itch.io

Yes and no. 

I am not, obviously, constantly hard and jerkin' it while working. It's work, and a lot of it is somewhat mundane. I've been going a WHILE on the wolf area now for example, and I haven't even gotten to most of the sexy stuff, because I have to lay down the "ordinary" game first. 

But obviously I do enjoy what I make, yes. That's always been my metric. If I was writing horror stories, I would want them to scare me. As I'm making porn games, I want them to turn me on. If they do, they have a good chance of doing so for other people too. And yeah, working on a particular thing over time will bring it in and out of being super hot, but it comes back after time, and these games are so big at this point that I'll often end up working on something for one pass, go off to do other stuff, and by the time I come back to do another pass (say the art) it's fresh and fun again.

But yes, I do, and it's not accidental, it's essential. It guides what goes in and what doesn't. Gotta be hot, or it's no good.

Yup, I saw. Probably not going to make yet another post though. Updated a bunch of TOS in some scary ways, walked a bunch of it back (but left some very concerning stuff), and are now claiming that it was just "clarification" and that nothing with enforcement will change. Well, I guess we'll see.

Aw sorry, not familiar. That's a heck of a design though.

Thanks!

Appreciate it. It LOOKS like things are getting mostly back to normal now, but we'll see.

Yeah, a number of places have tried some variation on this. The problem is that the intermediaries often end up looking (or actually beings) somewhat shady, which shakes customer trust: people don't want to spend their money there. At least with Dlsite it all feels a bit more polished and professional.

Also, Foxy! Not to call you out, but are you aware your Substar membership has been in "Payment Failed" for a while now? If they don't accept your current card, or you just aren't interested in supporting right now that's ENTIRELY fine, but given everything that's going on right now, and that you're still active and interested enough to post, I figured I should ask.

Yes, I'd say my active subs are more or less recovered as well, at least in terms of the Feb. loss. It remains to be seen whether those actually process next month, but for now it seems like we may finally be done with this particular bit of "fun". 

Oh no worries. Officially, no. The only supported system is Windows. Unofficially, RPGMaker MV is just a bunch of Javascript running in a local web page, running in a headerless browser. So it's somewhat possible to get it running anywhere that has a modern browser. Literally just drag and drop the html file (You'll probably have to turn off some nonsense "security" features preventing you from running a local web page). However, some of my plugins assume a windows filesystem for various things, so you may end up having a variety of things break. You're certainly welcome to try though.

Well, and more than that I worry about fatiguing my fans with all this nonsense. But if I DON'T say anything, then people who are supporting over there suddenly see this new button and have no idea what the deal is with it because Substar seemingly doesn't know what production and test servers are or how to do a smooth rollout of a new feature. So I'm a little screwed either way.

But the good news is that the initial problems seems to be mostly fixed at this point, numbers have mostly returned to normal. It is an annoying distraction though, any time I have to spend figuring out this stuff is time I can't spend making the game. Progress has been going fairly well regardless though; so far this has been much less of a concern than the summer nonsense, and hopefully will stay that way.

"Bit" Ha! But yeah, no problem. As always, I only want people to do what makes sense for their budget, of course. Appreciate what you were able to help with though.

Thanks!

Ha, oh no worries, I just enjoyed the coincidence.

And pity, was hoping I'd finally have some sign they were doing something. Numbers do seem to be gradually improving though, for one reason or another, so hopefully that continues.

1. In broad strokes, I have the full 5 game narrative arc planned, yes, although things obviously always shift a bit in development. But some general planning was needed, because there's an overarching story for the whole thing. That said, Chapter 3 is going to be a bit of an oddball, because it's somewhat separate from that. SOMEWHAT, but not entirely.

2. We'll see. A bundle is certainly a possibility, but that's a loooong way off. I certainly wouldn't hold off buying the games in hopes of getting a bulk discount. 

3. It definitely gets easier and faster to do x or y as I go, and as I learn. But also, I want to make each game more sophisticated, more interesting and hopefully a little more fun than the last. 3 is going to be a LOT more complicated than GT: more content, more stuff going on in Haven (especially eventually with the addon packs), and just a lot more refinement to little things here and there. If I just cranked out GT, but with new setting and species, I could have finished a lot sooner, but every time I want to try out new things I wasn't able to do before. 

I don't want to get expectations TOO high, it is an RPGMaker game at the end of the day. But there are a lot of neat little things going on with 3 that GT didn't have. I just spent a day, for example, setting up an instant retry option on a mini-boss, something I've never done before and something RPGMaker surprisingly has no built-in system for, and which is surprisingly difficult. This is definitely something people are going to die to their first few tries though, AND it has a fancy lead-up to it, so I didn't want to subject people to having to watch that same leadup over and over and over and over until they want to throw something. Now it's a nice clean "try again", like a real game!

Appreciate it!

Quick question: Are you the same Furluver that's over on Substar? If so, did you recently manually refresh your payment info? I ask because I'm fairly sure your account was non-active in the past few days, and it's now in active and healthy status again. So if you HAVEN'T touched it, that would mean Substar is indeed starting to fix the database bug (or whatever it was) themselves.

Also: "Just now excited that’s it’s August cause that’s my birthday lmao"

NICE. Well I'll see what I can do.

Appreciate it, helps to check in with other devs on this stuff, see what generalizes and what doesn't. And yes, TECHNICALLY a lot could be extracted from that CSV, but you'd have to whip up a bunch of custom scripts to get this kind of granular subscriber info from them, and even then I'm not sure if they neatly label subscribers into those same categories in the CSV. In general I just wish Substar was a lot more clear about what payment status a subscriber was in, and what that meant. But you work with what you've got; it's something of a miracle they exist in the first place, and I am grateful for that despite my complaints.

Thanks, appreciate it!

Oh hey guys, thanks for the heads up. Saw this too as I was checking things just now.

That said, this is very much still a "believe it when I see it" situation. For review:

1. This situation, by my records, started at LEAST at the start of February, possibly going back as far as December of last year. I show a SHARP drop of subs during that period (20% or more), not into "unsubscribed", but into "unpaid" or "sub expired". I have yet to get an explanation from substar on why subs are allowed to "expire" at all; this would seem to defeat the purpose of a subscription platform. It may simply be another way of saying "payment failed". Bafflingly, some accounts in "not paid" show no reason at all: no expiration, no failed payment. They're just...there.

2. SubscribeStar said nothing about any of this until Feb. 28th, after people had started freaking out about their disappearing subs on social media for several days. In that post, they framed the whole thing as "routine maintenance". Great. Then tell us BEFORE you do it, so we can brace for impact and know what's happening. As it was, we weren't given the full picture of what was going on, and what we did get wasn't in a timely manner. Also, this was a post on their OWN Substar page, which also appears in everyone's feed, if they check that. Something this serious should have been an email. It took me quite a while to dig up their Substar page (it's not linked on the main page anywhere, and I forgot the posts were also in the feed). 

3. In that initial post, they claimed things would be resolved by the 3rd. It is, now, the 3rd, and things have not been resolved. I am down from 20% to 14% of subs lost, but that's likely entirely down to my fantastic supporters seeing my posts about this situation and manually fixing their payment info, something they never should have had to do in the first place.  And now we get THIS post. I hope it's accurate. More compatibility with more cards and/or more ways to pay would be great. And I'm glad they're posting SOMETHING. But from my side, I have yet to see ANY improvement or fixing of the situation coming from SubStar. Have you? Aside from those recovered via manual fix by my subscribers, my lost subs are still lost.

Hopefully this post is true, and those subs will re-appear over the next week or so. But I'm certainly going to be keeping a close eye on this.

I will also say, let this be a heads up: you should probably be manually recording all your sub numbers (active, not paid, unsubscribed, payment failed) at least a couple times a month if you aren't already. Substar provides no historical data on this, and I'm only able to have a point of reference for all this because I started doing so a while back when I realized the big, official sub number was wildly misleading (active + not paid). 

I mean, usually it's dead-center, the screen centers on him. But I may need to be sneaky next time.

Appreciate it! And of course, only what you can reasonably afford.

Excellent, and I'll keep that in mind for the future then. And I appreciate the support!

Excellent, thanks for checking. Thankfully it wasn't EVERYONE, but at one point I was down nearly 20% of active subscribers, so it was a little worrying. With everyone's help it does seem to slowly be coming back to normal though.

Aw, thanks, appreciate it.

I do tend to have fairly in-depth main posts a lot of the time, but this one was "brief" by my standards because I had so much else on my mind with the ongoing subscribestar nonsense. But yeah, I like, and make a point to reply in depth if it warrants it. It helps that I have great fans that actually have interesting questions to answer.

On sprites, no in fact ALL of them are custom for these games, "sprites" being the actual character graphics. Proportions and certain ideas referenced from pre-existing stuff of course, but there's obviously no Mezz or Farthing or rat street thief, so that's all custom. In terms of everything else, the TILE work, that's largely pre-existing, but pulled from a LOT of sources, and often tweaked slightly. CS was 100% vanilla tiles that come with RPGMaker, GT was MOSTLY vanilla tiles, but with a few extra pre-made sets mixed in and with some tweaks. 3 has a LOT of variety and work put in there to have some visual interest while still trying to stay mostly coherent (not just look like it keeps changing into a different game every five minutes). So I'm glad that comes across, even in screenshots.

"I wonder if you'll ever had to scrap something solely because you did not have the texture packs for it?" It's kind of a back-and forth between what I want to do, and what resources are available. I pushed a LOT harder on 3 to actually make my planned stuff happen, one way or the other, but I'm still somewhat flexible to what the available resources allow, and sometimes they suggest possibilities I wouldn't have thought of too. Ha, and yes, I've mostly learned my lesson with the lighting. There IS still a lot of cool lighting in 3, but I keep a closer eye on how big of a hit it's giving to performance, and the code is a bit better optimized now. So there might be a LITTLE slowdown occasionally, but it should be very mild and rare.

Appreciate it! Realistically though, attention is a resource (especially because it converts to cash to some degree), and that resource goes down with time. So it's always a fight between getting a decent amount of finish on a game and getting it out before people start to lose interest. But I'm glad to see so many are still excited for it (I certainly am), and hopefully it won't be too much longer.

Eh, Lucky! I saw your account in the non active category and was especially confused, since I could remember you being active and interested recently. You are indeed showing as active status now though, thanks for checking. 

Thanks!

Thanks!

He certainly thinks so.

""forcing" art vs making it when you're really inspired doesn't actually change the final quality all that much."
Bingo. You have just cracked the code that many, many people interested in making art never manage to. Now, it is true that there are CERTAIN things, certain parts of the process that require more creativity, higher brain function etc, which is why I often won't even try to do those things when I'm braindead from massive amounts of stress, lack of sleep etc. There are, especially, certain times of the day where I just do other, non-creative things because I know most of what I try to make then will be trash. It's a waste of time. But the key is to not let that become an excuse. Some times are good? Fine. I better be working during those times then. 
But "Inspiration" is like "Passion", people get enraptured by these magic words. Making stuff isn't about "Inspiration". I had ONE bit of inspiration nearly 3 years ago now when I had a fucked up dream and went "Actually, maybe I can make this work for the third chapter". And occasionally little bits here and there as I work, most of which I throw out as they don't fit the flow of what I'm doing. But mostly it's not about "Inspiration", it's about tuning in to the general...vibe of what you're making, like tuning in a radio station, or floating down a river, and letting that pull you along. It's not some grand lightning bolt from above that gets you through 95% of it, it's just this calm, ongoing intuition of "yeah, yeah that feels right" or "No no, that doesn't work, throw it out, try something else." It's like anything else in life, it doesn't live in the grand and earth-shattering, but the practical everyday continuations, building slowly through trial and error till you have something. But I like it that way, it feels more real than if I was constantly getting revelations from the heavens. Because then my stuff would be written by the heavens. It wouldn't be written by me. My failures. My successes. 
But I've definitely enjoyed your stuff Sheep, and time allowing I'd definitely like to see a bigger project when you can manage it.

Ha, glad to inspire then. And yeah, I do have somewhat of an "advantage" in that this my main focus. Even with a hobby though, it's more fun to lock in and actually get something done. More satisfying. So definitely give it a try.

And the other thing I'll add, briefly, is that to some degree people don't want to follow things through to the end because they're afraid of failure. You can't fail if you never finish anything. But you also can't learn anything, or improve. It's cliche, but to some extent it really is true that you only learn the RIGHT way to do something by learning all the WRONG ways to do it first. If you're lucky you won't have to learn ALL the wrong ways first hand, but you do have to wade through a lot. But the result, eventually, is that you actually improve.

The first nsfw art piece I ever shared was a VERY simple Celestia comic. People liked it. The second was a multi-panel, multi-page Luna comic. People HATED it. But I just kept going. Making terrible stuff, and good stuff. And now, most of the time, people seem to enjoy my "style". Just takes a lot of misses to finally start hitting.

Pff. I mean "longwinded nonsense" might be more accurate. But this is how my mind works. Just hope there was something useful in all that.

Oh no worries, you're good. Just hope I'm able to sort this out, one way or the other.

Yes, subscribing at the $10 level gets you a copy of GT if you don't already have one (since it's the same price). Just send me a message on SubStar once you're subscribed letting me know you need a copy.

Oh you're free to whenever you like, as long as 1. You make it clear it's unofficial and 2. You don't charge for it. Always glad to see fan stuff!

Lol. And thanks, appreciate it.

I am bad at a lot of things, which is why I ended up making horny games for money and not working an office job or being a teacher or something normal. But three things I am, and always have been good at: organization, focus, and enduring pain over a long period of time. These have served me well in video game production. 

It isn't a trivial thing either: look at Itch, look at the "indie" game space in general. It's littered with gamejam titles, neat little toy projects, experiments, etc. And there's nothing wrong with experimenting, prototyping things etc, but eventually you have to commit and actually FINISH something, or you'll never get anywhere. And that's where I shine.

I'm not the best at art.

I'm not the best at game design, mechanics, etc.

I'm not even the best at writing.

But I am, absolutely, one of the best at FINISHING. May take a while, but I get there in the end, and the whole process is geared toward that end goal of ending up with a finished product. Steve Jobs was a douche, but he was also right about a lot, including this: Real artists ship. If you never finish, you have nothing.

In more practical terms though, how do I do it? How do I avoid feeling stale? I don't. I feel stale all the time. Real work, on a real project is like a long-term relationship: you're not in the honeymoon all the time. There's plenty of work to be finished that's mundane and has no bearing on whether you're thinking about her every moment of every day, or having passionate sex for hours until you pass out. Of course you still need SOME of that, or it's not really a relationship anymore, it's just an obligation. But part of both projects and relationships is being able to sense when there's something worth believing in there, some vital core, and then just continuing. When it's hard, when it's boring, when it's painful, when you're uninspired. How do I avoid distractions? How do you avoid cheating on someone? You believe more in the possibility of the bird in the hand than the one in the bush. Even if it's hard in the MOMENT, it'll be worth it OVER TIME. And I'm not some perfect person, I do see neat stuff some times that gives me ideas, and sometimes I manage to work those into the game as I'm working on it. But I'm not going to run off and do something else, because that won't go anywhere. It won't be satisfying. Satisfaction comes from commitment.

And not to be melodramatic, but I'm fairly used to dealing with pain in my life at this point, so I stopped trying to find uses of my time that are pain-free a long time ago. I just try to find things where that pain, that "blood and sweat" will actually purchase me something in return. There's a lot of suffering in working a fast food job, or a delivery job, or so many other things, but they're dead ends. You can endure that pain for decades and get basically nothing for it. The trick is to find the places in life where you can arbitrage your pain and suffering to your advantage, where the exchange rate is good. And build a set of steps you can climb, slowly but surely.

No, I'm bi, but this series/setting is themed exclusively gay and male.

There are two answers to that. One, in a way the first game serves as an overall free demo of the series in general. Two, there won't be a free demo of Chapter 3, no, but as with GT, there will be quite a bit of additional content released for Chapter 3 over time, for free. So it's the other way around: you have to pay in at the start, but then you get extra content over time for free. I will add, if you're worried about being able to run the game, Chapter 3 shouldn't be any more demanding in terms of system requirements than GT was. 

And thanks, glad you're looking forward to it!

Excellent, appreciate it!

I do definitely intend to have some basic puzzle stuff in this one, but we'll see how that actually ends up.

Thanks much!