Dev Log #41 - The slow, slow month of July

Hi all! Welcome back to another weekly update! This dev log will be slightly shorter than the previous week's ones as I'm currently in the middle of doing up the custom renders, which I aim to complete by the end of the coming weekend at the maximum (render times notwithstanding).

A decisively slow month
I'll be blunt: the month of July was not a good one for me mentally, with several in-real-life events really baring their teeth on me where the previous 6 months were pretty smooth-sailing.

However, I won't let this rough patch of sea mess me up and I will be looking forward to the month of August, where I expect to get everything back on track and proceed with the creation of Episode 2, where I will be putting this subject behind me once and for all and catch up on my development plans!

A minor change
On an entirely separate topic, I was having many thoughts on one aspect of the previews that are shown every week to First-rate tiers and above, where I tend to show previews of the next episode in very small chunks (i.e. just 1-2 screenshots).

The reasoning I had at the start of this was that in the end, Cara in Creekmaw is a mystery game, and showing more than 3 preview images at a time every week would most definitely spoil certain scenes that I want to keep for when the whole game is ready.

Of course, that was my past thinking and recently I've been committing to the idea that I should be making specific tiers more worth the investment of your support. Instead of showing just 1-2 small previews of the next episode, I am planning to show about 3-5 images at a time every week for each tier that provides previews (i.e. 6-10 total if on the Head of Family tier).

On top of this, there will no longer be any distinction between preview renders and lewd renders. This means if you are at the First-rate tier, the variety of images seen every week will be about the same as what a subscriber at Head of Family would see. The only major difference is that the latter will see more preview images every week (on top of the 1-week early access). The tiers and their descriptions have been updated to accommodate this change and to prevent confusion.

With this change (starting next week as render work will begin in earnest in August), I'm hoping to retain an interest in your support in the higher tiers while still providing informative dev logs and interactive polls to the larger portion of the community as I have always strived to do!

I hope this change is a welcome one and as always, I'm thankful for everyone's support, big or small!

The story so far!
Between work on render requests, I've also been drafting a few add-on scenes and scene refinement for the overall script and flow of Episode 2, which I have mostly finalized. Once the work wraps up, I will be beginning the full production of E2, with render work, gameplay, and dialogue all planned as I kick myself back into full gear.

There will be no progress report this week as I do not believe much has changed since last week. I will be striving to make sure this will not repeat itself for the next dev log!

Stay safe and healthy!