Weekly update: End of May (Patreon)

Quick post this time, since there's not a lot to dig into. 

What's being worked on?

This week, I encountered some sneaky problems with the new animation code. It was bound to happen given the huge amount of changes, but it's kind of a kick in the balls to have them this late into the update cycle. 

Since the game is now working from a custom version of the Spine animation library, I've fully separated the animation code off from the rest of the game engine and am bug fixing from there. Probably should've done that from the start, but things actually worked almost perfectly without that step until now. 

At the very least, once I'm through these animation bugs, the end will be in sight.

So, yeah. That's what I've been doing. Kind of unsatisfying but them's the breaks. 

>.<'

FAQ

Will there be prolapses? Maybe! This'll be relevant to some later features, so I'll talk about it when they come up. Seems like something that can have an easy on/off option, and wouldn't be hard to animate, so it's good idea!

(End of FAQ lol)

Side project talk

Besides SHF3 development, I mentioned last week that I was considering the benefits of taking on a smaller side project, and delaying Factory for a bit. I have a set of different ideas on how to approach this, and I'm not making any decisions until the current SHF3 update is finished and I've gotten community feedback.

One suggestion was to go back to the poll where Factory was voted for, and pick a less ambitious idea from it. Namely, a text-based game with lots of customization options (codenamed SHF:ink), or a linear story adventure with animated scenes (I forget the codename). I'll talk about this in-depth later, but I wanna address it a little so you're not left wondering.

To start with, if I do something text-based, it'll be smaller in scope than the SHF:ink idea. There was definitely a lot of interest in that concept, so it's worth considering starting with something similar, but smaller!

The animated story adventure idea is definitely small enough that it could be a good starting point.

BUT ALSO, I've been kicking around another narrative-focused game idea that takes some qualities of both of these, but is targeted toward user-generated content. I'll elaborate more in a later post, but I think there's a good set of ideas to talk about.

We'll have to dig into this conversation way more after the update is released, cause right now SHF3 is my full-time focus. 

Also. 

I sincerely appreciate the graciousness and encouragement from y'all. It consistently blows me away. My lack of responses to messages and comments doesn't mean I'm not reading them. Thank you <3

That's all for now!