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!

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!

Hey there, nudies! Another busy week for us, with some very fun progress. But first, hope you like this new art from Anne because I personally LOVE it. These COLORSSSS

We've been chugging away in the background, trying to improve our process to make things a bit faster! One of these was Invertex implementing a drop-down selection for animations! Before, if I wanted Amber to emote during a particular line of dialogue, I'd have to go in and write in Amber_Idle_Excited. Not a particularly difficult task, mind you, but once you get into hundreds of lines of dialogue, it gets pretty mind-numbing AND is fairly difficult to keep track of. But now, everything's organized in a nice little drop-down box!

 

Notice that "set wearable" option? That's another thing Invertex added as well. Now, we have an easier way to enable or disable clothes and accessories on characters!

(NOTE - not a real scene)

While Amber loses her clothes pretty definitively and permanently, this is still an easy way for us to enable her shoes, bag, or any other accessories. It can work on other characters too, so expect some fun clothing mix-and-matching!

 

As far as story progression goes, one of our major NPCs for the opening needed some extra work. Freddy, the cafe owner, was one of Bear's first rigging jobs (even before Amber!). It was great practice, but now needs some revising to better fit the rest of the gang. Bear's been hard at work re-rigging Freddy for new animations and is just about done. Since he's a heavier character than the others, special consideration was given to how he moves around, like where his bigger belly rests when he sits down.

 

Couldn't just have his stomach clip through his waist, so it sits a bit more naturally on his lap when he sits! Bear's a real one for figuring that out.

Not only that, but we felt the cafe area park was a bit empty. We decided to add one new piece of equipment to make it feel a bit busier...

A rock-climbing wall! Bear knocked this one out pretty fast. Why a rock-climbing wall specifically? Well, beyond just filling out the park more, we also wanted to slightly expand on the opening a little bit more and realized we had an opportunity! Anne's hard at work now on some new illustrations for a couple more scenes with Amber in these early moments of the game. Here's a sneak peek at a very rough WIP Anne's cooking up...

 

Poor Amber! She wouldn't have these problems if she just ditched the pants...

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