Hey Boo,

We're into the second month named after a Roman emperor. The economics are pretty bad for everyone and my bosses seem to think that's my fault. Little do they know, it is my fault. Not only do I engineer the seasonal dips in sales but I also broke the economy and gas prices. They are so close to the truth, hew-hew-hew.

​

Progress
If I didn't track these numbers, I'd feel like I didn't do anything at all. That'sjust the kind of mentality I've adopted with jobs that either hide the big picture or have a big picture that doesn't make sense.

Adding the programming to the to most lines really balloons the page count, which is why I count down. When I started it was some two hundred. This fifty pages that I made progress on left 90 pages behind. Another way to track the inflation is there were fifty-seven thousand words before and that is now at sixty-five. Seven thousand words of programming and direction. My typewriter (what I call my chromebook that I write on) cannot keep up with the size of my document. I have to write the tags and sometimes wait for the input to catch up. 

It is nice to start rendering though. The parts of the job that I really like are the writing and the renders. Still. I wouldn't mind handing off some of the render work. I just haven't found another artist that is as like minded as me. Which might be a mistake but compromise hasn't worked out that well so far.

Coming up
I've been thinking about a good bug bounty for people finding mistakes in the game but people can only really buy the game once. I have made renders for people on my discord who have been very supportive of the game and helpful but that never feels like a huge deal as it probably should be. Most of them were already thanked in the credits. Though, I'm not sold that people really like having credits for this kind of game. It's different audiences for different projects. Some things like youtube videos and fan games love tracking in game credits. Vtuber supporters love buying merch and watching live streams and getting their names read in super chats. There should be a cool thing that the AVN audience likes. Don't say fast updates, we're working on it.

Rewards
One cool thing is special renders. This month I have Jane trying out some of the new street environments and Hiding a few more girls around. Then, there is my viral reference. "You are never too old to kiss your mother on the mouth." 

Hello Boo,

I'm going to take my personal note to talk about the life of a dev. Not the whole life, the secret double life that people who do anything anonymously get.

Wilson Wonka died of cancer last month. He with his co-dev and animator Puggy made The Hellcat Lounge.

I first noticed Wonka when he was sharing his art on several servers. His art is gorgeous. He paid attention to materials in a way that made every render perfect. Wonka did things the right way.

After I learned that he was making a game and joining his server, the first thing I remember was him making an announcement that he was scrapping all his previous work on his game because he got a new pack of higher resolution textures. He wanted to do everything in his power to make his game look as good as possible.

He paid for those textures too. Something that I learned several times is the extent to which Wonka hated piracy.

Every asset in these daz porn games was sold in a store. Sometimes, in combo packs but sometimes, props are sold separately. It seems to be twenty to thirty dollars for any daz asset. Some assets suck and you don't know until you try them. When a dev's first game has few assets that look bland in a world that looks sparse, I'll believe that they bought everything. Someone could spend $500 dollars on two characters, an outfit, a location and still have an empty looking frame with details that don't match.

Hellcat Lounge looks better and fuller than some devs that have been making these games since before the pandemic. I fully believe that he bought every one of those assets. He spent thousands of dollars to tell his story the right way.

I only played early versions of Hellcat Lounge because I respected Wonka's work and disgust for piracy. He was a musician earlier in his life. He felt that piracy and an unfair industry held him back from making music. He saw it hurt indie bands that he liked and respected. He didn't put his game on itchio because he thought they seemed like shifty and untrustworthy people.

I was looking forward to a steam release because that was going to be the right way to purchase and play his game. 

The thing that really made me relate to Wonka was his desire to write about normal people. A lot of stories in this space really lean on fetishising wealth. The cast is rich people and soldiers in fabulous places, getting wealthier, being the smartest and strongest people in the room. Wonka put more thought into it than me, though. It's hard to find buildings that look like normal houses but Wonka took it a step further to consciously think about a character's resources. He noted hair and nails that would have to be styled and paid for every week. He put so much thought into his work.

Development times for games in the adult space are pretty long. I was surprised to learn that further work on Hellcat Lounge was delayed because of band posters. A move I'll bet was generous in Wonka's mind to promote bands he liked and respected. Some devs would cover them up with post work but Wonka did things the right way and was re-rendering the scenes from the source with replaced posters. It wasn't until yesterday that I learned he was also struggling with cancer.

When you have limited time or possibly limited time, you don't waste your life with things you don't want to do. Wonka still told people he was working on his game, telling his story. That's what I believe I would be doing too.

Thank you all for indulging me on this. Thank you for the chance to tell stories that I love.

My condolences to his creative partner Puggy.
My condolences to his family. Those that are open to his side of his creative life.

Wonka's server is still up. You can leave your memories of him and what his game meant to you, there. There is also a link to a remembrance page and a place where you can donate to cancer research in his honor.

Writing
Writing is done! I thought writing smut in public could be embarrassing. Try writing a eulogy and stopping yourself from crying in a Fredy's. That's an exaggeration, my regular writing also makes me cry in public.

I was very excited when I put that last complicated scene together. We celebrated and went out. I told the unpaid teammates and private discords. Then, I started tagging images and ran into "ray write this scene, I am la tired."

RAT BASTARD

Now, it's done-done. I haven't found any points where French Ramon passed work to the future. 57,994 words. That does include name tags and some light coding for variables. So, I'll update the real word count with renpy when everything is compiled.

Art
I've been setting up scenes as I write them. Trying animations. But now that the script is written, I'll be adding tags. So, there will be a 'PAGES-TO-TAG number that will count down as I fill in pages and explode the overall count.

Rewards
This months rewards are Ashley. Someone said they could see her bra strap but she's not wearing a bra and not doing the meme for non-patrons.

June Bugs Goodbye, favorite month. Hello, Summer.
I tried to crack my knuckles but the noise wasn't very satisfying. So, I decided I couldn't write.

Last month, I got a lot of people excited about my harem opinions. I'm probably not going to find a topic that will attract the same attention.

Progress

Animation
I tried a few more animations. For some reason I thought I had zero and then I had a chapter five folder full of uncompiled frames. I think I haven't been happy with them so they got memory holed. As a reminder, if the animation isn't lewd, I don't count it on the tracker.

Writing
I keep saying, "I think I can finish this by x". Weekends, spare time, being left alone in coffee shops. I'm glad I don't make those promises publicly. 

Skin color
I played around with a certain body part's skin color selector. It's a setting that is like a riddle.
Three color values. Subtle changes to each don't seem to show on the model. Yet, any one of them can take on a value the ruins the whole thing.
It's a butthole problem.

Pride
It's pride month! I should talk about my LGBTQIA character. Beatrice was actually the first character I wrote. Similar to Candied Oblivion, Baskin All-In start as a short story conversation. Specifically the roof conversation from the end of chapter two. I was on break from the second chapter of CO and I had four scripts for story ideas of my next game. All the characters had some evolving to do. There were elements that I liked in one model that felt conflicted to me but I liked. So, I made that model the base of both Bryerly and Beatrice.

There is a render that I made for a contest with Bea, in a thong and looking suture. This was made before I had fully fleshed out her character.

It wasn't until I started fleshing out chapter one, after the demo, that I thought about how each of the girls would approach sexuality and the MC. Beatrice is smart, emotionally intelligent, observant, and insecure in several ways similar to a person I know and that person is Asexual.

Part of my background is in community volunteer work and participation. I moved to this part of Iowa for the nearby writer's program in Iowa City. There are local groups of writers and resources and I've met a lot of great, interesting, and diverse writers. And I know quite a few asexual people. I've met programmers that are only interested in their work and hobbies and friends, and didn't think there was a part of themselves that they could put into a relationship. I've dated Ace girls while they were discovering what being Ace meant to them.

But less than half a dozen people isn't a great basis for fiction. So, I did some other reading. I read some romance adjacent Aro/Ace fiction. A few biographical accounts. Then media reviews from a podcast called The Ace Couple and they had several episodes analyzing Ace representation in specific media.

I feel really good about where Beatrice is in the story and where, if you choose her as a romance option, you can go with her.

Of course, she isn't my only queer character. I made the hyper-friendly friend Aro/Ace, cops are attracted to authority, anyway. The demisexual gay, recently cloistered, elderly mentor neighbor. Ashleigh with a more unfortunate past and struggles with her personal life can be befriended by the player.

I have three specifically pan characters in mind and they will reveal themselves as characters mix and find out about each other. It's very common to have shades of pan and bisexual characters in a harem and people are a lot more familiar with them, so I don't get any points for them. :p Lesbian interactions are isolated to intimate scenes and very familiar in media targeting a male audience.

I put a lot of care into Beatrice's coming out. It's her major personal development before committing to a relationship, which I plan to do with most love interests. My goal was to make it informative but light and funny; Most importantly, I wanted it to be personal to Beatrice. She cares immensely for the people in that room. It makes me feel great that so many people, in turn, care for Beatrice. I asked an asexual writer for their thoughts and they were very supportive and liked all the points of view I was able to include.

It's something that means a lot to me and I'm thankful to all the people who shared their experiences in private and in media. I hope for the day when Beatrice's lunch is common knowledge and people can be free to say they like themselves.

That's what pride month means to me. Behind the memes, parades, social media posts, and explainers. It's people just trying to live their lives and be true to themselves.

Rewards
I have a pile of extra lewds. I edited the good ones and made some previews. I'll have them posted tonight or tomorrow. Between building the location and having Ophelia in the cultural miasma, I felt like doing a render. Then, Gail gets steamy. I'll upload what I have to Discord right away. I think that's it for the month but I am rather influenceable. 

Hey Boo,
I've always thought of myself as a lazy transcendentalist. Like, the spiritual has always felt familiar. It's always felt like I've always been meditating. I've always felt connected to my inner life and thoughts.

It's possible that it's over exposure. I'm familiar with meditation through pop culture made by people who DO meditate and believe in inner truths that are deeper than ourselves and connected to the universe.

It could be great marketing. People want familiar things. It's Die Hard but the building is on fire and your sister lost her clothes. You were already meditating, let these teachings show you how to take full advantage.

But that can't be right. There must be more to it. More that I don't understand, don't do right, and don't grasp. But it feels familiar, so I use that as an excuse to not investigate further. Thus lazy.

I was given David Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish. It can't be worse than when I based a whole game off an Allen Watt's speech.

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Progress
I've been building sets and picking outfits again. It's nice when an asset like my location exists already and I can just tweak it to make it my own. Like THE convenience store or THE park with a running path and tunnel. It makes sense to have some things the same from game to game. Places in games don't need to be just like the real things but they do need to feel like the real thing. If something is supposed to feel real but it's unfamiliar then it is uncanny and uncanny is distracting, and people reach for the reason behind the feeling. 

Then, the people are usually wrong.

Writing
This is the big progress. I'm staying above my minimum writing goals but a part of me wishes I could work out a scene as fast as I summarized it in my outline. Writing harem, there is less branching and more skipped content. There's a path where everyone gets romanced so it doesn't make sense to choose between the girls.

So, I kind of write everything and let play testers and alpha readers pull me back when it's too much.

I also have to avoid the dispatch problem of having Invisagirl be more involved in the plot than Mandy. Some chapters will lack certain goals but my goal will be for the finished game to feel like none of the girls are side girls. It's already possible to reject Beatrice and that is going to effect the rest of the game and cause alternative scenes.

Why does the game start with alternative/exclusive scenes? It's easier and more likely that people replay the beginning while that's the only content or easiest to replay. There are lots of people that just replay the opening acts of Baulters Gate 3 or Dragon Age Origins. Once they get a feel for the character they want, they take that save to the end of the game.

I'm also a little lazy. So, preferences that can be fixed with mods, I'll leave to mods.

Discord
Discord is going through all kinds of fuckery to make people scan IDs or mining their data until an AI can determine their age, despite several data breaches happening at various points of the company's history.

Nothing has been like discord for me as far as community building. So, I don't know what I'll do. I have cancelled nitro in protest and I encourage others to do the same. I've never forced people to join it and I can email people directly, if reminded. I've heard that steam chat has gotten really good but that's for a close group of fans and I'm not sure that can translate for my purposes.

Girls in the Rewards
We have Tulip, Meka, and Donna. With an appearance of the MC because there is a movie poster that I really like.

Hey Boo,

Slow down grab the wall 
wiggle like you're trying 
to make your ass fall off
(-Sage the Gemini)
"-Is the best couplet. It's the best couplet. It's the best, yet, couplet. Fuck you, Shakespeare. Fuck you, Emily Dickenson. Fuck you, E.E. Cummings. Fuck you, every other poet. Gas Pedal."

-Hank Green

Progress Report
New progress tracker!
I'm currently writing. I've been writing for a few months as I've been working on other things. I'm mainly a writer and I just do it all the time. The stats on the tracker will shift as I hit different stages of production. 

Word count is a permanent feature, along with art, animation, and coding. When those steps get more focus, they'll take up more space on the tracker and get subcategories to better communicate the work being done.

Writing
I find I like to do things that satisfy me. There are a lot of stories that will leave a gap after a cliff hanger. It is interesting to piece things together and in some sense skip drama. I have nothing against that, depending on genre focus. I feel a little cheated when I expect a conversation and I only get a status-quo puzzle.

Chapter four was all Cindy. Chapter 3 was Selena's chapter and we learned a lot about Beatrice, too. Then chapter two was Tulip and what she's set up in the world.

Chapter 5 will shift focus in a predictable way.

Scenes
This is a loose count of scenes. I have one big "last time on" scene that I'm excited about. I forgot about some of the scenes that I wrote already when I went over my handy outline.

Art
I have scenes planned out and I've started making the new locations and character outfits.

That's this month's Progress Report.

I do backer rewards and my progress report on the third Wednesday of each month. Backer rewards will be going up later today on Patreon and Subscribestar. Rewards like this!

Links to everything, polls, and more discussion on my DISCORD. Thank you for reading.

Rewards every third Wednesday.