Community Update - Player Artwork Followup

Greetings everyone!

Last week I opened up the discussion concerning peoples' thoughts and feelings on the artwork assets for the MC's wardrobe, visual representations of the player's choices on the MC, etc. There was a poll, too!

All in all, it was a good discussion and I'll be taking the comments and poll results under consideration moving forward. I believe my artist and I have come up with a good solution that will please most people, and I'll be sharing details once we move into working on the MC later this year.

Artwork Status

This is a pretty good segue into talking about plans for artwork as a whole, as well as changes to the game's directory structure as it relates to future artwork implementation. Below you'll find an unfortunately non-artistic timeline of getting the artwork developed:

• 2019 Q1 - Establish new art direction, starting with Ava - DONE!
• 2019 Q2 - Move on to Dakota (DONE!) and begin intimate posing system
• 2019 Q3 - Develop Main Character base assets and intimate posing
• 2019 Q4 - Finalize Main Character body and clothing assets
• 2020 H1 - Develop base models and outfits for all primary NPCs
• 2020 H2 - Finalize alternative outfits and intimate posing for primary NPCs
• 2021 H1 - Finish additional NPC models, outfits, and intimate posing
• 2021 H2 - Finish up remaining CG scenes and implement artwork

What you see here is a deliberately generous timeline for artwork development. As it is, artwork is a secondary priority for the game, so we're generally moving at a manageable pace. More realistically, we expect the rate of development to increase as we move forward, and we should be able to beat our milestones relatively easily. And of course, previews will be posted over the course of development!

The actual artwork is only half of the equation, though. The other half is actual implementation which will require a change in the way the game currently handles images. These changes are coming later this year, and will bring with them a number of benefits even without using the new artwork. Specifically...

Modular Image Pack Support

I've talked about image pack support in the past. Basically, with the restructuring of the image directory later this year, we'll also be moving towards using an image manifest that will allow interested parties to tell the game exactly where to look for certain images. This is what will make user-generated image packs possible.

We'll be taking this idea and expanding it further by giving each character their own manifest file, meaning you can potentially mix and match different image packs that do different things. Wish Tasha was played by, say, Aubrey Kate instead? Grab the "Tasha to Aubrey Kate" image pack!

The expectation is that this will be done by the end of the year, and as always I'll share more news as it develops!

That's it for this week's community update, and it will likely be the last one for April. Keep an eye on the weekly development updates as we near the release of Update 6.1!

As always, thank you all for your continued feedback and support!