A Question of Motivation-Progress Report

Hey Boo
When I was younger, I played StarCraft 2. I didn't get to play it when I was a kid because the covers looked too violent for my parents. Living in the country didn't let me have many paths around that.
But nothing could stop me in college. I got an install of SC1 from a friend and we played some Big Game Hunters. For some reason I was one of few of my friends who stayed interested when StarCraft 2 was announced.

I wasn't very good. StarCraft has a lot of things happening at once and I wasn't very good. I barely got used to using hot keys but the early game looked similar no matter once. Gather resources, look for early build clues, make counters and defences. I learned and got better.

Until, one day I snapped out of a day dream and three minutes had passed without selecting my units. My life had been rocked in a very fundamental way and I couldn't focus anymore. I couldn't distract myself with my favorite game.
I was deeply sad, lost, unmotivated, and I didn't have anything to do. Prime cult bait. Arguably, I had escaped a cult by that time.

I moved on. I got better and worse jobs. Moved cities. Dated. Life moved on. 
I've even picked up StarCraft and played around for a few seasons. The excitement wasn't there. I didn't have a trajectory to play all the time and theory crafting strategies. 

Motivation depends on a lot of things. Fun. Profit. Fellowship. But we are squishy things. Mood can cut off even positive attachments. When I feel motivation leave me or realize that a scene has loaded and has been sitting for several minutes, I remember those drones sitting next to the nexus as the time ticks forward. I could push forward. Organization or task lists and spreadsheets can help push past but those drones stare.

Then, I switch. I write whatever comes through my fingers. I play something dumb. Today, I went out to buy tax software and bought a burger.
Aha, I thought I'd have to stop without writing anything that y'all care about but then I found an outlet under the table while adjusting my boots. It's cold here, I don't wear boots for fashion reasons.

Artist news
I picked an artist, what to help me with art and whatnot. Emotional stability was not one of my questions or requirements but I'm playing the numbers that they are more stable than me.

They are on the server. They'll be in the credits. I'll make a big fun announcement if they want.

writing
Revisions for the last scene have been finished. Everyone's character should make sense when they start headbutting the MC. I need to tag the revisions for images, then there will be the most accurate estimate.

Writing on the next chapter has started. I write a thousand words a week as a rule. I've had other people get confused about that. Like how can I write one part without more reader feedback. I considered this for a little while, then I looked at all the reader feedback I don't get and decided not to worry about it. Perhaps in the future, I will be able to distract myself with other projects but until then, I'm a machine that turns sadness into incest stories with too many jokes.

As a consequence, the final word count has changed but the chance to quantify it has been lost to the injected code.

Art is good. Thank you for asking.
I was thinking I had made two hundred renders in a month but math rains on my parade again. I think I have a personal goal for this month.
I had a major problem with one scene rendering. An obscure setting was fucking me over.

My estimate has been adjusted. Someone pointed out that I had 15k before. That would be a lot. THat would be an image for every three words. Animations might shake out that way but I don't count animation by the frame, like a nerd. Who has time to do so much math for numbers that players really won't understand, anyway? I don't even think that sounds impressive to players and reddit.

Shots fired. Who am I fighting with now?

My estimate is 1,500 images. Hopefully the last few scenes will only add a hundred.

Valentines Bundle
I should really post special promo logs more. The annual Vday bundle has hit its goal of EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS! For a few more days, you can still get all the games and demos in the bundle for free but also, there are coupons for all of my games, special renders, and discounts on backer sites!

Thank you all for participating and supporting and grab some of these 73 games while they are still bundled together.

Rewards
I made a teaser post that disappointed someone. Hopefully it was for the teasing and not the actual content.

You can marvel at this rival

Tulip "When they told me they wanted to dress me up as the Invisible Woman, I was expecting a lot less clothes and no shoulder pads."
You're the Sue Storm we have at home.
Tulip "Does she have shoulder pads on her tits?"
Would those be tit pads? It's supposed to be armor.
Tulip "It's armor made of shoulder pads. I'm surprised my ass isn't padded."
That is the part that matters.

First Devlog of 2025
Hey boo,

The weather here is nuts. It got really cold and snowy and this week it is all supposed to melt. I got up at four thirty in the morning to shovel.

I took the time to try some new games this week. It was for the purpose of being a messy bitch but I think the helpful part of me regained enough control.
Once Again
A pretty fun life redo/time travel story.They do the things where the girls are named according to a theme, which I love to do. As seen in the sfw games where the characters are named after the arts of the day and my trunk novel where characters are named after days of the week. Damnit, why'd I start talking about me?
Past Tense
Has some very ambitious visualsand judging by their special renders, the game is going to look fantastic as it continues.
My New Memories The Beginning
It's a shame that Killer7 doesn't have all his assets to keep going on his main game. This prequel is a nice taste of Killer7's style. Conversations with cute girls. It's my genre.

Progress Report
I still catch myself calling it an update. That's what revision is for.
I think things are going well. Hopefully the rate of images done can increase smoothly. 

Programming/Tagging
I don't know what other people are calling it but I have all but the last three scenes tagged. So, I have a very good estimation for how many assets I will need to complete the chapter! It took way longer than I thought it would. Like, I'd sit and time would go by and I'd still have several dozen pages to go. I think this is what other devs nebulously call coding but I have hard coding issues that I also spend time working on.
I want several new features in chapter 3 but I don't think I'll get them all. 

First is a gallery. I've downloaded, read up but I still need to implement it.  I want a menu toggle to add transitions to the game. 
I was hoping a modder would do something because it strikes me as a preference that I don't give a shit about. That's what mods and settings are for, your preferences that I don't care about. Some people like a fade transition between every image and I think that's overkill and it bothers me. So, I'm not putting it in the default game. If you overuse transitions it's a bunch of extra coding but also people can already turn off transitions, which will take out the shitty transitions I do care about. As well as, the meaningful transitions that I put thought into and effect the pacing or punchline of a joke.

The code just hasn't worked for me though and I found some other problems that make me think I need to research it some more.

My first hurdle seems to be getting transitions to work at all. Then, implement the code that makes every image shown without a transition command to have a cross fade.
Then, make that code a toggle in the preferences menu.

Beer Goggle Games
I've been thinking about how some of the "best visuals" in AVNs just look like lifetime or hallmark movies. I'm calling them beer-goggle-games. 

The best working and working daz assets are women and women's accessories. Backgrounds, men, and props not so much. So, this can be rectified by creating your own assets or improving the underwhelming daz assets. People can do like Wilson Wanka and just go hard into 4k textures, and make everything as detailed as possible. Hellcat lounge looks amazing.

The easier way to do this is be hitting the depth of field hard. Heavily blurred background, foreground, and if your lucky a part of the character you'll want to see will be visible. 
It looks good. Especially when someone increases the saturation and sharpens the details the daz renders can look lifelike.

This works great for special renders. It's eye-catching and pretty.
But we run into problems of tone. High saturation, high depth of field, is how people shoot and produce a hallmark movie. It's fine for a sweet little cheap love story where certain tropes are expected but when you are trying to make a story with a mysterious crime story, the wires get crossed a little.

It's a mismatch for some stories, in my mind. But I only took one movie class so this might just be a little brain crack that I needed to get out. What do you think of my new abusable and irresponsible term of beer goggle games?

Artist Search
No update. I've talked to a lot of cool people. I need to organize my notes and make a choice.

Patron Rewards
Cindy and Hermy fans sure to thank Asia the Magical Girl because it was their birthday and request that led to your renders this month.
There is the return of my Daz version of Nova from Eternum. I made her butt bigger. I hope you like your multicolored eyed gingers bathed in non-cannon sunlight.
To round it out, I put tulip and Cindy in the sun too but I stopped my fun there because there was work to do. For the Pixie tier and above we have an 8k render of Cindy and Hermy."

Your attention is worth more than money can buy. News, Previews, and hanging out

Good Morning, Merry Christmas, and happy Holidays to all you boos!

I'm sitting in my brother's house on one of the last days of my vacation banging out this devlog. The render queue was buzzing away at home but I can't check on it. I didn't make one of those silly promises like not working during vacation. Someone at home decided to move some furniture and while they understand that wires go into the router, they don't understand how.

No one is forcing me not to work on my vacation, so I have. Not very much, though. I'm still tagging images. Every step takes longer than I expect, always. Last I checked, I still had 57* pages to go and about 930 images planned. 

My dad was in his chair and I was tagging Baskin images. 
He asked what I was doing and I say I was tagging images in a script.
He asks if it is a script that I wrote and I say yes.
He doesn't ask me anymore and I was kinda counting on that.

I call it tagging images but other people might call it programming but I'm not sure because I don't hear anyone else talk about it. I see some people name their images like img-06-03-18 and that might be faster if they are just counting up but it also needs its own description. I know some people write and make assets scene by scene. If anyone sees a devlog where another dev goes into detail about what steps they go through, feel free to tell me about them. I'd be interested in reading.

Animations
I don't like sex scenes to be entirely animations. I still like the spam variety of having a lot of angles on the woman.

I've started making extra animations. I make the animation, I throw it at the end of the pile, I say if the computer gets to it, it's extra. My computer gets through my whole queue, then the back of my brain thinks of a new scene that I could use an animation on.

There is a quirk that I have with old videogames and digital tasks where I don't like to do them twice. Like, if I trek across the continent in skyrim, fall in a ditch and die, losing all my progress, I don't do it again. I do something else. Correcting animations feels like that in a way that correcting still renders does not. So, I have some animations I could correct but it's just not as easy.

Artist Search
I'm still not sure how sharing assets works for daz. There is content gatherer, but ever file ens up being ten gigs. Sometimes, files install in a different locations. My guinea pig is getting frustrated.

I was giving myself until I finished tagging to pick an artist but tagging is taking longer than I want. 

Rewards and Special Renders Delay
Sorry, I was driving on Wednesday and didn't have a lot of the special renders available to me.

The Winter Adult Games Bundle https://itch.io/b/2806/winter-adult-games

Looking for someone to keep you warm during these winter months?
Perhaps a snow-dusted fling forgotten with the melting snow?
Or just a good story to help you forget the cold?

The Winter Adult Games mega-bundle has 73 games from 57 developers, ranging from engrossing stories and unforgettable romances all the way to nights that leave your legs aching in the morning, all completely for free!

Rewards Are Up!