Hey all,
I realised it's been a while since I've done an update here, and truth be told, I sort of forgot. I'm going to try to do at least one development update per month from now on. I've added a reminder in my phone to remind me on the last day of the month, every month. There obviously won't be one at the end of this month since I'm posting it now... yeah. But the point of the updates is both to update you guys and to hold myself accountable. I feel like I've been slacking off too much with The Cabin, and things need to change.
That being said, massive updates have been made this month from both Crap and myself. First Crab, he's finished all the writing for episode 9 and will soon be starting on the planning phase of episode 10. He already has a decent idea of how it'll go and what'll be involved, but that's all in his head at the moment, and it needs to be fleshed out a little, and we both need to go over it fully to make sure it fits with the overall story.
As for the art, I currently have up to scene 5 finished and another 4 scenes left to go. That being said, episode 5 was a big scene and a pain in my ass, but now that that's done, I expect the last 4 scenes will go a lot smoother (although, one other scene is also a big one, but I can't recall which one off the top of my head).
I've also run into a slight issue with this episode. A couple of the scenes require animations, and my regular animation guy isn't answering my messages, and I fear he may have gone AWOL. If that's the case, I'll have to either release without animations, look for another animator, or attempt them myself. I've done one of the anims myself, but the others are a little tricky, and I doubt I'd be able to do them. The scenes still flow just fine without animations, but I'd rather have them. Hopefully I hear back from him soon, but if not, I don't know what we're going to do.
I'm sure you've all probably heard too, but there is a big uproar going on in the NSFW world in recent weeks with the kickback from payment processes, thanks to a certain activist group. I stand 100% with the developers and the NSFW community and am doing everything I can to help out, though I have to admit, it looks bleak. If you want to help out, there is a petition you can sign that might help; since I can't link it here, simply google "Stop Controlling What We Can Watch, Read, or Play."
As some of you already know, The Cabin was removed from itch by itch themselves. I had no notification of this and didn't find out until someone messaged me. I find it a little odd that they removed the cabin but simply delisted all my other games. But what happens if it gets removed from Steam? Honestly, I don't know. There are no other markets like Steam, and losing it would probably be the end of my development career. I wouldn't be able to survive on Patreon alone, so as sad as it might be, losing steam would be the end of The Cabin. From what I know of Steam, they don't give you the option to change any content in your games. I know of a couple of devs who (before this whole NSFW assault started) had their games declined from Steam because of 1 small detail, and Steam didn't give them the option to change it; they simply banned the game from ever being sold. So I don't know if they'll give me the option to change the content, but even if they did, I don't think I would. The Cabin is the way it is because that's the way I wanted it; it's already been censored too much with the whole "landlady" thing, thanks to Patreon, and I wouldn't want to censor it anymore than that.
With that all said, maybe we're panicking over nothing and all will be fine. I hope it will be, but I'm a realist, and I honestly think we might be at the start of the end of NSFW games. I hope I'm wrong, but that's all for this month. See you all next month, where I doubt the update will be this long :P
P.S - I almost forgot, I don't like giving release dates, but depending on the whole animation situation, I hope to have it out sometime in August.