Progress Report - July 22, 2026 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

Apologies for this week's Progress Report being a day late. The weather has decided that the Pacific Northwest's obligatory 1 week of summer is now, my apartment being built into a hill and as such being half-subterranean means that it actually gets hotter in my apartment after the sun goes down (thermal lag is a bitch), and it turns out I pretty much become completely incapable of functioning when temperatures exceed about 75F, and 92F is does quick calculcation decidedly in excess of 75F.

All of which is to say, by the time I finished all of my Tuesday chores, shopping, and dinner, I was basically a puddle in an office chair and incapable of doing much of anything. My single little desk fan can only do so much.

Today isn't much better nervously eyes my computer saying it is 86F as I write this, but that's why I am writing this post now, before the full weight of my building's thermal mass slams itself in through the walls.

We're gonna keep this Progress Report brief, and basically only discuss Breed and Bond and Overbreed this week. Let's get started!

Right up top, let's discuss Overbreed! It's the preview image for this week's post, after all.

Both Milly and Cinder have been on a roll lately, with them both delivering their latest batch of audio to me within a few hours of each other on Friday. Cinder is currently in the process of recording section 5 of Sequence C, and Milly is planning to record the audio for Sequence A by Monday.

Despite the raw percentage in the preview image being so low, it is worth noting that these are recorded in chunks, and that recording time isn't really proportional to runtime. So the raw minutes aren't the most accurate way to read this chart - it is far more accurate to count how many green names there are, versus red names.

And in that capacity, by that metric, there are 16 of 35 sections recorded, which comes out to about 46% completion. Which, admittedly, isn't that much better than 32%. But it is better! And, more importantly, it is moving.

With Milly's audio delivery this last Friday, all of the narrative audio has been officially recorded, processed, and installed. I still need to adjust the timings on Narrative C, because holy crap was I off in some of my estimations. This was probably the most egregious example:

That bottom audio clip is supposed to be after the top clip, and they are both supposed to fit in the same shot. As you can see, just Milly's audio alone runs longer than that shot. There is no way that Moira's response can fit it. So I definitely have to lengthen that shot.

And with the narrative audio being completely recorded, it means that Milly is now jumping into the dubbing of everything. And as you all can already tell from her amazing performance in To Breed and Bond, I know she is going to deliver an amazing dub performance. I am very much excited for this section. And when we finally get to Sequence C, and I can put her in conversation with Sombra...

Oh, it's gonna be Biblical.

Speaking of To Breed and Bond, let's discuss that next!

I'll be honest with ya'll. It's not going well.

And the fuck of it is, there is no discernible reason why. There is nothing particularly difficult about it. It's not even the most complex episode in the Chapter. And yet, for some reason, I am just struggling to make forward progress on it.

A big part of it is just stress. I had unprompted plans for this weekend sprung upon me, and so I've had the anxiety of figuring out the logistics of everything involved in that weighing on me. My friends, love them to death, are very much the embodiment of " ̄(ツ)/ ̄ " when it comes to actually planning things out. It wasn't until about two hours ago that I even learned if our weekend plans start on Friday or on Saturday, so this past week I've been unsure if I would even have Friday available to release the next episode. Turns out, we start Saturday at noon, so I do at least have Friday available.

That stress has had a knock-on effect though. This past Saturday, I spent the entire day constantly redoing the emphasis animation on a single shot. No matter what I did, I just could not be happy with it. I ended up crashing out so hard over it I physically unplugged my Ethernet, to stop me from saying things (both publicly and privately) that I would later end up regret, out of sheer frustration.

And then, after spending hours on it before giving up, I came back to it later that evening, looked at what I had initially built (I ragequit SFM without saving and intentionally lost all the hours of redoing work, so only the initial emphasis was saved). And it was fine. It was great, even. I loved it. I could not understand why I had hated it only hours before.

So yeah. That wasn't great.

I still have a lot of work to do. I've already decided, I am not taking this Thursday off - I simply can't afford it. This actually works out, because my friend group I normally watch movies with on Thursday will be otherwise occupied and so we won't be watching movies anyways, so I'm not inconveniencing them with this decision.

As it stands right now, I'll be blunt with ya'll. It's a 50/50 as to whether or not Breed and Bond Episode 4 will be ready to release on Friday. If I can't get the final 4k render going by the time I go to sleep on Thursday, it may just not happen.

But sitting here whining about it won't get it done any faster. And sitting here worrying about it won't get it done, either. So I'm just going to put my head down and get through it as best I can. The heat is going to slow things down. The stress is going to slow things down. I have no control over either of those things.

At the end of the day, que sera sera, what will be will be. Friday will come, and we'll face it when it does.

And then as a final brief note, my original plans of posting the Obsidian vault publicly fell through. It was just one of the many stressors weighing down on me, and I decidedly rather early on to stop focusing on it. Once Breed and Bond Episode 4 is finally out the door, then I will focus on getting the Obsidian vault out to the public.

With all that being said, that's all for now, everyone! My computer is saying "Heat advisory," and I can already feel that it isn't lying. I'm going to try and get as much done as I can before I completely melt into my chair. I would say "before I start melting," but it's too late for that. In the wise words of the great philosopher David Draiman, the conversion has already begun.

Until next week, everyone!