Hello, and welcome to another Friday Progress Update. The penultimate one for 2023!

I'll write some about character design below, but first, let me do the mandatory state of the progress write-up.

I'm progressing at a steady pace. We're at about 200 renders and 5 animations done right now. The written script should require about 150 more, and after that, I've got some more writing (and rendering) to do for the full update. The locations, clothes, and all that is set up for the full update, so it's all about posing and lighting the renders.

Oh, and no real life work for about a week, which means more Daz3D time! Yay.

Now, let's talk about character design.

As Awaken pointed out on Discord, the single thing I get most negative feedback about, is character design choices. So what's up with that? Is it simply poor taste?

Well, I guess that'd be part of it at least. While everyone's taste is personal, there are looks that a lot of people agree are attractive, and other looks which fewer people find attractive. Obviously, the smart thing is to try to give your characters looks that many find attractive. 

I've been pretty hit or miss when it comes to character design. Some get a high amount of positive comments (Beth, by far the most) while others (the MC receiving the most negative), not so much. Part of the problem here is also my own need to feel that the characters are unique. This has probably lead to overdesign. Messing with too many dials. Mixing too many ingredients into the soup. A side effect of this is that characters can react very poorly to expressions.

So will I be changing characters? Nope. They are who they are. I'm way too far into the game to even consider re-rendering all of a character's images. And I personally hate it when characters change mid-game in other games so I certainly won't do it to my own game. I did a rework once, very early on, to Miko. I quickly got several comments about her looking suspiciously young, and that wasn't my intention. So I aged her up.

Rework survivor:

What I've learnt from this though, is that for my next game, I'll definitely try to have more community involvement, polls, and gather opinions. Try to weed out my poor choices early on, so to speak. I work largely in my own little bubble and, well ...

And no, I'm not working on a new game. Not at all. I have some random ideas bouncing around in my head but my only focus is Maid to Please. It still got a ways to go.

Okay, that'll have to be enough for today. I'll see you guys again soon! Thank you for your support!