February 13th 2023: Progress Report

Hello everyone, super mega sleepy Rem here with this week's Progress Report!

What a week although it's been like that for a while, but the Lovense Integration was finally ready for public beta testing last week! For those who don't follow us on Twitter, here was the Tweet thread and video first showing off and explaining how the Lovense Integration works for Karryn's Prison:

https://twitter.com/Remtairy/status/1623568149160382466

And then once the public beta test started, the feedback from Lovense users have been overwhelmingly positive!!! It's as if, oh thank god. I wasn't wrong with my ideas this time.

It's almost 3AM here but I want to tell everyone why I decided to do the Lovense Integration in the first place.

Oh but first, for those who aren't up to date on our Twitter or Discord, you can join in on the v1.2 beta test for Karryn's Prison if you are on the Steam version. Please check out the #announcement channel on our Discord!

Anyway, the Why. Because I want to do something no one else has ever done, or more specifically, do something that has and is being done, but do it in a way no one has seen.

Well, it's strange sentence but essentially, that is actually what Karryn's Prison was. It's a form of a battle fuck and corruption system never before seen, as well as a Passives system that was a complex and huge upgrade from the 10~30ish 'bad states' a 'normal' or maybe a better word, 'sane' eroge would have up until now. And of course, an eroge specialize in gangbang instead of the gangbang being around 1~4% of the total sex scenes of an eroge. Karryn's Prison was me taking some of the parts of things in eroges that I enjoy, and mixing together in a way I thought would fit. And this insane attempt at not only trying something no else has done, but do it at an excessively high level well beyond experimental.

After all, if a normal popular eroge at the time only had around 10~30ish 'bad states' each with a very basic effect attached to it, wouldn't standard logic mean that the next logical step to attempt would be to try making an eroge with 60 or maybe if you're feeling risky, a 100?

Well unfortunately your boy Rem doesn't think logically and just enjoys really taking the creative part of the brain for a spin and seeing what comes up.

Now, back to Lovense Integration. So a lot of people probably don't even know what Lovense is, much less what an integration of it even means. Essentially, it's about integrating real world electronic sex toys into the game so the game can tell the toys to vibrate or whatever.

This type of technology is actually not new at all. In fact, as far as I recall, Waffle, a professional Japanese eroge company known for nukiges, and KISS, now currently most known for the Custom 3D Maid eroges, both implemented connected sex toys into some of their games over a decade ago.

But the implementations were basic. And now we move forward ten years into the present time.

And game implementations are still basic.

So, while doing researching for the Lovense Integration, I checked out how other games' version of the integration, the capacity of Lovense toys themselves, how other people actually use and more importantly enjoy Lovense toys, and how much I can actually draw out of the Lovense toys to integrate into the game.

And basically after a lot of time, the results were that there is A LOT of freaking untapped potential being currently wasted right now. And this got the brain cells, the electrons, in my head jiggling and wobbling because it means I have an opportunity here to once again attempt to do something no one else has attempted before, and not only no one have attempted it yet, but to do it at an excessive level that I ended up going for.

I don't even need to be trying to create a new game, and already I'm getting a chance to try something new right now using Karryn's Prison, which is also the perfect canvas for what I wanted to try. How can I not make an attempt?

Long time followers or readers might remember that I'm someone who only wants to try to create new things. I don't care very much for trying to do something already done before aka the 'safe option'. It's why when Sachinama and I were discussing what game to make from scratch together for the first time, I told Sachinama right away that I had zero interest in creating a Meltys Quest 2 or a game that uses the costume system from MQ. Because I know those things work, but it wouldn't excite me to design.

Back to talking about the Lovense Integration. So as everyone is well aware, Karryn's Prison's sex scenes is not your typical eroge sex scene, since as designed from the start, everything happens during battle. Not only that, but it is also a gangbang themed game, so it's not your typical sex scene with only two actors. So this got me thinking real hard.

And I created three core designs that I want to achieve with my Lovense Integration. First core, was that I want every sexual interaction in KP to produce a toy response.

You have multiple actors in a scene, targeting different body parts. So the second core was that I want the game to be able to allow customization of exactly which toy you want to respond to which type of sexual act. As part of my research, I tested. Nothing out there cares if you're using one toy or multiple toys, they're all treated the same, and they vibrate if when they're told. So just combining these first two cores I'm talking about here is already something that has not been done.

But I'm insane and not easily satisfied. The third core, was that I want EVERY sexual interaction to produce a UNIQUE toy response. The standard integration out there has the toy vibrate at one speed, until something happens the game tells the toys to vibrate at a different speed.

It's... very monotonous. It's the same type of toy integration from over a decade ago. And it is not at all how people actually use their Lovense toys because their toys have the ability to use 'patterns'. So I created patterns. A lot of patterns. A pattern for every sexual interaction. And then for every sexual interaction, I created more patterns based on Karryn's sexual experience so playing an inexperienced Karryn versus a sexual predator Karryn is different completely different experience of intensity.

I dunno. I dunno. I don't know why I'm like this myself. I don't know why I have to go to the excesses and not just take the safe, well traveled path and take it easy. But I'm happy that so far based on the beta tester feedback I received, that my work got validated.

This has been a long post crossing into 3AM, but back to the Progress Report! There is still a lot of work to be done! I spent most of last week on the Lovense Integration, and I also have been working on the code for the Stray Pubes DLC. Sachinama has been working like a madman too last week, finishing up on cutting up the new artwork and turning them into game files, which is hugely time consuming and tedious so give Sachinama a back pat the next time you see his post or tweet!!!

The plan right now, is finish up the Stray Pubes DLC, and send it to Steam for approval. HOPEFULLY if nothing goes wrong, v1.2 and the Stray Pubes DLC will be released some time next week?

Anyway, tons of work still to do, and I'm personally looking forward to next weekend when the latest Astronauts chikan eroge drawn by M&M releases. Don't be like me, and get plenty of sleep everyone! Talk to you all again next week!