Blog time. (Patreon)

It's Patreon blog time. And what's new in the world of Patreon blogs? A new Patreon blog. If you guessed right, go ahead and pat yourself on the back.

About today's image: I originally wanted to show you something else. The NSFW scenes for Chapter 14 are already worked out, yes, you read that right, Chapter 14, and I was going to send a sneak peek. Then I realised it would give away far too much of Chapter 13's story, so I scrapped that idea. (That alone tells you quite a bit. Which character would spoil too much of the story if I told you she's in for some action next chapter? I doubt any of you will guess it :P)

Instead, here's a nice shot of Emma. "Emma, is unsatisfied with your work. How are you going to make things up?"

Hope the Emma fans enjoy it. And for everyone who isn't an Emma person: next time I hit one of these "I can't show you the actual image" moments, which character would you want to see? Emma's done, so who's next? Drop it in the comments.

One small request: if someone has already named the character you want, upvote their comment instead of writing your own. I'd much rather see one Noel comment with five upvotes than five separate Noel comments with three upvotes each. Makes it far easier for me to count. It's not a scientific poll, I know, but for something this small it doesn't need to be.

Now to the game itself. Working in parallel with the animators who handle the NSFW scenes is less of a juggling act than it sounds. My focus is still on finishing Chapter 13, and I got a good chunk of new content done just yesterday.

One new thing: timed decisions. A choice comes up, A or B, your call, and you've got five seconds. If the timer runs out, C happens instead. I'll use these sparingly, but in hectic scenes I think a decision with a clock on it does a lot for immersion. That went in yesterday, along with the usual pile of videos and renders.

On working ahead. I've already gone through the Chapter 14 scenes with my animator so that work runs alongside everything else. Those of you who've been here a while might remember why I do it that way now.

There was a stretch where I didn't work ahead at all. Chapter finished, on to the next one, and in the meantime I'd tell the animators I didn't need anything. Then the next chapter came around and, of course, they were busy or things took longer than expected. That's where some of the delays came from back then.

It's also why we ended up with so many scenes on the truck/bus. I had to stay flexible because I never knew which scene would be ready first. If someone needed more time, I'd commission a different scene from someone else, since there's no point in two people animating the same thing. Then the second one would sometimes finish first. Long story short: that's how we got the truck scenes with Noel, with Emma, with Arsa and with the groupie (Sophia) from the High Order. Lesson learned, talk to your people early. We don't want another bang-bus incident, right?

To be clear, the NSFW animations are genuinely the only thing I don't do myself. Everything else, like Action animations and writing and so on I do myself. But part of the job is knowing what you're good at and what you're not, and there are a lot of talented people out there. Handing those scenes to them is simply what's best for the game.

Where things stand: Chapter 13 is coming along nicely. Its NSFW scenes are done, and Chapter 14's are close to finished. Chapter 13 itself is still very much in progress. The first half is out, and the second half is going to be a full chapter's worth of content in its own right, because it should be worth your time and mine. It's going to be big, and I think it's going to be good.

If you have questions, leave a comment or send me a DM. I answer most of the time. Occasionally something slips past me, but I do read them.

And a reminder about Discord: I post extra sneak peeks in the Patreon channels over there. A while back you voted that roughly one Patreon post a week is about right, so when I've got more to show than that allows, it goes on Discord where it isn't clogging anyone's feed.

That's it. Take care of yourselves, don't do anything stupid, and stay safe.

Love,Berki