Hi everyone! 

I hope you’re all handling the summer heat well. Here in the Northwest, we had the hottest days EVER in recorded history here (42C!) so that was fun. Thankfully, things have cooled down now and we’re back to normal temperatures for the foreseeable future.

So new stuff since the last update: As you’ve hopefully seen by now, the Unity Rebuild is finally done and Ch20+21 are out for everybody. If you haven’t played it yet, you’re really missing out.

Snow is currently working on a quality-of-life update that will fix a lot of annoying pain points you’ve all been helping us find. So stuff like scroll-back, skipping being slow, history finally being implemented, movie volume, etc. Plenty of little things that will go a long way towards improving the whole experience. 

The Mac build we got out is still has some wrinkles to iron out and as long as there’s even one Mac reader, we’re going to support that platform.

 We think there are some inherent issues with Mac builds made on Windows, some coming from Unity bugs and some coming from permission issues stemming from .zip compression, but thankfully we have a few more cards up our sleeve on this front. Stay tuned.

Speaking of platforms, Android is still on the table and will be the next focus area for Snow after this QoL pass. You guys made up a big portion of our early readership and we want to take you with us the whole way.

Chapter 22 is render complete, the script has its first draft finished and the music ques have been implemented! It is currently playable, sans combat, which is what we’re working on now.

 Lots of animations to implement here and very good news on that front: we’re trying a new method for animations. Instead of banging our head against the wall with Koikatsu Timeline animations, we’ve gotten our heads around exporting the models to Blender so that we can just animate them with professional tools.

Moreover, this means we can import those models, environments and animations into Unity and render them in real time instead of having to rely on webms for combat visuals.

What this means is:

A) Our animations will look much better, since they’re not being made in a porn game using an animation mod jury rigged from a Honey Select mod.

B) We no longer have to worry about webms exploding the file size of the game. Originally, this was a GIGANTIC limitation on how much gameplay we could put in. To put this in perspective, each webm was aimed to be about 10mb (Pretty good for 10 second animations at 720p) and each combat section would easily need 3 generic idles, one idle for when each character is selected, and then different idles depending on what enemies/friendlies are knocked out.

That’s 10+ animations right there and we haven’t even added any attack/ability animations yet. Ch15 alone was about 400mb of animations and Ch22 would have been easily over a gig. This meant that we either had to accept that the game would end up being 50gb by Ch100 or we could have around 7-8 combat segments in the entire game. Both are lame options.

Now, we won’t have to worry about that. Your hard drive space and my sanity are both saved.

On a lesser but still cool note: We now have a brand new and completely custom sound effects library that was commissioned for the game. You’ll see it (hear it?) implemented into existing content over the next few updates. 

Normally this wouldn’t be that exciting, but as you all know sound in Out of Touch is nearly as important as the visuals so it’ll be a nice treat, I assure you.

Current update timeline is that we’re hoping to get all the animations done by the end of July. How difficult implementing them and testing combat will be, we don’t really know yet. 

At this point I’m hoping for Ch22 to be entirely complete in early August.

 Unlike my Unity Rebuild estimates, there shouldn’t really be any hiccups here that cost us weeks. Unity was made to take animations after all, so we’re finally having the engine do something it was specifically designed to do.

As for any updates before then, I actually want YOUR opinions on this.

Would you rather:

A) I update the game every week or two with side stories that would be accessible in Ch19 while we’re still finishing Ch22 (Smaller Bi-Weekly Updates)

Or

B) Would you rather I just wait to implement those in the Ch22 update? (Big Monthly Update)

Of course, if I’m just thinking in terms of F95 exposure I should obviously do A) but I also don’t want to spam you with updates that you feel obligated to download every week. These side stories are something I’ve been planning out for a long time now and I’m excited to finally have the time to make. They’ll be accessible in any open world segment, so even if you don’t go back to Ch19 you can do them later on in the story with zero penalty.

Anyway, I’ll open a poll for this or you can just tell me your thoughts. This games for you as much as it is for me, and I want to make it enjoyable for all my boys.

Special thank you to my Patrons, as always. Thank you for sticking with me through the past few months’ content drought, I assure you your patience has not been in vain. You guys are making my dream come true and while I hope you’ve enjoyed the content you’ve read so far, I can tell you right now that what’s coming in Ch22 and beyond will blow your socks off.

I’m not aiming to just make a game to earn money. 

This isn’t just a business.

 For better or worse, I have too much pride for that. I want this project to be the best indie eroge it can be and I want to push the envelope for what we can do visually, audibly, and thematically.

 It’s a little crazy I know, but you guys are making this crazy guys dream come true. And for that I cannot thank you enough, each and every one of you.

Anyway enough sappiness, as always my DMs are open to anyone and everyone. Don’t be afraid to @ me on Discord either in the server or by DM if you have any questions or concerns. Here’s the invite.

Thanks again and take care!

Sincerely,

Story Anon