December 5, 2021 - Progress Report (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

I meant to get this post out on Friday, but every time I sat down to do so, I had things come up that ended up taking up the entire evening. Finally managed to find the time!

On the November 27 public stream, I ended up working on Overbreed, because I haven't had the time to work on it recently. This is the work we got done! I'm rather chuffed with it! You can download the whole 84-second WIP as an attachment on this post!

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to work on anything else. I didn't even have time to work on the visual novel, though some high-level writing has been taking place.

Visual Novel

Right now, the only thing concrete in that department that I am willing to share is that the visual novel is taking place in a Gotham continuity where Barbara is a superhero superfan, whose put together her own homebrew Batgirl outfit as a fantastical outlet for her passion, but has never actually worked with the Dark Knight.

A plot beat in the first act of the story disillusions her about the idyllic version of the Caped Crusader she's built in her mind, and player choices will lead to her either taking on her own branding or put the costume away altogether to find alternative ways to help save Gotham from its infestation of crime. 

Either choice leads to unique complications with her already-complicated relationship with Harley and Selina, which is just one of many tangles the player will find themselves having to help Barbara untangle.

The larger story plot is still hazy. DancesWithWolves, who you may best recognize as the subtitle-writer for my videos, but is also a co-writer and co-editor for many of my videos (most notably, Rabbit.Hole Episode 3), is workshopping the high-level for the visual novel with me. We have some loose plot ideas, but a strong narrative spine and gameplay tie-in has yet to be hammered home.

There's also the issue of interweaving sex cleanly into the story. Right now, I am leaning toward a balancing-act approach, where you have to balance Barbara's sex life with the various other things she's juggling, and leaning too much either way leads to seriously different outcomes for the story. But we're not there yet.

DVa Does December

The main reason why I haven't had any time this week, though, is because I've been working on my DVa Does December marathon project! I spent a few days building up a small buffer of videos to push out, one video a day, and then have been using the time that buys me to work on the back-end for the project.

It's a lot more than just an animation every day, though - the whole project is multimedia, in the sense that it is all framed as a live-stream, modeled after a combination of Twitch channels and Camgirl websites. And the live-stream mechanize is entirely interactive, dynamic, and real-time - I built an entire mock-up website to house it, with a randomly generated chat and various little odds and ends.

The programming that goes into constructing and then maintaining that is not insignificant, but a major sink of my time is the chat generator. It uses a simple templating system, embroiled in a complex web of abstractions, to generate varied strings that I still have control over - no Cuil Theory madness here.

The problem is that I don't have a proper editor for it yet. So I am managing the entire template system in Notepad. The data file for the chat system is just shy of 1400 lines now, all of which I have to constantly scroll up and down as I am writing out new chat templates. I am almost done writing the editor, which will make this task MUCH faster, easier, and less mentally exhausting than trying to mentally keep track of 163 unique string templates, what they're called, and what all values they contain. The editor will do all of that for me, so I can simply write out a single specific chat comment, and then just automatically generalize it into a Mad-Lib-esque template.

As of this writing, on December 5, there are 5 entries over on the live web-page for the stream. It is updated every time I push a new video, and the goal is to push a new video every single day in December. That means, if all goes well, there will be 31 unique DVa animations available for everyone to enjoy. Will I actually be able to pull it off? We'll find out.

I burned through my buffer already, unfortunately. I was hoping to get more done today, but unfortunately things got in the way and I ran out of time. Tomorrow I don't have anything planned, though, so hopefully I can put together another few days' worth of videos in the next 48 hours.

Since this is a public project, you'll want to keep an eye on my Twitter if you want to see when new videos go live. There's no hard schedule, beyond "one a day." And, as has already happened once, I might technically miss a given day by a few hours. But so far, I've managed to maintain the day:video ratio!

Immediate-Future Productivity

I will say pre-emptively that I am fearing that December will be less productive than I would like for Overbreed, simply because of the overhead I've placed on myself with the DVa Does December gimmick. But I really want to see if I can pull it off, and Overbreed is such a hilariously large project that, honestly, one month won't push it back that far.

On that note, Overbreed Episode 1 is currently at 8.5 minutes of animation. If it were published right now, it would be my 9th longest video. It's in the top 10, and doesn't even have a drop of narrative animation yet - just raw sex animation, and it already beats out the majority of my videos in terms of runtime.

As to the one-off videos, ala Renegade Diplomacy, and specifically the Elizabeth gym video - I don't think I am going to push one out this month. I originally planned to release the Elizabeth gym video this month, but then the DVa Does December gimmick popped into my head 4 days before December started. And honestly, I think when DVa Does December is done and dusted, it'll end up being more animation than the Elizabeth video anyways. Even if it doesn't have any audio or strong narrative tying it all together.

So, I will save the Elizabeth video for January. And just yesterday, I received the final sound-design for a third one-off video, meaning that both January and February already have their content-drips covered.

Of course, that is assuming I drop the idea of "Femdom February" I've had brewing in my head, as another marathon project...

That's all for now! Until next week, everyone!