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Progress Report - March 24, 2025
🕑 Added 2025-03-25 07:31:46 +0000 UTCHello, everyone!
Last week's Progress Report ended on a cliffhanger, as I set out to reinstall Windows, and the myriad uncertainties as to how that would go. I am supremely pleased to report that the Windows reinstall went flawlessly, and I am once again operating with the full wind behind me. I haven't had any performance issues whatsoever since the reinstall, and I was able to get all of my major programs reinstalled and reconnected effortlessly. We truly do live in the Todd Howard era - It Just Works.
Batcat
With that in mind, Batcat has made good progress. The new Barbara model is fully functional within SFM, and both her outfit and Selina's new outfit are working with Source as well, as this week's post GIF demonstrates. The core loops for the sex sequence have been assembled and reviewed by InsideIncognita, to make sure that they roughly match up with her expectations when she wrote the story. As of earlier this evening, we've got green lights across the board in that department.
Beyond the model and animation work, SultryLamp's audio has been recorded, submitted, and processed, and is waiting to be installed into SFM the moment the animation is ready for it. Her role is minor compared to Innie's and Milly Stern's, who are voicing Selina and Barbara respectively - Sultry's lamp is purely the disembodied voice of Selina's friend who plays a larger role in the extended mythos Innie is eyeballing if this project is received well. As always, her performance is absolutely fantastic, and I think you all will appreciate the range she has on offer in her role in the video.
I had originally hoped to get more of the animation skeleton built out over the weekend, but my executive function simply did not want to cooperate with me. I literally spent like 7 hours on Sunday just playing Balatro. I don't even particularly like Balatro - that's the state I was in over the weekend.
Thankfully my executive function was in a much stronger state today, and I am hoping that it will maintain itself for the rest of the week. My goal is to have the whole of the studio apartment sequence blocked out by the end of the week, such that I can render out the full sex sequence and send it to Milly and Innie for voice-over. Tomorrow, I plan to reach out to both and share this goal, and my hope to have their non-dub audio recorded and sent in to me by next Monday. That way, I can send the sex sequence over for dubbing, and then immediately start installing and lip-syncing the non-dub audio while they work on recording the dubs.
Micros
Beyond Batcat, I've been doing more Micro video exploration. I think I'm getting pretty close to locking in the first batch of Micros I want to experiment with. I've reduced them down to 6 broad categories I want to cover. For the sake of this list, I use the term "low-cohesion" to mean "you can watch in any order and not miss anything", and "high-cohesion" to mean "if you skip episodes you will be missing things"
1.) One-off self-contained sex comedies (think skit videos like RedMoa makes)
2.) On-going low-cohesion sex comedies (think Friends or Brooklyn 99, but sexy)
3.) One-off self-contained serious videos (think my early 3-minute videos, just 1 minute)
4.) On-going low-cohesion serious videos (think Doctor Who, but sexy)
5.) On-going high-cohesion serious videos (think pretty much any modern TV show, but sexy)
6.) On-going contiguous serious videos (think a miniseries, or a movie that was split into episodes for TV)
I have complicated thoughts regarding the viability of each of these, but I think they're all worth experimenting with. History has shown, repeatedly and consistently, that I am fucking terrible at predicting what people will like and what will flop like a stone in a lake. So I'm not going to get in my way and sabotage any of these, and just go forward with them and let the pudding be the proof.
After all, the whole point of these micros is for them to be incredibly quick, cheap, and easy for me to produce. Like, animated-in-one-day levels of quick and easy. Productions where I spend more time waiting for the audio than I do working on the video itself.
Worse comes to worst, they all flop, I'm out a week of work and a few hundred dollars in voicing. 6 micros flopping is the equivalent of a 6-minute video flopping. And the chances of all 6 flopping I think are rather low.
With that mind, I have continued working on writing out these Micros, and I think I've gotten the hang of writing sub-minute videos. I wrote out 3 this past week, and all three of them effortlessly clocked in under a minute - one of them didn't even reach 50 seconds, and I honestly need to go back and try to make longer, to reach the 60-second mark.
Watch animated Micro draft here
The first of the three Micros is actually one of the ones that I showed earlier, which at the time was only half-completed. I managed to complete it, and even manage to hit all of the narrative beats I had planned for it (and didn't think I'd be able to pull off). This is actually the beginning of a much larger story I've long been writing, and haven't had a good outlet for really exploring. A lot of the ideas I've had for them are rather short, and I have actually struggled to stretch them out into even five-minute videos. The 60-second format of Micros actually fits this particular idea incredibly well.
Watch animated Micro draft here
The second Micro I worked on this week is an idea that struck me like fucking lightning one evening while I was getting myself a drink. This is a single contiguous idea that is intentionally split up into individual episodes - it is a story of ratcheting escalation, with each episode being its own level of escalation. As of right now, I have references sorted out for 5 explicit episodes, with a rough plan for between 8 and 10 videos. Effectively, this is a 10-minute video split into 1-minute segments, though specifically written for each 1-minute segment to be a complete thought - no awkward cuts mid-moan. This is the draft that actually came out to 48 seconds - I need to go back and see if I can extend it out 12 seconds.
Watch animated Micro draft here
This is an idea that Dr.Javi and I have been working on since shortly after the Claire/Jill video Refuge released. Which means that yes, shudders, we've been working on this idea (on-and-off) for almost 2 years now. We've managed to put together a nice collection of ideas for a Refuge sequel, but ran into the problem of scheduling it. The original Refuge was put together on stream, and came out to 22 minutes when all was said and done. If the sequel was anything like the original, then that makes it far too long for a short, which means that it'd need to wait until after both Overbreed Episode 1 and Blue Star Episode 4 were done. But then I had the idea of taking our ideas for the sequel, splitting it into one-minute segments, and then staggering out the narrative components to sprinkle them across the episodes. I think it's an idea that's crazy enough it may just work.
I think I'm just about ready to pull the trigger on the Marie/Honoka Micro. I think it will be the first one I do, as I already have all of the voice casting figured out - I just need to reach out and see if everyone is available and on-board, which I plan to do tomorrow.
All of the core animation is already done, so as soon as I get green lights on the voicing, I can immediately send it out for recording, get it all done in one swoop. When the audio comes back in, I can quickly clean up the model work, finish out the scenebuilding, and then just quickly assemble it all. It's genuinely just one day's work, once the audio comes in.
Once the Marie/Honoka Micro is done and out (assuming I get the green lights), then we'll figure out the rest of the Micros.
Game Design - Roadtrip
And then finally, beyond Batcat and the Micros, I have also ended up spending some time exploring yet another game idea. Like the Brothel Game and the Space Sluts Game (I am terrible at names, if you can't tell), Roadtrip Game is being drafted out with the intention of it being a potential on-stream project.
Like the Chloe/Max Micro idea, this idea struck me like lightning. It originated as a poster idea, which I posted over on Bluesky:
This started as me just having a sudden thought of a story that follows a lady roadtripping across the country, slutting it up as she traveled. The idea very quickly came into focus as being an alternate Life is Strange story. In the game, it is noted how at one point, Rachel had asked a trucker if he would give her a lift out of Arcadia Bay on her way to Los Angeles, but he turned her down. This idea asked the question, what if he didn't? In Life is Strange, Rachel was manipulative and lascivious, having sexual relationships with her drug dealer for free kit, and sexual relationships with her photography professor for his fashion-modeling contacts, as well as exploiting Chloe's crush on her to manipulate her into doing basically anything for her. In my mind, Rachel is a perfect fit for this slutty-roadtripping idea.
Originally, that's where I intended to leave the idea. Just a standalone poster, to get the idea out. But instead, the idea dug deeper into my brain. And deeper, and deeper, and deeper. Until, finally, a game idea took root - Roadtrip Game.
I actually posted a minute-long proof-of-concept of how this game could play (in part), again on Bluesky, the other day. This idea has me gripped so tightly that I made the entire video, from conception to posting, in a single sitting.
Click here to watch the proof-of-concept video
To be perfectly clear, everything seen in the above video was animated in SFM, and then edited together with a combination of Photoshop and Davinci Resolve. But it is a very rough demonstration of how I imagine the modes of gameplay to work together.
More broadly, I am very heavily borrowing from the absolutely fantastic roadtripping game Road 96 for the design and construction of this idea. The high-level idea is that the player travels from Arcadia Bay to Los Angeles over the course of two dozen or so individual trip segments, with each segment being punctuated with a unique, hand-tailored experience where the player can choose how to manage their resources - with sex being a resource in infinite supply, and people are usually more than willing to trade for.
At its core, it is a porn game, and people (myself included) need to keep that in mind. That isn't to say I intend to neglect on writing, gameplay, or experience - but rather than the writing, gameplay, and experience will all be intentionally designed to motivate the player into choosing the sex options regularly.
The way I like to think of it is "the sex is always opt-in, but opting out doesn't offer an alternate experience - it just skips the experience altogether. You can play the game entirely chaste if you want to, but it will be a very boring experience if you do."
Rather than go into exhaustive detail of my thoughts for the game, I will instead simply link to my internal design documents for the game.
Click here to read the work-in-progress notes.
These notes are written in the Obsidian Editor, and exported out with a third-party plugin that's a bit clunky - there are a lot of links that aren't live yet. If you get a "Page Not Found" error, just refresh the page - the back key won't properly work.
Also note that I am very much not done writing these notes out (if all the Page Not Found didn't give that away). But between the Playthrough Page and the Locations Page, I hope you can begin to see the vision. I am personally feeling really good about this idea. I think it has a lot of potential - it is both narratively and mechanically simple, but its structure allows for a unique moment-to-moment experience, and for exploring a lot of interesting ideas.
I intend to keep hammering away at the design, mostly just finding the time in the evenings to write out all the ideas in my head for it. I'd like to eventually put out a more robust proof-of-concept, too - the one I posted on Bluesky earlier is only a very small and myopic view of the bigger picture I have in mind.
That's all for now! Until next week, everyone!
Comments
Lord Aardvark
One day, I will elicit a more elaborate response from you. It is my life's mission. đ
empheezie
nice
