Hey, folks! Hope you're all doing well this week!

I've been working on placing renders, and doing "pick-up" renders, for most of the day. Right now, my immediate plans are still to try to finish compiling the remaining Season One material, so everyone can get their save files update. That'll be published for everyone as soon as it's ready. My secondary goal is to get the new Season Two material (700~ images) added to the Season One material.

Buuut, I'm trying to basically create a second game for Season Two, which will load all the variables from Season One, allowing me to avoid having a giant file size as I continue to build onto it. I'm encountering some difficulties though, so.. We'll see.

My backup plan is to get a standalone teaser made for the new Season Two stuff, as I've been doing, just to make sure my high-tier supporters get new content to playtest. Then I'll work on getting all the Season One stuff added except for the very end, which will prompt all the variables that need to be carried over.

If that sounds confusing, just uhhhhh.. Trust me? :'D I'm basically taking steps to get content into everyone's hands ASAP, without causing myself a big headache later.

Otherwise, not too much to report at the moment! I recently had to sit down and write the big montage designed to advance the story, while touching on all the love interests. I've mentioned this in a paywalled post, but I'd previously just had a note in the script there saying that's where the montage went, and.. Boy, past-Neon really did future-Neon dirty. But it's done, as are the images, and I think it'll be pretty cool -- if nothing breaks.

I don't want to spoil too much, but I just really like the vibe of the whole thing. We get to see our (not always so) lovable hero forced into a situation that's a little uncomfortable for him, I get to smooth out some plot details with a few sentences rather than an extended in-game sequence, and the whole thing will serve as a really nice little catch-up for everyone.

Besides all that, I'm kicking around some ideas re: changes here, in terms of weekly posts. Haven't made any decisions yet, but as always I'll keep you folks in the loop.

Until then, take care of yourselves -- and thank you for your support!

 Hey friends! Hope your week’s off to a great start.

Rendering for the next chapter keeps rolling right along! I had a scene for this one I was kind of dreading, due to the nature of it. Lots of characters, props, etc. Then I found a nice little product on the Daz storefront (score!) which was on sale (double-score!) and made my life way easier. Sometimes the gods of smutty AVNs extend a hand of mercy towards you.

(Don’t touch that hand though. You don’t know where it’s been.)

At present, I’m working to get all the remaining Season One content integrated with the newer stuff, since I’ve reached the point I wanted to with the new chapter. Please note that doesn’t mean the new chapter is done, just that I reached a good stopping point in my workflow. So I'm going to shift gears for a little bit, fix the remaining variables, and polish up whatever needs polishing.

Everyone wants to know when the new chapter will be ready, and all I can say is I’ll let you know when I'm getting close. (Giggity.) I’m almost 800 renders in now, so I’m chugging right along. But I’m limited by the frailties of this mortal frame, time, and my GPU. Still, I'm trying to bring this chapter in under 1200 renders, so I hope I'm closing in on the end.

I’ll leave you with that for now! But as always, take care of yourselves -- and thank you for your support! 

Hey, folks! Hope you're all doing well this week.

There's not a ton to talk about this week. The image total for the next chapter currently stands around 650, and I'm hoping to crest 800 by this time next week. I'm not sure where exactly the final image tally will land at, but I'd like to bring this chapter in around 1200. That seems to be the sweet spot between a bloated chapter, and one that's a bit too thin.

As I'm going through and rendering, I keep touching up lines of the script, revising little bits here and there to work with the art. It's not uncommon for me to write something that works as words on the page, but fails to translate well into images. I always enjoy this part though, because it's where the game really starts to come together. So far, I like what I'm seeing!

This chapter really pushes harder on the idea that fame and celebrity status comes with certain drawbacks, and some of Guy's past actions have the potential to (gently) bite him. But we also get to see some of the positive outcomes of his actions. I think it'll be a nice way to kick off the new season.

I'll leave you with that, today! As always, I appreciate you folks being here. Life's been beating me up a bit recently! But it's been nice to have this work and this community to submerge myself in, when I need to retreat from the more serious stuff that comes with being a human.

So as always, take care of yourselves -- and thank you for your support!

Hey, folks! Hope you're all doing well, today. Sorry for the late update, I ate something that didn't agree with me yesterday, and was having some nasty stomach cramps. As a result, I just didn't it in me to do a post. But now I'm feeling right as rain, so let's get tooooo it.

I've knocked out some more renders for the next chapter, finishing the little bit that sees our hero reuniting with the Barron family, to finally catch up. It's a cute little scene, and I'm pretty happy with it. Now I'm onto the next set of scenes, which have Guy wrapping up another very long day. I'm almost to the bit where we jump ahead in the story a bit, and Guy's black eye finally vanishes. Rejoice! I know people hated it, but I really loved having him walk around with a living reminder of the consequences of his actions. When I finally wrap the whole game up, I'd kind of love to go back and do a variant of all the chapters, where you're able to avoid Jamie's suckerpunch, and never get the black eye. It'd be a huge time investment for something relatively minor.. But I still can't help but think it'd be fun.

Speaking of wrapping the game up, I recently received a question as to how much longer exactly people can expect this story to continue. I've talked off and on about this, and allow me to opine for a bit. The plan is and has been to make this a two season story. So, we're basically at the halfway point now, and I'm working to wrap it up within 11-12 more chapters. Assuming I continue working at my current rate of speed, that means another 3-3.5 years of content. Some folks expressed dismay at that, which I totally get. It feels both very close and very far away, and people naturally want to spend more time with their favorites, and see all the various love interests get their time to shine.

Buuut.. I feel like, within this space, there aren't very many games that actually manage to arrive at a satisfactory ending. Or an ending of any kind, for that matter. And even when one does, nobody likes to invest a ton of time into a story and then see it reach a conclusion, and all their fictional friends ride off into the sunset. It's bittersweet, right? I mean, I still haven't finished the second season of Pushing Daisies, because part of my brain says, "If you never finish it, those characters are still out there, having adventures."

That said, I think part of what makes a story special is that it ends, and you get to have a sense of closure. And as much as endings can suck, I think being left wondering, "What would've happened?!" is so much worse. So, yeah. Trying to land this plane in the next few years. That won't mean trying to arbitrarily force the story to wrap up by an arbitrary deadline or anything, and if I need more time/chapters, I'll make use of them. But that's the plan for now.

That discussion, naturally, lead to people asking: what's next? What'll I do once Guy's adventures are over? And right now, I don't know! It's a ways off, and who knows what my life will even look like by then. I think I'll always want to keep making AVNs, and I have loose plans for a few. I think anything in the future would be designed as more of a limited/smaller scope project. I've also talked a lot about taking some time to do expansion/DLC content for secondary characters like Isabella, Jun, Wren, Dash, etc. which would turn them into full love interests. Or building out big date scenes for all the main love interests, which could easily slot into some of the little time skips I'm building into the story.

But I'd also like to get to other creative pursuits. I've mentioned I wrote a spicy fantasy novel last year (which I'm still in the process of editing) and that whole experience was really fun for me. Being able to just focus on following a single narrative thread, without the demands of doing thousands of images, was really, really nice. I'm also a traditional artist, who wants to do some graphic novels before I die. Not that I'm planning to kick the bucket anytime soon, but life is unpredictable, you know? I've got some stories I want to tell in that format, some spicy and some not.

More than anything else, I just look forward to slowing down a bit. I know, I know. People are probably thinking, "Slowing down?! You're already slow!" :'D But, I basically treat this like a job right now, with a minimum number of hours I force myself to "clock in" every week. It'd be nice to eventually relax a bit and go back to making stuff purely for fun and the joy of making it.

This all might sound a little dour, and I really don't mean it to! I love making this thing. I love entertaining you folks. And I think I have one of the coolest, healthiest communities in the AVN space, and I remain eternally grateful to have attracted such kind and overwhelming support. I basically failed my way through the indie comics scene, failed my way through creating an artistic presence, and failed my way through writing some novels that I aborted a couple chapters in.

This whole project has been, bar none, my most successful endeavor. Putting aside the financial end, which has been overwhelming from the start (What?! People actually want to PAY me for something I made?!) just having so many people enjoy this little world I've made, has been amazing. I love reading everyone's theories, speculation, ideas, etc. It's that interest and enthusiasm that's kept me going for so long. So, thank you! Thank you for being here week after week, and for playing in this little world with me. I look forward to entertaining you, for as long as you'll have me.

Oof. Really went off at the mouth there, didn't I? I'll spare you any more of my ramblings tonight. But as always, take care of yourselves -- and thank you for your support.

Hey, folks! Hope you're all doing well this week! I know I said I'd have some thoughts to share today about some of the things going on in the AVN space, but my meandering thoughts grew into something like an essay, complete with visual aids.. So, I'm giving it some more time to percolate. Didn't want to leave you in the lurch though, so I thought I'd drop a normal dev update.

Not a whole lot to talk about, though! I'm still moving right along, banging out images for the new chapter. Tomorrow I'll be dropping a new demo build for $15+ supporters, which includes a new ero scene. I still need to place some images, but I'll do my best to get it up as soon as possible.

Also, a lot of people really feared the worst with my ominous update on Monday. So let me just assure you: I'm not planning on going anywhere. I have every intention of finishing this story, and I do my best to take steps in that direction every day. I'm just looking at how I can best protect the project, my income, and the investment of time, attention, and money that a lot of people have put into it. I'll clarify some things, once I publish that rambling essay of mine. But I'm not intending to do anything drastic, so don't stress too much.

As always, take care of yourselves, and thank you for your support.

Hey, folks! Hope you're all doing well this week. Real life's been kicking my ass this week, as I've been forced to address some rotten fence posts that surround my house. I spent several hours going to town with a shovel, sledgehammer, and bigass wrecking bar, and only did nominal damage. Good stress relief, though.. Then I turned to YouTube and found a tutorial on using a big jack and a length of chain to yank the concrete out of the ground, and hot damn. That's a heck of a trick. This has precisely nothing to do with why you come here, but hey, I like filling you folks in on my foolish misadventures.

Moving on! Work on the next chapter continues, and I'm working towards getting a new demo build for Chapter 11 ready by month's end. As usual, it'll probably come down to the wire. This has left me with limited time to futz with the rest of Season One that I still need to integrate. This is further complicated by the fact I need to address a few scenes with some artistic goofs, some of which will require some re-rendering. But, they should be easy enough fixes.

There's a bit with Viola where her hair is clipping through her face. It doesn't look terrible, but it looks bad enough to me that I want to address it.

Then there's the issue with the disappearing wine glasses during Ashe's jacuzzi scene. I should be able to get away with doing most of these via simple cut-and-paste in my art program of choice, but I'll need to run renders for a few images that are at different angles. 

 There's been a small (good-natured) debate on Discord over what I should actually call the next chapter. I'd been calling it Chapter 11, but now it'd really be something else, since I renumbered the previous chapters. But some folks said it should really be Season 2, Chapter 1. I'd been mulling it over a bit, but then the answer came to me while I was watching anime.

For this show, Crunchyroll carried over the episodic numbering from the last episode of season one to the first episode of season two, and.. I dig it! If it's good enough for My Dress Up Darling, it's good enough for me! 

Alright, that's enough rambling from me. Hope you all have a great week! May your fences never rot, and your shojo anime always bring you the answers to life's hard questions. As always, take care of yourselves -- and thank you for your support!