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Introducing the new $20 Tier! Plus Important Reminders!
🕑 Added 2020-11-29 19:26:25 +0000 UTCFor those not interested in the new $20 Tier, PLEASE at least skip down to the Important Reminders section. This is particularly important for New Patrons, as there are changes to the Development Cycle and Patreon Tiers that are starting on December 1st.
Alright, everyone! I've been teasing the introduction of major changes to the $20 Tier all month, and I'm finally ready to introduce them. I'm quite excited to do so, in fact, as I've been working hard to make the new rewards possible. As of December 2020, the $20 tier will include the following:
1) A set of 4k wallpapers every month. You can see a reduced resolution (720p) version of one such wallpaper attached as the first image in this post! There will be at least 2 of these wallpapers monthly, one SFW such as the attached example...and one very much not safe for work ;-). In months with Major Holidays (such as December with Christmas), there might be a third wallpaper in the pack. The extra Holiday wallpapers may also be released as All Patron gifts. The regular 4k wallpapers will remain permanent $20+ exclusives.
2) A monthly Comic! You can see a few pages of the first such comic attached to this post. Though I'm still playing with the color and font of the speech/thought bubbles (hence why not all of them have text yet, even though the script is largely done). Each comic will feature Alternate World versions of the characters from Haven's Port (and possibly other games, eventually). The first comic, for example, features a Steampunk World version of Alexia (the default name for the Haven's Port character, for those that don't remember :-p). I have the first three comics all planned and the needed assets purchased. Each will introduce a new world and, after those three comics, I will open up voting for patrons at this Tier to see which world gets another comic next...or if you want to see another world entirely!
Comic renders are/will be done at 720p HD (as seen in attached images), with simpler lighting and a different render engine than Haven's Port itself, in order to keep the time needed for the renders down to something I can handle monthly. These comics MAY eventually be released for lower-tier patrons, I haven't actually decided yet. If they are, however, it will be at a major delay (at least 3-months). The total length of each comic will vary to match the stories, but will be no shorter than a dozen(12) pages/renders.
3) High-Speed Download Links! As of December, I will be experimenting with this. I will be using a service called MASV to provide High-Speed links for $20 Tier members.
This isn't the scummy move it may seem to some of you.
I've tried, hard, to find good delivery methods for free for both Patron and Public builds. Unfortunately, most are either slow...or don't allow for games the size of Chastity Quest. (And, as a reminder...no, Chastity Quest can't really be compressed farther. It's already using JPEG images and Webm Video, which are both highly compressed formats. The game's size is owning to the fact that there is now over 3 hours of 1080p HD video in the game. I can't compress the game any farther without a steep quality drop off.) I will continue to upload for everyone to the best of those mediocre options (currently, Anonfile, Pixeldrain in addition to Mega).
The reason for the new High-Speed links being restricted to this tier is due to the fact that MASV is a pay-per-gigabyte service. It's genuinely HIGH speed(or so they claim), but I will have to pay 25 cents for every GB patrons download. For this reason, even those at the new tier will be restricted to a single High-Speed download of each game per build. Even that single download of each game will run about $2.50 for me at this point, and that will only get worse with each build, hence why it's restricted to such a high-cost tier. That said, I'm not going to be an ogre about this. If, for example, a patron has a crash mid-download or something similar, I will reset their allowed download (so long as they aren't a major repeat offender or something).
4) This is an old reward, from the previous iteration of this tier, but $20 patrons will continue to receive an ebook copy of Freedom in the Sky. This novel was written by me in collaboration with another author, under the joint pen name Jaylee Coglin. Those who have been with the Patreon for a LONG time(or have read through the story archives) , may remember that name being attached to many of the early short stories as well. I no longer actively collaborate with that author, but we both retain the right to use anything we published together, so an e-copy of the novel will remain available for all $20+ Patrons.
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IMPORTANT REMINDERS SECTION
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As of December 2020, there will be a number of changes to this Patreon. These changes have been discussed and voted on over the past month, with every change mentioned here repeatedly covered so that no one is left in the dark. However, as there are always new patrons who might not have read the backlog of posts, I felt the need to go over the changes one last time, so everyone is on the same page.
As of December 2020, the following changes will occur:
1) The Development Cycle for the games will change. Instead of releasing both games every month, I will release a much larger build for ONE game per month, alternating games each month. The voting for which game will start the new cycle is still on-going. It will wrap up at midnight tomorrow, with the winner being the first game updated on the new pattern. Currently, that looks like it's going to be Chastity Quest, but that could still change given the number of new patrons from the most recent Haven's Port release! Make sure to vote if you haven't already!
At the end of the day, the games will still be getting roughly the same amount of content-per-development-hour (actually, probably a little MORE content), they will just be released in bigger chunks.
2) In direct consequence of #1, Haven's Port's early release will be moved to the $5 Tier. This sucks, I know. Unfortunately, for both fairness and practicality's sake, they need to be leveled to the same tier with the new dev cycle. And, to be honest, it never actually made sense for Haven's Port to be the $3 release, as it's BY FAR the more expensive game for me to produce. It was only slotted into that tier as it replaced The Dungeon of Lewdity in the development cycle. And that game had been expressly designed as a quicker, simpler game for a lower-tier reward.
3) In a sort of compensation for #2, the monthly Short Story Reward (along with its related poll) will be moved from being a $5 tier reward to a $3 tier reward. I know it's not exactly an even exchange, but hopefully it helps ease the sting a little bit :-).
4) The Focus Poll for each month is obviously going to need to be overhauled, since it was only relevant to Haven's Port. I haven't yet decided how to handle making a focus poll relevant to Chastity Quest, though I have a few different ideas. Regardless, due to the awkwardness of the change-over, there won't be a focus poll for December. That sucks, but there's always some issues with any changeover this fundamental. The Focus Poll will be back for January, regardless of which game wins the right to be the first bigger-release in December.
