The Board of Tens: $10 Meeting! [And Poll]

Hey hey people, TDL here.

I figured that as my most high-tier supporters, I can be a little more open with y'all over what I've been working on in secret and what's planned, both to canvas opinion and just to give you an idea on some changes coming over the next few months.

Flashiest first!

 https://imgur.com/TSVyrZA  

Live2D

So, I've been checking out Live2D and it's very cool. The asset work I'd already done with Ty Lee helped make the workload a little bit easier to do the about test animation, but it also highlighted some bad practices of mine and how to make assets in the future.

The only reason I'm not making a bigger song and dance about it at the moment is I'm unsure where I can best apply it in the game. If we animate all the CG's, that's like a different rig for every image, and that's where I'd say 70-80% of the time consumption would be. However, using it for the character sprite would severely limit the range of expressions I could portray with Ty Lee, and as I'm sure you appreciated if you've played through the scenes so far, expressions can be rather important when deciding on when to take a reference.

A nice halfways house might be to make the larger game-image a more limited but animated Ty Lee and when she speaks have a head at the side with a more specific expression. I think though in order to make that feasible....well let's bring up something else first.

CMS System Change

Taking on some of your feedback, I've revamped the CMS System to make it both more useful and more of a trade-off- as well as an opportunity to introduce a system I've been wanting to include in the game but lacked the ability to implement in the Trust Route's narrative- Synaptic Conformity.

Here's a video of it at work: https://i.imgur.com/vJEhQPV.mp4

Basically, it now doesn't automatically show you what pattern she's at currently, which hopefully makes it less distracting for the conversation.

If you want to check, it gives much clearer positve/negative feedback, based on data accumulated from prior variants of this material- however, the 'intrusion' of doing this increases her incongruence, as does every use of each of her triggers.

Poorly taken triggers increase her incongruence more, an increase indicated by an increase in the conformity wavelength below the CMS there. If she maxes out and is pushed too far then an aberrance occurs, and...well basically you've ruined her through overuse of your equipment.

This will be more relevant for her education, as you'll get to select how much/how little you're going to put her triggers to use, and get opportunities to 'review' your triggers to make them more efficient by combing through past conversations.

I've also increased the Max of trigger strength from 9 to 15 for a better spread of good/bad that goes from 1-5. I'm thinking of including rare 6's that aren't guaranteed to turn up too, but those'll be more relevant when the game is further along and you'll get the chance to instruct multiple variants or instances of this same material (and you happen to strike gold with one.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with it but for one thing, which you may have noticed when watching that clip...laaaaag.

It seems we're reaching the limits of ren'py's tolerances. I'm sure there are things I could program into it with python that can create pre-loaded videos in a cache that it can instantly call up or so, but it's a system designed for visual novels and not too much besides.

It also makes adding different expressions to it challenging beyond a certain level (though some of this I warrant is due to my own bad practices). Point is, I believe after the demo's done, and even before then, I'll be looking to convert the game to Unity's architecture because from what I've learned with it, it's much more modular and intuitive to use when it comes to tagging images, using videos and adding actual 'gameplay' to a system.

Speaking of such variant expressions:

We're on the last leg of the Guilt Route, adding Ty Lee's expressions and tidying up the dialogue (haha some of it is a real mess both in grammar and clarity).

When this tick box sheet is done, it'll be done! Then right into the Fear Route.

As for games to bide the time as we om nom nom through the demo...

Ponygirl Minigame...and on Discord too!

In the TW game, you earn ThrallCredits. In thinking what to spend it on I thought, well, why not sponsor ponygirls and/or bet on races?

And then I thought- well, why not have it be the game after the hunger-games on discord too? And have $10 patrons be sponsors?

I intend to run a week-on-week ponygirl league, much like F1 racing, where teams of up to 3 $10 patrons (yourselves) manage a ponygirl and have her race, with an ending 1-on-1 bracketed tournament where people are seeded according to their performance.

As patreon does not allow gambling, that's not what I'll be offering on this service, rather each ponygirl (and their team) will get a sketch over the course of the circuit regardless of pony performance, plus other stuff besides. Currently I'm fine just making every $10 patron an eligible member of each team (A team consisting of someone in charge of training, someone on handling, and someone on race strategy) but if there's more demand than there are positions then it may be wiser for me to make an opt-in seasonal gumroad ticket that I offer up to $10 people first for free, then open up to others a few weeks later for a fee.

When the Thrallopedia 'Thrall' entries finish, I imagine working on art and design for this will replace that timeslot.

As for ThrallCredit, I liked the idea so much I want it to bleed over into reality...

Discord 'ThrallCredit'...and ThrallCredit for the tiers!

Everyone on Discord can wager a certain amount of ThrallCredit on each race- credit which can be used to get discounts on commissions from myself, or 'lock-in' a position on a commission list or recieve higher priority for image completion (obviously, when commissions are back open).

Each Patreon tier will also start recieving a monthly stipend of such credit. There is a maximum purse-size (perhaps also increasing with patronage) and a spend-limit per commish. The exact numbers I've yet to hammer down on as it's not a huge priority right now (due to uhhhhh not working on commissions currently) but I'll keep you all in the loop about it. I know at least that the most that can be discounted on a commission is 10%. Beyond that it's a Mr. E.

What else...oh yeah, I've teamed up with a programmer on something. I don't want to say too much about that right now, but...well. I don't imagine you'll hate the outcome.

Aaaand I think that's it! The harem set's set the roadmap back by the two weeks I was working on it, but things are still roughly where I expect them to be. Productions going well, and I'm very, muchly thankful for all your support. It's basically allowing me to do all of this and get all these lovely thralls out there into the world!

So yeah please, comment below if you've any questions about any of this stuff; if you've preferences on animations. I can't answer everything as the stuff I'm talking about here is real-real WIP, but even if I can't answer, you putting the question forward at least lets me know what people want/like or what I need to think on.

Cheers...and enjoy!

...OH SHIT I almost forgot, this is a poll post! Well, I do believe I'm doing a Drone for you this month, right? To include in the game? I've quite a few on the list actually. So I'll give you another choice on $10 content.

Let's say we'll do...a detailed image of...something. And the poll will determine particulars.

I'm aware polls are only really good for the 'winners', so for this one I'm going to be paying attention to what comes near the top as well and try and think of ways to combine things.

Okay, NOW enjoy!