Hey there, nudies! I am so, SO sorry for the extended delay. I didn't mean to take so long getting to you all, I promise. Just an extremely busy few weeks, and not just for me. Invertex actually suffered a power outage that damaged his computer and knocked him out of commission for a bit. Everything's been repaired and replaced now, but it was pretty worrying for a bit! As for me, I've been dealing with trying to sell this house I'm in, talking with banks, and preparing a big personal announcement that should be ready in the next couple weeks. It's been hectic as all heck. But now that things have settled down a bit, let's get right back into it!

We're prepping everything to get this opening area done, and that includes prettying things up a bit! One thing we decided to test was the image you see up at the top - shading! We weren't quite happy with Amber's self-shading giving her a kinda weird look, so we dialed that back a bit. A nice benefit to this as that shadows can now be casted on top of Amber, which looks really nice... though the downside is that she can't cast shadows herself. Just a weird compromise we have to make. I promise she's not a vampire! We did give her some little feet shadows so at least there's some marking that she's on the ground. It'll just have to do!

This opening area is going to have a couple of NPCs, as you saw with Freddy in a previous update. But we needed to streamline our rigging process for animations. It would take too long to hand-rig every single NPC, so Invertex whipped up a new program that generates rigs for the models with only minimal adjusting. It's not an automatic process and requires some tweaking, but it removes a LOT of the tedium for setting up animation controls. And with the same base rig being used across all our different characters, they should be able to share animations! The above GIF was a test to see how well this would work. It ain't perfect, but with just a small amount of tweaking, it can be!

But that's not all, either! Don't go turning your head and coughing just yet, because we've got a brand new character to debut! This one is actually an original design from our 3D modeler, Bear Festival! We gave him carte blanche to create a character, and... ta-da!

Presenting the town's healthcare practitioner! This doctor runs a clinic in downtown Culo Culo. She's a bit intimidating, or at the very least tries to be... but sadly, she's kind of a big dork. Bear put a lot of love into this one, and fought tooth and nail to keep her boobs as big as they ended up being. We still haven't quite decided on a name yet, but there's lots of potential for a big-boobed goth chuuni doctor!

The big push for this month is getting all of our NPCs and final props into this cafe zone, then attaching dialogue and cutscenes to our interactables to finally get this section done! Then we need to do it for the very brief section outside Amber's house, the lengthier, much less clothed scene inside her house, and then the demo is DONE! Full speed ahead! Let's go!

We'll also have another prequel comic page for you guys tomorrow! It came out VERY cute, and it's the start of a great new scene you're definitely not gonna want to miss! Here's just a one-panel preview of our nudie cutie waking up from a very relaxing nap...

That's all for today, though! Again, sorry for taking so long on this! And see you tomorrow with a new page!

Hey there, nudies! Short progress report today, still just trucking along. We got a fun little quality of life element going, which is... keyboard controls! Originally, we only had mouse controls implemented, but now you can directly control Amber's nudie cutie self with the WASD or arrow keys! We're aiming to keep the control scheme very simple for this game, so the entire thing can be playable with just a keyboard, just a mouse, or both! It's all doable with just one hand, so let that other hand enjoy its newfound freedom however you see fit!

Speaking of which, we're hard at work on the prequel comic for this month! We're a bit behind schedule on it, and currently it looks like this.

Which, you know, still looks fantastic, but expect to see a slightly more detailed version soon!

With my uh, scheduling adjustment I mentioned a few updates ago, I've been able to put in some MNL time just about every day of the week since! I'm cranking it harder than ever on this writing, and we're making good time! I don't want to jinx it, but we may actually be able to lock down a release window soon if we keep this up... Mostly me. Everybody else has been doing fantastic, I'm the one who's gotta keep this up. AND I WILL.

But that's all for today! Thank you all so much for the support, and see you next week with another report!

Hey there, nudies! Back with a weekend progress report! Got a good amount of visuals to go for this one! This week, I got in and finalized the opening cutscene of the game, adding title cards, illustrations, transitions, sound effects, music... basically everyone on the team has SOMETHING in this 6 minute long intro to the game! It required a ton of rewrites and work since it needed to establish so much in as natural of a way as possible, but I'm really happy with how it came out. In fact, let's see what the reviews of the opening are saying!

"This feels like an Animal Crossing opening in the best ways." - Bear Festival, 3D modeler.

"dude we have something so fucking special on our hands right now. i'm just beaming watching this whole thing" - Anne, 2D art director.

Wow! Incredibly high praise from the crew! But yeah, it took me FOREVER to finish this cutscene, but I'm so happy with how it came out. And hopefully, you all will get to see it (relatively) soon! We're definitely trying to get it out to you as soon as we can!

Next up on the agenda is getting this cafe area populated and the rest of these cutscenes going. Which thankfully, won't be quite as rewrite-intensive as the opening cutscene was, but has its own unique set of problems.

The rigs for our characters have been edited to better utilize a pool of animations across everyone, but our big boy Freddie here has a much more unique model, making other animations look a bit... weird on him. He's going to need some quick custom animations!

Thankfully, Invertex has whipped up a great animation preview for us, which will be extremely useful for immediately seeing at a glance how each character will look with a specific animation.

Work that runway, Freddie!

But yeah, gotta get Freddie some animations, plop in the other NPCs, add a couple more props, and then set up a couple more, mercifully shorter cutscenes, and then this cafe zone is DONE. That doesn't mean the entire opening is done, but this is by far the biggest, most complicated thing. So worth it, though. So, so happy with it!

That's all for today, though! Thank you so much for the support, and see you next week with more!

PS. Expect the return of the prequel comic early next month!

Hey there, nudies! I'm so, so sorry about the delay in progress report. Unfortunately, things just haven't been great for me these last few weeks, with the biggest thing that's been eating up my time being... well, the loss of one of my comic jobs. I won't go too deep into it, but basically I've had to spend the last few weeks helping wind down the SFW division of the company I work for. Since a lot of people's livelihoods were on the line, this had to be top priority. Unfortunately, this job is also how I primarily fund the development of MNL, and while I'm not completely out of work, my pay's been cut fairly substantially.

The good news is that I'll definitely have more time to work on the game now! But uh... If you could recommend this Patreon to your friends or share it with others who might be interested in a nudie cutie game like this, I would highly appreciate it. 

But game development continues! The beach zone is now 99% complete! We're just adding a couple more textures and props to really beach it up, but it should be done within the next day or so. I seriously can't wait to get Amber in there!

We've also finished up 3 new scenes in-game, including the one you're seeing up there! Anne had a blast drawing SEVERAL new illustrations with a lot of different variants. For those that wanted a bit more E (embarrassment) with your NF (nudie friend), this is going to be right up your alley!

Invertex has also done a great job on some back-end stuff, making it a lot easier to add illustrations and action panels to scenes straight from the dialogue script, so it will be way easier for me to make scenes with my newfound free time! Invertex has also been working on a better way for characters to share animations, which previously wasn't possible. There's been several hiccups around that which has prevented the continuation of building our little demo scene, but we're just on the cusp of figuring it out. I think by next update, we'll have something! And hopefully, we should be back on regular updates again!

Again, my biggest apologies for taking so long. It's been quite an ordeal and I'm so sad it shook out the way it did, but it's over now and I'm excited to get back to work on the thing I love most... cute characters running around with no clothes on!

That's all for today, though! See you next week with more!