Huge Update Post 2022 (Patreon)

Hi guys ヾ(・ω・ｏ) I was preparing this update post for a long time, so it will have A LOT of text in it. I know some of you don't like to read a lot of stuff, as usual I will mark most important parts with bold font. If you don't want to read all of it, I suggest you to go through main points, it will be about changes in my workflow and my projects overall.

Let's start with long boring intro (´ε｀；) As most of you know, past year was a lot of troubles for me, I had a lot of issues with my own health, health of my relatives and at the end of that rollercoaster I lost my job due to some completely idiotic circumstances.

All of it made me think a lot. I really like my lewd projects, I REALLY appreciate our community and all your support, so I want to make sure all of it work fine and smooth. But getting into those extreme situations I described above lead to situation in which I messed up a lot of stuff. I completely missed a lot of deadlines I was planning... And oh boy did I missed it! Those of you who remember last time I posted FH timelines, "Eroge's Revenge 2" release for example was planned for first half of 2021! I was extremely desperate in following routine release schedules, and often was releasing rewards in last days of month or even had to postpone it to the next month at all. And ofcourse I had almost zero time to work on my skills, which is crucial for developing and brining brand new type of content.

So, during May break I sat down, and tried to gather all thoughts and ideas on how I can improve everything related to my lewd projects. Below I will try to describe all of it as clear as possible. It will be divided into four big sections, starting with:

More discipline!

By that of course I mean my own discipline. Every time I work on a project my brain generates tons of ideas for other projects. And in theory that's a good thing, but on practice I'm getting spread all over different projects and barely finishing main ones. Let's just look in our Secret Creamy Stash for a second, in "Fap Hero" folder there are separate rounds for next Fap Hero projects: "ASSimilation", "Blow Away", "Blow Away Recall", "Eroge's Revenge", "Eroge's Revenge 2", "Labyrinth", "Reminiscence" and "Size Matters". Of which fully finished and released at the moment just three! (゜Д゜;) That's not good （´＿｀;）

After release of "Reminiscence" I want to establish more strict, clear and exact workflow for my Fap Hero projects, let's go through it:

• At one time I will have only one active main Fap Hero project. I will work only on that project until it will be finished;
• I also will have one small side Fap Hero project at a time. It will not have any deadlines and I will work on it just as relaxation from main project;
• After release of any Fap Hero I will always post updated timeline in which this Fap Hero is involved. That will be the only place in which I will be sharing estimate deadlines for next projects;
• After release of main project, next one will be determined by votes of Demonic Supporters out of pool of my big projects concepts (as it was originally intended).

Having strict workflow should make things more stable, for me it should be much easier to organize things if something unexpected will happen. And it also should be a great help with next section, which is:

Less pressure!

I do realize that I work with very, khm, "delicate" matter. That's why I always tried to make things more clear for my audience. Weekly updates, estimated releases plans, automating some of my processes, all of it was done by me for the clearness sake, so any of my supporter or follower would be able to keep track of things. So, let's say, he could look at releases plan for example and being able to understand what might be released in this month. Or could realize what I'm working on right now by looking on my weekly updates.

Did it work? Hard for me to say, I do not get enough feedback on that matter but I would assume it more than half did, because most part of my followers are seems aware of what I'm doing and why b(￣▽￣*) But I have a lot of examples when it didn't work. Every month I'm getting personal messages via Patreon or Discord with something like "Hi Meliodas!. Will project X will be released this month?" or "Are you still working on project Y?". When it's just couple cases, that's not a big deal, I'm always happy with helping out person who interested in my art process. But our community is keep growing and clarifying hundreds of questions takes hours (which I could spend on delivering more and better content).

I have a lot of ideas about improving clearness but all of it will be talked in last section of this update. Now I want to focus on "pressure" part. Because all those update posts inevitably will lead to more responsibility and as a result to more pressure. During past year I often found myself in a situation when it is 4 AM and I barely slept during month, but I still have to finish this exact project cause I said that "I maybe will release it this month". I do understand that usually it's not a big of a problem, cause we all humans and all of you understand that I can't endlessly stretch my limits and "maybe" is just "maybe". But turns out there are a lot of people who reads "maybe" as "for sure" and "estimate" as "exact schedule". There are a lot of unpleasant stories (which I will not share) when because of some weird assumptions people who was actively following my works started reporting and hating everything related to me because I "betrayed" their expecations and didn't deliver "promised" content in time. So... （￣ー￣）

I will be making several changes in my usual updates to reduce unnecessary pressure:

• I will not be posting percentages in my "Estimated releases plans" anymore. Now it will be just a "list of projects I will work and that might be released next month". (Originally it was planned as "percentage chance of specific project will be released this month". But guess I didn't explained it good enough, cause a lot people understood it as "percentage of completion". And that turned out into a lot of questions "Why project X was not released this month?");
• My weekly updates will become more loose. What does that mean? I still will be posting it every week, but I will try to avoid phrases like "I will release". Mostly I will be posting what I worked this week on and what I would like to work on next week + sometimes will share new interesting ideas;
• All deadlines on my projects will be mostly internal from now on. All my projects still will have it, ofcourse, any project should have it in order to be completed at some point. But I will not share those deadlines (especially publicly). For audience all of my deadlines are "It will be finished when it will be finished" from now on. Only place where estimated deadlines still will be able to be found is updated Fap Hero timelines I talked about in first section.

And that's it. You might ask "But how I will be able to tell if you release something at all and when?" and that's total fair. That is why (∩｀-´)⊃━✿✿✿

I'm establishing exact list of my monthly priorities:

• Highest priority obviously goes to monthly reward. Every month I will be starting with working on reward and that's the thing you can expect will be 100% released each month.
• Next in priority list will be my main Fap Hero project. When reward video is finished or in state of "guaranteed will be finished till the last week of month", that's when and only that's when I will be switching to work on my main project each month;
• And to the last priority goes basically everything else (my current side project, public works I was planning, improving my current skills and learning new ones, stale projects waiting for their time to shine, any ideas in concept stage, etc.) I will be working on those when I finished my monthly planned part of main project or just to relax, switch my focus and refresh the view.

That wrap up the tense part, looking at which you might get an impression that I'm starting sharing less info and doing less stuff. That's clearly not the case, and I want to ensure you that...

More stuff on the way!

Since monthly rewards are the only thing that officially left in "100%" category and I liked an idea of giving you glimpse of it in advance (◕‿◕✿)

Here is upcoming monthly rewards until my next break in November:

• June 2022 - next HMV in Monster Series (previous one was released in October 2021 and was called "Enslave");
• July 2022 - HMV "More Vacation Fun" (which is continuation to HMV "Vacation Fun". I had a decent break with Devil Carnival related rewards, so I think it's fine to release two in a row);
• August 2022 - Paizuri Bliss 3 (it's kinda already become a tradition to release new part of Paizuri Bliss each august. I will be posting polls about interface design in order to assemble best one for your pleasant experience);
• September 2022 - some regular hentai HMV (At this point "Reminiscence" already should be released and all projects at the time will be CG related, so I would like to refresh my skills on editing regular hentai);
• October 2022 - turn some old reward HMV/HMVs into fap challenge by adding beatbar. I will run a poll so you guys will choose which series we'll improve (＾ω＾)

As a big milestone in relatively close future I hope to finally finish and release "Eroge's Revenge 2". Which in turn will allow next big Fap Hero project to be selected (I have a lot of prepared concepts).

Overall since I settled most part of my problems I should have more time to work on my projects now. And that's perfect, for a long time already I wanted to make my projects...

Nicer! Better! BIGGER!

And I have a lot of ideas to achieve that. But for today (･ω<)☆

I want to share two big concepts that will be added to my projects in the future:

• I want to finish my learning of how to animate arts and start implementing it in my works (for beginning in monthly rewards). Some of you may remember, when our community started to grow there was a milestone on 150 patrons on which I promised to start learning how to animate arts. And I actually did, but with all that insane stuff happening past 2 years started with COVID pandemic, I never had a chance to actually finish it. Now, reflecting on my past ideas, I really want to finish this one and bring it to life;
• Nonlinear gameplay in my Fap Hero projects. And I literally OBSESSED with that idea for the same past two years. Actually, "Eroge's Revenge 3" already has it's first implementation in concept, it suppose to have 2 different endings (final cum rounds) and player will choose which one he would like to play. And whole Fap Hero "Labyrinth" concept supposed to be build around nonlinear gameplay. I already did research and did preparation works, so I have an idea and vision how this nonlinear gameplay feature will be implemented in Fap Hero. And when this milestone will be achieved it will be a huge step towards "game" concept and overall imroving your experience with my releases.

To be completely honest I have much more ideas than that, but I'm not ready to reveal it yet. And there are a lot of other aspects I would like to improve before bringing new technical processes. As I told in 2nd section of this update post, I would like to improve clearness of my projects for both supporters and public audience, that's why ヾ(＾-＾)ノ

During my next break in November I will perform big refactoring of my Patreon page:

• Little visual update. Nothing to fancy, just wanted to create new banner for the page and maybe some thumbnails for info section;
• Information section update. I will update all info sections, welcome message, etc. It's all heavily outdated and should be more clear, F.A.Q. section would really help a lot of people;
• Tiers refactoring. I will update current tiers to represent actual situation, will remove obsolete benefits and will add those that are not mentioned. Maybe (just maybe!) there will appear new tier to meet needs of some patrons;
• Our own discord server (finally, guys!). And this one is very huge, almost as huge as this update post (￣ω￣) It will take a lot of time and preparations, but also will open a lot of usefull opportunities. We'll be able to configure some bots that will automatically distribute your rewards, a lot of info sections also could be placed into various info bots. Some basic channels for public lurkers as well. And overall it will be much faster, direct and easier to use channel between me and supporters, compare to Patreon messages.

And, that must be it. Ugh, can't believe it's actually finished, I spent whole day just typing all this stuff down （；￣д￣）

Thank you for reading this update, especially to those who actually read all that stuff. And one more time I would like to thank you all for your incredible support ＼(★^∀^★)／

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions on all of this are highly appreciated. I always happy to hear your feedback, guys (＾ω＾)