Hey there, nudies! Check it out - a brand new poster-sized beautiful piece of promo art by none other than Anne! Since Anne's our artist going forward, I thought it would be good to have a new piece of key art from them to show off, and Anne was way more than willing to flex their skills. We'll probably do some more edits and variations on this going forward too as we continue adding characters and solidifying everyone. But still, it's great to see all the characters we've made in one busy scene! And of course, it's even better with Amber's no-clothes self right in the middle~

Today's post isn't much of a progress report because everyone's been uh... well, I had to build two new computers for me and Leslie and import all the files over. Anne's been working on this monster of a pic. Invertex has been working on importing the stuff Bear's made, and Bear's FUCKING APARTMENT EXPLODED. Like, straight up, big fireball. He's okay, everyone's okay, he was just out for a bit with no power. He's back now, but obviously couldn't get much else don in the meantime. But the band's back and we're rocking and rolling with no clothes on! Wait, that's that other comic...

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

Hey there, nudies! Thank you so much for your extreme patience. Happy to say that we made it to Portland with no issue at all! Everything's unpacked, we're all settled in, and we've been hard at work on some cute clothing-free games! Since you've been waiting so long, let's dive right in!

The 2700 mile roadtrip to Portland gave me a lot of time to think about MNL and what things could be tweaked. I actually thought up some great plot elements that are now so foundational, you'll wonder how there was ever a version of this game without them! But one major thing I can share now is Culo Culo itself, as you probably gleaned from that image up there. We're on the beach now!

See, the issue we were having is that MNL is a simple point and click adventure on a small budget. We can't have extremely elaborate environments, and most areas you walk around in contain JUST that immediate area. That theater in the background? It's just a prop. To walk to it, you have to go through a loading zone into the theater area. That basically means that there's whole swaths of space that we simply can't show in-game because there's nothing there and you're not meant to see. Case in point - the original version of the cafe zone.

In the original version of this area, you could only see on one side of the street. Everything beyond it was completely empty, and the camera would never pan around to show you that side. While it makes sense from a design perspective, it's also obviously a bit limiting in what we can do with exploration and camera control. But a new problem arose when we realized that it was becoming difficult to actually build new areas in this abstract sort of way. We just finished the beach shops area, which is supposed to connect from that road going south in the screenshot above this paragraph. But we then realized that the placement doesn't actually make any sense, and would be kind of disorienting once you play it. We'd need to rearrange the layout of the area to make it connect... at least, that's what we thought at first. But then we realized... What if we just brought the beach up a bit and move the shop to a different connecting spot?

Everything then just sort of fell into place from there. We had to significantly tweak the rough layout we had in mind for Culo Culo's town structure, but with the cafe zone on the beach, it gave us a visible foundation to work from. We're literally on the shore, the lowest point of Culo Culo's map. Meaning that everything from here is either adjacent to the cafe zone, or it's behind it. Just that simple tweak made it so much easier to start placing locations around Culo Culo. So much so that I had to make a new rough map of Culo Culo - this time in RPG Maker!

This isn't complete yet (and obviously won't be the final map for a number of reasons), but this one change connected so many dots for us and helped us make a better Culo Culo that we all really gelled with and understood immediately.

Amber's home street is also on the beach now!

I've had to go back and rewrite some lines to accommodate the beach's proximity, but now... well, no wonder Amber liked to take off her clothes around here! Who wouldn't be constantly skinny dipping when your house is right on the beach?!

Speaking of which, let's look closer at the beach itself! It's still a big work in progress, but we're really happy how it's coming along. Did you notice that the original header image was a .gif?! Invertex programmed a simple tide system so that the water's always splashing on the shore. Check it out!

Wow! Those waves sure are wiggling! You WERE looking at the waves, right? Wait, you weren't looking at THOSE, were you...? Hmm... Well, that's okay, too.

We still have to pretty it up and throw on some shaders to really make this water shine. But damn... Culo Culo's looking pretty idyllic now. A nice beachtown perfect to ditch your swimsuit in...

I mentioned having to do some rewrites to incorporate Culo Culo's beachiness, but that's not all I was doing. Thank you all so much for your feedback on the intro! I'm pleased with the positivity around it, but I took some of the criticisms to heart and aimed to adjust some lines to better hone in on the themes and Amber's internal conflict. I won't show every change here just now, but I'm happier with these adjustments and think they suit the story much better. Thank you again!

All right, that's all we've got for today! We're aiming to be back on regular progress reports again now! The team's back together and fired up, especially with how good these new changes came out! Hope to see you again next week!

Oh, uh... one more thing...

Stay tuned for an INCREDIBLE new piece of art from Anne! Until next time, nudies!

Hey there nudies! I want to apologize for being so late on this... If you'll remember my last progress report, I made a brief mention of trying to sell my house. Well, I'm happy to share that this house is SOLD. And these last three weeks have been scrambling trying to get everything in order - everything packed, all the paperwork done, new apartment acquired, moving trip planned, and all the last minute repairs and whatever else necessary to complete the house closing. It has been an EXHAUSTING month, and it's hopefully going to get even crazier soon because within the next week, we'll be on the road and moving to Portland on a 5-day roadtrip! So updates may still be sporadic for a bit as I move out and get settled back in... so with that, I wanted to give you guys a bit of a meatier progress report.

Well, here it is. Attached to this post is the full 8 minute opening cutscene of MNL!

Unfortunately, Subscribestar doesn't let me upload big videos directly for playback here, so I had to upload it as an attachment. Please download and check out the opening in its entirety, if you so wish! I will also upload a slightly shorter version on our Discord if you want to see it there as well!

This 8 minute long video contains everything all the way up until you gain control of Amber. I wanted to give you all a taste of the game - the driving motivation, Amber's characterization, the overall tone and style of the game... even just the stuff like how the text wiggles and the game sounds. Anne's art and Vanware's music is on full display here, much like Amber herself! I'm really happy with how this came out, and eager to see your feedback!

You may notice that the shots of Culo Culo near the end are fairly empty. That will be changed in the full release. In fact, that's the immediate thing we've been working on these last three weeks. We're trying to populate the area full of NPCs, but unfortunately, rigging has proven to be an issue. Invertex has had to work his butt off trying to figure out a universal animation configuration so that all NPCs can share from a pool of pre-set animations, rather than each one being uniquely animated. I've mentioned it before, but these last few weeks have mostly been trying to figure this out. It's been a hair-pulling experience that's produced a lot of truly monstrous looking creatures that I won't dare show you here. But eventually, Invertex figured it out!

Despite the size difference, these two characters are sharing animations pretty easily! Invertex even worked up some extra little bits on this business woman, like boob and hair bounce. With this figured out, we should be able to plop some NPCs down and get this area finished up! Though again, things are going to be delayed a bit until I get settled down in our new city.

That's all for today, though! Again, thank you so much for being so patient and understanding with these long delays. I hope to get back to my normal schedule as soon as I have my computer set back up in a fresh new apartment! Check out our Discord if you haven't already, and see you again soon!

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!