Serenity Chapter 2 - Ep. 6 (Devlog 5) (Patreon)

Hi everyone... There are a few topics I'd like to cover so this might be a bit wordy. Sorry (for the TL;DR).

First, the Serenity update itself... is going well. Although a bit slower than I'd like, I've had to spend a bit of time working out a few things and setting up for the finale episode that will come after this one. Overall, I have a good feeling I'll be able to release episode 6 this month (we shouldn't go into November thankfully). I've had major financial difficulties that have been building up over the last few months. Retirement has not gone exactly perfect in that regard. This is not me giving you an excuse for how long my updates are taking. This is just me being as transparent as I can. The struggle is real. I've ended up having to take on small side jobs where I can to grab a few extra bucks (and I do mean only a FEW bucks). Mostly, the response I received recently when I posted about this was extremely helpful. N2TheFire Games has been very close to the edge as far as surviving. I am very close to having to go back to work full time somewhere. If that happens, my projects will come to a crawl. I DO NOT want that to happen. The only answer is to just do my best to put out a story and images that you guys like enough to want to subscribe and support me. All I can do is continue what I'm doing and try to be better at it. I listen to feedback both negative and positive and try to adjust where I can without getting away from the story I want to write. I can only hope like hell that eventually my projects will gain the attention needed to boost my income enough that I can stay doing this full time - not to mention removing the financial stress so that I can focus and actually accomplish what I need to. It is very difficult to focus when you're constantly stressing that you might not make the electric bill in time or get the car note paid, etc.

I want to bring up the subject of AI... because AI is getting more and more used by the day. I see a lot of AI-made games out there where artwork is all AI. Personally (my own opinion here), I don't like AI artwork as much as say, HoneySelect. At least in HoneySelect, you have to work and be creative. Same with DAZ (even though I don't prefer DAZ in AVNs). What you end up with is something that looks like someone put time into and tried to make it pretty. To me, AI visuals just don't work for our genre of VNs. With that said, I do think music done with AI isn't quite as bad, especially with what I've recently discovered. Of course, it is true that the instruments you hear in an AI-generated song were physically "strummed/noted" by 'someone'. I guess the question of giving that 'someone' credit is part of the reason some folks are against it.

Recently, I discovered that you could create your own melodies and build full songs where AI simply places the instruments in there for you. If you've been following me long enough (and if you haven't, this might interest you a little) - I myself have written a lot of music over the years. I was a guitarist in a small band back in the 80's and early 90's. I learned how to read music at a young age. And I also learned how to write my own music. I know how to create sheet music of my songs. This is just to give you my background in music. Using a couple of keyboards back in the mid-90's to early 2000's, I made about 16 songs that I have burned to CDs and passed around to various friends and family members. Some of my music was very well received. And I've used a couple of my songs in Serenity. In the Serenity Chapter 2 game\audio folder, showme.mp3 and fromwithin.mp3 are my own music composed and performed by me. They do not sound that good because the way I recorded them was pretty sketchy LOL. I used a mixer that was practically held together with electrical tape. But I wanted to get those songs saved. Back then, the MP3 extension was only a few years old.

Moving on... when I started thinking about the Camilla game, I knew that I wanted to have it set in the 80's/early 90's because that was a good time for me. I still had my GTA Trans Am, was still playing music... it was just a great time to be alive. And I want this story to go deeper than I've gone with Serenity and LH with character and story development. I want it to be good. No... I want it to be awesome. In order to fit that timeframe and capture the feeling I want you to feel when you play it, I needed some rock music with an 80's vibe. So I dug into this AI stuff a bit, did some research, tried out a few options. After several months of failing to find something I liked, I finally found it. A place where I could upload MY OWN songs and rework them in a different style. It gave me the power to really strip them down and make sure they had each element I wanted, every hook and chorus, and to make sure it stayed loyal to the melody I had originally written. Most of the places I tried just generated a song and gave me no control over it. I didn't like that. This site gave me enough control that I could spend several hours working on a track. It isn't just throwing together a song that sounds similar.

The result of this is... I have made 6 tracks using my own music. I spent several hours on each over about a month. And I love the result so much, I am going to use them in my projects. Three of them for sure will be used in Camilla. And one will be used for the ending of Serenity. I don't know if this will run a bunch of my patrons off or not (I hope not). But they came out exactly the way I wanted them to... exactly what I was looking for. Hopefully most of you will look passed the idea that I used AI to help me make them this way. But also know that NOTHING else in my projects is AI or ever will be. My writing isn't perfect, but I will never us AI to do that. My graphics and animations aren't the best out there, but I will never use AI to do that either. And most of my music is procured from sites where I have to pay to be able to download and use them (not my own songs). But one or two tracks in each of my games will be done with the help of AI - generated from my own written music. With these songs at least, the melody and feel of the song is my own creativity. AI just makes it sound the way I want it to.

Now on to something else... Some have asked me if once Serenity has ended, will there still be crossover from Serenity into Last Human. The answer to that is... sort of. Only 2 characters are going to continue to show up in LH - Camilla and Rin. Camilla (if you chose to be romantic with her in LH) will show up more often - if you didn't choose to be romantic with her, you will see a LOT less of her. As for Rin, she will feature in some episodes. She is like the superhero that shows up sometimes to help... as with the situation in the Persian Islands in the last episode (Kah!). Rin and the MC will have a "friend" relationship. He will not be intimate with her. However, she will still play her little games sometimes. Depending on feedback about Rin in LH, it is possible I will consider offering the option with her (as I did with Camilla). That situation seems to be so sensitive to some people, so I don't know. For now, the captain and Rin are just friends with some occasional funny banter.

Before I close, I want to reassure you of something that I said above. If I had to go back to work full time, my release times would suffer. However, I will still NEVER abandon any project I am working on. If that ever happened and you haven't heard from me in a long time, then pray for me - something happened to me. I have no intention of leaving any of these stories incomplete. With that said... subscribe. Save me from having to do battle for time between doing this and working some 9-5 job that will get in the way. Purchase posts... subscribe, contribute to me on itch, and you can also subscribe on subscribestar if that is your preference. Every single patron helps, no matter what tier. It helps and I deeply appreciate it.

Now enough of that bullshit... I need to get back to rendering so I can get this update out to you guys. Thank you again to everyone who went out of their way to sub or help out recently... and those of you who choose to stick around and see what I have in store. You're going to love the Camilla story. And there is a lot to look forward to with Last Human.

I love you all, ...Fire