Progress update- pain. (Patreon)

This week was not very productive. I'm not sure why, but I've been struggling the last few days to put my brain in  front of the actual problems.

Also, I gots a coding stream starting in a couple minutes. If you miss the stream, VODS are also available. ('Videos' tab at the top.)

To new patrons: We’re in the middle of an absurdly-long update cycle. Here’s the summary and how to access content.

The struggle

One of the most challenging parts of doing this enormous update has been realizing that old behavioral patterns no longer work. When each update was small, I could put in crunch time and finish it in 1-2 months. Now, crunch time only hurts things, cause I'll crash before finishing. 

I don't get to ignore mental health and wellness anymore. Whatever this current mental block is, I gotta break it down and be honest about what will actually help. Maybe it's that I need to push myself harder, or maybe it's that I have to be more patient. 

Facing mental blocks has gotten easier as I've gotten more practice doing it, but it sucks to sink back down into this state after feeling like I've conquered it already. It's like... didn't I already fix this? But yeah that's not how it works >.<

The code

My current task is a little hard to fully grasp for me, which might be why my brain is working so hard to push my away from it. I'm looking at the game object spawning process and how it'll flow in the finished game. It sounds simple, but I want my approach to be future-proof, and for toys, clothes, npcs, etc to all use the same process. 

I've been using a temporary spawning process just to make sure it all actually works on the screen, but now it's time to make it function. I think the answer is simple enough, but kinda weird. Anything that can be player-spawned needs to have a line in the data file that points toward the correct spawner (toys/clothes/npcs), and include all the data related to its pre-spawned state. 

Again, sounds simplistic, but the neat thing about it is that objects can be placed into any or all of the spawners at the same time. While some things (like a dildo) probably won't need to overlap, others might. For example, consider a tiny fairy character that one might use as a toy, or strap down as an ordinary npc. Or consider a chastity cage, which is kind of a toy, kind of clothing. 

Categorizing the buttons into the right places isn't that big of a deal. It's more that the objects in the game all need to be treated as equally capable of acting in any way whatsoever. All mechanics need to be able to be attached or detached from an object in a modular fashion. 

Consider a tentacle monster (eventually planned), which may have some basic AI, a personality/preferences, can feel sensations, but also its tentacles can function as an automated dildo/sheath, an external-use toy, a manually-controlled toy, restraints, etc. It requires there to be no distinction between toys, objects, and npcs. 

Portals will be utilizing this as well, merging the mechanics of body parts and toys. 

Gonna be working on the spawning stuff on stream today.

Anyway, that's all for now!

I hope that sharing bits of the personal aspects of a project like this are helpful to some of you in pursuing your own projects. Weirdly, emotional growth seems to be a major aspect of making lewd games. I don't know what to make of that.

Thank you all so much for following along and supporting this project. I'll do my best to have a bit more to show off for next time! <3