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!

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!