module or you would like to ensure the framework supports something specific, let me know so I can integrate whatever is required into the framework! Keep in mind, the framework is a large project and it may take time to get things integrated, so just because it’s not in or supported yet doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future!
Question : AI Related – “Do you plan on making more tutorials or guides?”
Answer : Yes, I’ve just been very distracted by projects lately. Production on those sorts of things can take a ton of time and with how quickly AI is moving it’s hard for me to keep up with all the changes, so some guides and projects get stuck in limbo for a bit. Part of my website redesign would help work around this issue a bit, where I can create guides and update them over time in a much easier fashion without having to worry about platform specific formatting or discoverability. Videos however are still difficult since I can’t just go back and re-edit them, so we’ll see what happens on that front. I may just start doing basic chill and AI streams where we cover specific topic or experiment with things and see how those go.