6.0 - The Casting Couch (Patreon)

It's been a great first week of work implementing Chapter 3 into the game. The new event system is coming along nicely (currently being referred to as "Personal Events") and all the groundwork for the new character has been laid.

I'll touch more on those things in a bit. For now, let's get straight into it!

Pre-Alpha Status

Oh my poor, poor pre-alpha testers. I'm so grateful to all of you for putting up with the endless broken builds, save resets, and other shenanigans all in the name of building a stable release. Seriously, though, despite my best efforts to make this phase as easy to test as possible there's still been plenty of bumps in the road, so I wanted to thank you all for bearing with me as we get this thing off the ground. I expect the content pace to pick up in the coming weeks so definitely look forward to that!

Additionally, I want to clarify that the current "hard stop" in place at the end of the available story in pre-alpha is only going to be there until the Chapter 3 story has been fully implemented. Once that's done, I'll revert it to the old open play system.

Casting for Chapter 3

Speaking of pre-alpha, those in that pledge level have already had the chance to meet Lauren, your new coworker at The Company. Lauren, played by Lauren Phillips, will be a central figure for Chapter 3, but she's not the only new character being introduced. In addition, you'll have for first encounter with one of The Company's executives, Dr. James Klein, and it's him I wanted to talk about today.

When I choose models for The Company, their personality is a non-factor when it comes to selection. This should be glaringly obvious to anyone who's watched any videos with pretty much any of the actresses (or actors for that matter) in the game. When I need a character, I think about how that person would behave and speak, and then find someone who could match that character physically. When I started considering choices for Dr. Klein, there was only one face I could picture. I'm of course talking about James Deen.

Now, for those in the know, James Deen is a controversial figure... by which I mean kind of a horrible person. While he's my prime (read: only) candidate for this role, the last thing I want to do is to alienate or otherwise trigger my community, so I'm happy to open this to discussion. That said, remember that with the local version of the game you're free to change any images used, not use images at all, or eventually use the 2D artwork pack.

And that's all I have to say about that!

So About That Artwork?

Right, so it's been a while since I've shared any new artwork. In my absence I told my artist to spend the month of September working on his other projects. After we reconnected this month, we both decided that the current way of handling images was too inefficient to realistically maintain, and would inevitably lead to burnout on his part and a half-finished commission on mine. In that sense, we've gone back to the drawing board and mapped out what looks to be a much more sensible method of converting the existing images to 2D art assets. Once the first batch of images is complete you can expect to see them here!

I'd also like to take this opportunity to reiterate the fact that development of The Company is not contingent of development of artwork, and will continue to prioritize using the current system of live models until the end of development.

One More Thing...

In the spirit of character transformation, I'd like to announce to you all that I, myself, have been TF'd with the help of shady government agencies!

While once I was Westane, the man (the bear?), I am now Westane Digital Entertainment LLC! That's right, we're legit now! The need and desire to create an S-Corp LLC and become a real business would have never come about without all the support from every one of you over the last year and a half. I seriously can't thank you all enough, but for good measure, thank you.

On that note, that's it for this week. I'll have more to share next Wednesday as we progress further into Chapter 3 towards the release of Alpha 6.0!

As always, thank you all for your continued feedback and support.