We enter the last development month for Liora's second part, the early midgame (out of 5 parts). The remaining main goal is to finish up the scaling towards the first sex scene.
Week 1: I have received the Blowjob H-CG variations yesterday for the Sexual Service H-CG and also just finished writing the text variations for it & extended the proposal with a blowjob option. It's technically already possible for reaching the required minimum lewdness that I will be using for sex (probably 30) but with this there will a bit more variety than repeating the titjob with all modifiers a bunch of times.
The date scene will also receive one "last" main modifier. In the masturbation module Edgar will be able do the fingering instead of Liora. I say last because there will probably be more clauses that can affect the scene, but I will be developing them primarily for other events and then support them in the date event if necessary instead of developing them primarily for the date event. There will also be more story events but more on that in Week 2.
Finally, I will be spending the rest of the week working on the first sex scene. The trigger will most likely be something like "If Edgar made Liora cum twice in a day" and only get unlocked for negotiation once Edgar managed to trigger at least one orgasm for Liora. I don't think I will have enough time to work on clauses that modify the sex event in this week, but that will then be then focus of week 4. Sex will probably also be classified as "sexual service" that can be done vaginally or anally (option), so the sexual service clauses smile / flatter / beg will also trigger here. In exchange I will probably raise their negotiation values.
Week 2: While Liora is not a narrative game like SKA, there is a bit of story development to make sure future events / quests / etc. have a decent amount of context. The story events here will focus on introducing a couple new side characters in the form of some noble characters that Edgar wants to impress (and also some of his brothers tagging along, to his annoyance). These characters will mostly be in Redmere and only visit Thornefield once a week, and serve as named characters to pop up in Redmere events (such as the date event) and otherwise interact with Edgar's prestige mechanic. Quest wise they will also serve as potential interaction points for influential characters who aren't under Edgar's thumb, so he can have a bit of a harder time going into Part 3.
But we will need to see how much I go into that, for now it's really just about building more options for future story events.
Week 3: Dungeon work, this time focusing on the second area of the Granitite Caves.
Week 4: And then we will be back to contract work. Focusing mostly on finishing the work work from Week 1. Our artist Deniis will hopefully finish the Sex H-CGs in time for the release so I can integrate them this week. I hope...
Other than that, I would then start with contract work I had planned for Part 3, focusing more on the relationship deterioration of Liora and Rean. More stupid jokes for Liora to laugh at and more clauses that force her to react more hostile towards Rean.
And that's it for my work. On the side of our freelancers we have---
RPGM Dev
We have worked down most of the QoL improvements and behind-the-scenes technical work over the past year. There are of course still many places where we can improve (e.g. save renaming), but I think we have covered most of the high impact things such as wiki / accessability options / etc. so I can have Trihan focus again more on supporting me in content production.
He will be implementing a simple quest focusing on negotiation this month and then also prepare a larger, complex quest that he will implement next month. The focus of the second quest will be another trial, following up on the events of the Rean duel. Garrick isn't happy about his loss and Rean will end up getting accused of a crime (probably theft of treatment medicine). Will our heroine be able to defend Rean, take a deal with Edgar to drop the charges or perhaps end up not believing in Rean's innocence herself?! (I'm just assuming those will be possible outcomes, Trihan will be creating the actual quest plan this month :'D)
Voice Acting
The goal will be to have voice acting for all major cut scenes in the intro by the end of the month (which is nearly all cut scenes of the intro x_X). Allure has also reported that she has been working on improving her setup with more accoustic blankets and a new microphone to arrive this week in hopes of further raising the level of her audio quality.
Art
Quick switch to SKA: Emubi will pretty much be working on finishing the currently ongoing H-CG and then work on the last H-CG for the Victory Ending B Roland event. If we have time, we can try to squeeze in a CG of Rose wearing the special study helmet.
Then, back to Liora.
Our artist is currently quite a bit behind so things are a bit difficult. I hope we can finish the fingering variation for the Date event and then the Sex H-CG this month. Next month we then need to get started with the second round of costumes. Since this means updating all CGs with costumes with these new costumes, I expect that to mostly take the month.
Garrick's character art isn't super important, so that one currently not making the plan isn't an issue, but it's not super clear to me how we can best squeeze in the Blowjob variation for the Ariadne training.
Should we run further behind I will probably add 1-2 months of delay to the project by either scheduling an extra SKA only update month (1 month delay) or by scheduling an extra story events only Liora update (2 months delay) so Deniis has time to catch up. This would give our artist enough time to catch up. But currently the delay isn't large enough, so for now I will just watch and consider the options.
BGM
Our composer yourvinished has kind of been stuck on the Luciela Boss fight theme. Coming up with a theme that's sexy, nightmare horrish and fits to a boss fight seems to be a bit of a tough order. :'D
If you check out the pinned post, I have also added a new goal at 12500€: Experiments with animation. Making either Liora or SKA fully animated would explode the budget, but I would like to give it a try for the next project. To do so, building up knowledge on how the art needs to be produced and layered/how animations can be best integrated into a game, etc. would be useful at the current stage.
We would probably pick popular scenes (from SKA?) and I would make them available ingame as bonus content (like the bonus cg). This way we don't commit to anything in the main game, but also end up with something from the experiments that produce tangible value in the game through better bonus content.
Aaaaaand that's the plan for the month.