5.2 - Let's Talk Art

5.2's development is moving steadily as I continue to write content. At this rate we should be looking at a release before February taking into account the new patch criteria outlines a couple devblogs ago. As a refresher, 5.2 will contain mom's new content, 5.3 will see the new interactive events expanded to other characters, and 5.4 will see a general content update. 5.2 and 5.3 will likely be Patreon exclusive releases, while 5.4 will be the public version.

But really, today I wanted to talk about artwork for The Company!

Stay a While, and Listen

This is gonna be a long one (waves to Yojimbo) so settle in. I also ask that you read the entire post before igniting your pitchforks.

The post I made last week to gather opinions regarding generating 2D artwork for The Company generated a ton of discussion. It was informative and, frankly, a lot of fun! I think open conversations like that are a great thing, and you shouldn't be surprised to see more in the future. There were a lot of opinions, and as a result, a lot of things for me to consider. Well, here's the short of it:

I've already begun reaching out to artists with the intention of commissioning artwork for the entirety of the game. I should have samples within the next week or two.

Okay, okay, hold on, I'm not done!

Why I'm Going This Direction

The most basic reasoning is that this was always my intention, but it was never feasible in the beginning, and I never really thought I'd reach a point during this game's development where it would be. Now that it is, it's something I've been thinking about for a while. Here's the bullet points:

• The big one, doing this gets me out of this legally grey area I'm in right now by using real life models. See, I'm not "selling" my game I'm "receiving donations to aid in its development" That's fine, right? Right?
• Generated art would allow me to "market" my game as something that's truly "mine"
• Generated art would add a huge level of consistency to my scenes. Any character would be capable of any action, and it would depicted in artwork
• There's many story and fetish avenues I can't explore right now due to the limitations of my current media choice, at least not without compromising immersion and consistency

To me, these are massive benefits, especially the first one. However, with those come some significant drawbacks that I'll touch on now.

It'll Be Expensive

Well, yes and no. It's an expense, but it's one that's now budgeted for. Additionally, the rate of expense is limited by the generation of art work. It's not a quick process, so it's unlikely I'd be in a situation where I'm suddenly hemorrhaging money.

It'll Be Time Consuming / It'll Eat into Development Time

This was a big concern among a lot of people, but the reality is that development time really wont be impacted. This is for a few reasons.

Firstly, my involvement when it comes to procuring artwork will be limited to communicating with the artist, approving submissions, paying invoices, and moving the artwork into designated folders.

Secondly, there's been a lot of work going into the back end lately that is expanding how the game handles images. I'll show off some examples once I have it cleaned up and ready for prime-time, but even know there are functions in the game that allow for dynamic, layered, visual-novel style scene generation. With a simple widget call I create a background, call 1-3 actors to it with proper orientation and, with 2D artwork, adjust facial expressions on the fly. It's really cool!

Finally, the way I'll be implementing the new artwork is like this: My artist will generate art for the game in parallel to the game's development. Development will not stop to wait for art, now will update releases be delayed. Then, and only then, once the artwork has caught up 100% to the existing content will the old media be 1:1 swapped out for the new artwork.

Now, some people were concerned that they'd be waiting for new content to release until the art was ready for it. The answer is no, and here's why...

The Company is Defined by its use of Live Models and GIFs!

I don't disagree, and if I didn't see the appeal I wouldn't have gone that route to begin with. That's why they're not going anywhere. Starting in 5.2, you'll begin to notice my relaxing a bit in terms of image continuity. I've split the game up into 4 basic image categories:

• UI - Obviously, images used for the user interface. These include backgrounds, clothing images, buttons, etc.
• Characters - Character busts and portraits
• General Actions - These are general activities that occur repeatedly across scenes. You'll see a lot of these in 5.2
• Scenes - Actual, scripted scenes between characters, as well as story events

With the aforementioned scene handling system, Character images can be reused and reconfigured repeatedly over various situations and locations. This will go a long way in reducing image counts as well.

General actions pertain mostly to the new interactive events system. These are a concession I'm making in the name of efficiency and flexibility. A good example of this is kissing. Normally, if you were to kiss your mother in the game, it means I'm finding a scene where Ava Addams is kissing a man or woman and clipping the GIF. Honestly, these usually feel out of place anyway because I'm forced to just take what I can get, never mind if you're kissing someone else. Every character needs at least 2 kissing GIFs... Now, there'll be a single MF, MM, and FF kissing image that'll be used as needed. A closeup to maintain ambiguity.

Scene images are more involved and specialized. When you, mom and sis have your livingroom threesome, there'll be a scene made for it. When you transform into a shemale, there'll be a scene for it. When you slice your hand open on the TFM-1 vial, there'll be a scene.

Now, why am I going through all this trouble with semantics?

The Loophole

Once the 2D artwork catches up the current state of the game, it will become the "official" face of The Company. However, with all the streamlining I mentioned above, the game will be in a prime state to support honest to dog image packs. With that said, the current media pack the game is using will come to be known as the "Porn Style" image pack, or something, and it will be considered an "unofficial" image pack for the game. It will also be maintained (just as it is right now) for the entirety of the game's development.

So when 6.0 releases, the "Official Image Pack" may be stuck in version 5.8 for a few more weeks, the the "Porn Style Image Pack" will be updated and ready at release time.

Yes, it's a sneaky and perhaps overly-complicated way of doing things, but it's one that I think will be worth it.

Seriously, TL;DR Man...

Right, sorry.

• 2D art is coming, sure as Winter
• This new art will be the official "face" of the game once implemented
• Key reasons are flexibility, ownership, and legalities
• Updates will not be delayed while waiting for artwork to complete
• Aside from a patch cycle to shore up the image handling of the game, there will be no impact to development time
• I understand and agree with the attachment to current media in the game. Penny Pax is bae (Did I use that right?)
• The existing media style will be maintained and supported throughout the entire development cycle, it will just be labeled as "unofficial"
• The porn image pack will be updated just as it is now, and ready for release as updates are ready for release
• Documentation will be released for creating your own image packs once the system is ready
• Some art-related concessions are being made because, frankly, I'm tired of not being able to give people dicks! Dicks! Dicks for everyone!

Right, well, I told you it'd be a long one, but hey, patch notes will be shorter now, so...

Please drop any questions and concerns (I know there will be concerns) in the comments. Next week I'll be back to actually talk about the patch!