Friday, December 30, 2016

dev blog #23 - into the new year!



2016 

... what a year! As pretty much everybody else too I had my fair share of unpleasant moments this year but I'm happy to say that I can end it on a high note!



Big thank you to all my supporters who made it possible for me to advance the games development in very big steps! You guys are awesome!

When I started the development of the game I didn't think that I would have such a big support coming from the community this early on. The game is in development since October now which is not for very long at all.
In the beginning I didn't think the interest in it would be that high either but as statistics on my blog and Patreon show: you guys want it!
Ranging from an average of 300-600 hits every day to a recent peak of 3.700 hits on my blog alone on the 25th of December I can assume that the interest indeed is high.

And the game isn't even what it's going to be at all yet. Development just scratched the surface of what's going to come and I can assure you that my motivation is very high to deliver you guys even more quality! Despite the actual lack of real content I'm very thankful to all of the Patrons who decided to support me already with a pledge and I won't let you down.

That said, the amount of people who apparently can't or don't want to understand that development of a custom built game engine takes some time is too high but I won't let them drag me down with their impatience or harsh comments!

If you have not checked it out yet I recommend a look at the roadmap where you can see the development schedule and what's going to come (in the next update or later).
My main objective is still to finish up the game engine as soon as possible so I can start pumping out real game content for you. Therefore I have to focus on game engine development critical tasks more than on the creation of new scenes or characters. But that doesn't mean I'll skip those important things either and you can expect new scenes in every update like I did in the previous updates.

Speaking of updates: my plan is to have the game engine "finished" (it won't be really finished until the full game is done) to a point that all the big and gameplay critical features are implemented in around 2-3 Months at latest! (not making any promises here! only promise I can make is that I'll work as hard on this goal as possible)

Because... let's face it: you guys want them boobies!
and you will get them for sure! and they will be glorious! and I'm sure you're going to have as much fun with them as I had creating them for you.

And regarding them boobies: there are many more female characters coming to the game step by step who will be available for action at one point too. But that doesn't force you to engage with them as the main story line will still be evolving around the twins and their relationship progress with each other. The other girls will just be eye candy to spice up the game. And yes... more guys are coming too.

So aside from game engine "milestones" I also updated the "Goals" section on Patreon because I ran into several bottlenecks while rendering the high quality CGI for the game.
While I can render in a somewhat fast speed with my current 2 year old setup (i7-4790k 4x4GHz, 32GB DDR3-1600, 2x GTX970, all components watercooled) rendering one image in 720p takes between 30 minutes and 6h. The main bottleneck here is the "small" memory of the GTX970 (3.5 GB) which limits me to CGI with only 2 characters in it because the high quality textures take up alot of that. I couldn't render the "new year 2017" image as one image with all 6 of my current characters in it because that would've needed 7GB of graphics RAM. To render it I rendered each character separate and combined the images afterwards which took me some time. With one or two better graphics cards this bottleneck can be eliminated but the cards I have in mind are very expensive Nvidia Titan X Pascal (but the best bang for your bucks).

So where's all this tech bla bla leading to?
Well... I formed a 3-step computer hardware upgrade plan that (if Patreon support keeps being that awesome) will be leading to better hardware for my render PC and thus faster render times. This ultimately leads to faster update cycles for new scenes and other CGI at your end.

So the most needed hardware upgrade would be one Nvidia Titan X Pascal that would join my two existing GTX970 (I have a spare slot on my motherboard, yay) and that's the goal for upgrade step 1.
The other steps are detailed on my Patreon page so check them out (at the goals section) if you like to know more on that topic.

But enough already with this tech gibberish that doesn't really concern your end of the line!

What's in store for you over the next months? Well I plan to host more polls to give my awesome supporters the opportunity to participate in the creation of the game more! Like the currently active poll you will be able to decide in things like new areas, outfits, characters or even story lines (once ready). In addition I will also continue to post high-res and regular concept and preview renders as I already did this year.

To start fresh into the new year I assembled a free pack of wallpapers that everybody can download. It includes the "new year 2017" image and "single" images for each character without any watermarks... all in 4k resolution (3840x2160) so you can downsize them to whatever resolution you like.

LINK: Mega.nz

PREVIEWS:
New Year 2017


tldr; happy new year everybody!

Saturday, December 24, 2016

dev blog #22 - new techDemo 0.5 released



and here it is!
the next techDemo 05. version is ready just in time as a little christmas present!



  • you can play as Lena now!
    you can do almost everything that Mike could do already (except the Mike specific scenes of course)

     
  • new scene (when playing as Lena)
    added a new scene with 25 CGI rendered images with hardcore elements that you can trigger every night at Mikes door (for now)

     
  • new character: Ms. Adams hot young class Teacher of Mike (and Lena for now, she will get a handsome male teacher later)

     
  • new area: School
    on weekdays you have to go to school from morning till afternoon where you can select one of your skills that gets leveld during "class" with the

     
  • skill learning system
    attending class increases your skill points by 25 and once it reaches 100 points that skill goes up one level (skills still have no effect for now)

     
  • new improved inventory
    I re-wrote the inventory system for better performance and to integrate "usable items" for later updates

     
  • formatted dialog text
    improved the dialog text render engine to be able to show different formatted text in the same line (e.g. thinking, bold text, etc)

     
  • many bugfixes and tweaks!
     
all 20$+ Patrons should check their PM inbox for the download link!
10$ Patrons will get access on 31st December and then the public release will be the 7th January 2017

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Poll #1 - new area








the development schedule for techDemo 0.6 is set and includes the implementation of the "money system".
this includes a new area where you can actually earn money.



but instead of me deciding what area gets added next I would like to give you, my awesome supporters, the opportunity to cast a vote for one of the following new areas:

  • The Roadhouse (Restaurant)
    you can work here to earn some money after school or on weekends
    Lena/Mike: Waitress/Waiter
    the skill "Charisma" will affect how much extra tips you get each shift
    Lena: Cooking
    the skill "Creativity" will affect how much extra wage you get

  • The Rear End (Stripclub)
    you can work here to earn some money after school or on weekends
    Lena: Bar/Waitress
    the skill "Charisma" will affect how much extra tips you get each shift
    Mike: Bouncer
    the skill "Strength" will affect how much you get paid

  • Wranglers (Gas Station/Mechanic)
    you can work here to earn some money after school or on weekends
    Lena/Mike: Cashier
    the skill "Charisma" will affect how much extra tips you get each shift
    Mike: Mechanic
    the skill "Engineering" will affect how much extra wage you get

the poll will be active until the public release of techDemo 0.5 which is scheduled for 01/07/17

the poll winner will be implemented first! that also means that the other areas will be implemented at a later point too


cast your vote here

Saturday, December 17, 2016

dev blog #21 - new techDemo in sight





that was a long week of coding and rendering! the to-do list for the next version is getting shorter and shorter with more and more things checked as "done".



just some more fixes and tweaks to the existing "content" and the release is good to go live!
the planned release date for 20$ Patron early access is the 24th Decemeber and after one week the 10$ Patrons will get access on the 31st.

Public release date for techDemo 0.5 is going to be the 7th January 2017!

I'll post a summary of added/changed/fixed features on release day as usual so stay tuned until then.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

dev blog #20 - new Character





thanks to the awesome Patron support this month I was able to buy new character assets and environment assets.
and since development progressed very well too I decided to add a new character already in techDemo 0.5!

meet Ms. Adams: the young, single homeroom teacher of Mike



there wont bey any scene with her yet but some dialogs.

the biggest update would be the implementation of the skill system that lets you level your skills at school. check out a preview video here



as you can see there will also be a new area you can travel to: the school
(although in a very unfinished temporary state, there will be many more rooms later)

every school day you can increase the points on one of your skills by 25 points (1/4th).
Another way of getting your skills higher will be reading skill books. on their implementation I will work next in combination with other "usable" items.

Patrons can expect a first concept render of the new scene very soon to!

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Twin Star - techDemo 0.4 - public release



it's finally here for the public!

get it from the download link

if you haven't already checked it, find more details in the previous blog post here

Friday, December 2, 2016

dev blog #19





with the public release of techDemo 0.4 right around the corner I'm already busy working on the new features for techDemo 0.5!

some new things are already completed, like the new and improved inventory. due to the way the inventory was "generated" until now there have been some bugs and complications regarding things like item drag&drop and consistent control handling. so I decided to completely re-write the code for the inventory handling which lead to a new layout and the improvement of the inventory functionality.



as you can see in this screenshot the "Fridge" inventory is already one of the new smaller inventory types. The item description box got moved from the bottom of each inventory to one single box to the left side with better readability (also featuring the new improved text engine with formattable text).

What you also see is a new item: a skill book
depending on the item type you can "use" some of them right out of "My Inventory" by clicking the action button on the left ("read it" in case of a skill book)

what's also ready to show off? character selection!



it's working, and the integration into the save/load system is also finished. you can only select the character when starting a new game and it is not planned to ever switch between characters midgame! You can expect playing either of them to be a separate experience as the play style of both of them will be a different one.

as it might not look like much the background work of these "simple looking" upgrades took some time and there is still more to come for the new version that is not just bugfixing.

the next big part on my list right now is the skill system that will allow for leveling your skills by different ways. major part of  leveling a skill will be attending a certain class at school (which will be added in this update too). other ways will be things like "skill books" that also increase your skill level by a defined amount of EXP.
Yes that's right, you won't level skills as a whole but step-by-step with increasing the experience bar of that skill.

in addition there will be added many more things to do ingame apart from jerking off into a plant!
so let me wrap up this blog entry and get back to work so I can keep the planned release date around the last week of December (for early access).

also, as successful as this month was for my patreon campaign, I have to rethink the way I grant rewards. the amount of fraud and false patrons was too high so I will change the way patrons get access!