Update: The Sexy Cosplay Café Development

For those that want to short version, there's a TLDR summary at the end ^_^.

So...originally this was going to have a piece of art with it, to make it less wall-of-texty. Sadly, I ran wrist-first into a problem I should have expected to eventually become a problem, but didn't. Namely, I woke up yesterday afternoon (I work mostly evenings at my day job, for those that weren't aware) with my wrist and last two fingers of my drawing hand cramped/aching like crazy. To be honest, given that I'm a newbie artist that's been drawing/painting for 3-4 hours a day, every day, for over a month...it's probably a miracle it didn't happen sooner. Suffice it to say, I couldn't actually hold the stylus for longer than a few minutes, so I had to take at least a day off from drawing/painting.

Which, as it happens, doesn't mean I did nothing as far as the new game goes. Despite some complications, of which I'll touch on a couple, I'm now entering the final stages of getting the first build actually...built. As it happens, that means I needed to do things like find suitable placeholder images for several locations. Which is one of the things I did today(yesterday, really). I'm only planning to have game-specific art for the Café itself for the initial demo release, with a goal to add two additional pieces of original location art to every release after that. Locations are, by far and away, usually the most time consuming things for me to make, so adding them piecemeal over multiple updates makes the most sense.

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That was the original plan, at least. One of those complications I mentioned is my inability to find decent placeholder art for a couple of the locations. One, the Arcade, I created a quick-and-dirty Daz3d render to use as a placeholder. I hate doing that since it's going to show up in Mira's content, but if I want to release this thing anytime soon I just can't do everything the way I'd like. Unfortunately, one of the other locations, which will remain nameless since it has the potential to spoil an early twist or two, I don't feel I can fake in a reasonable timeframe with Daz. As such...I've added at least the base image of the location to the things I need to do for the demo release -_-. 

Having said that, I've got solid placeholder material for most of the other locations (the MC and Alice's apartment, the park, etc.) that are going to be in the initial build. I'm also only a handful of art pieces away from where I need to be, even with another complication of realizing that I really need a super-boring standard pose for Mira. Her current 'talk' pose while in casual clothes is fine...but the one for her cosplay outfits isn't suitable for when you're talking to her about punishments and such. It's two 'peppy.' That means that, after I finish the one I was half-done with before the problem with my wrist/fingers, I will need only 7 additional pieces of art, including the new location I hadn't planned for. 

Now, given that I've only made something like 25 total images so far, 7 sounds like a lot. The truth is though that I've managed to speed up a lot since I first started making the game images. The fact that two of those images will be simple enough I can probably do them in a day each doesn't hurt either. Nor does the fact that I've already knocked out most of the really difficult pieces. I'm fully expecting, even with having an unexpected business trip forced on me for later this month, that the art I need for the first release will be 100% done this month.

Of course, originally, I wanted to actually release the demo this month. Which...is somewhat unlikely to happen at this point. Not quite impossible, if everything goes right, but a bit unlikely. If it wasn't for the 9 day business trip I'm being forced on, I probably would make it this month. With that...well that's almost a third of the month where I pretty much can't work on it >_<. Oh, I might be able to get some programming done in hotel rooms, but that pretty much never works out as well as I think it will, so I'm not counting on it. 

TLDR Summary!

Despite delays, I've made a lot of progress. Art at least will be done this month. There's a small chance that the first demo release will be done this month. But early-mid August is more likely. The first build is looking to have roughly 33 completely original pieces of art(plus variations) along with a number of decent placeholders for locations(there are no placeholders for characters and never will be. All characters will always be original art).