Hello, dear supporters!

It’s time for the next report on my progress in developing Beauty and the Thug.

But first, a few words about “The Better Deal.” In my previous report, I mentioned that I wasn’t allowed to launch the game in Early Access, so I named the game in its current state “The Better Deal. Part I” and sent it for review. Just a few hours ago, as I was preparing this report and had written the first paragraph about how it’s been 13 days with no response, I suddenly found an email from Steam! With trembling hands, I opened the email and saw that the idea of “The Better Deal. Part I” actually worked! However, the game didn’t pass the review due to several technical issues. Naturally, I dropped everything, quickly fixed the issues, reuploaded the updated game build, and fixed some information on the Store Page. I was about to resubmit the game for review when I noticed that the correspondence was no longer available, and the admin page for the game said it was approved! In the upper right corner, there was a big green “Release App” button…

This is where I should be happy, but there’s this strange ambiguity. On one hand, they wrote that the review failed and “You may resubmit your app for review when you’re ready,” but on the other hand, they are allowing publication, and the resubmit option is unavailable. So, given my previous negative experiences with Steam, I remain cautiously optimistic. The release date is July 26th.

Now, let’s return to Beauty and the Thug. I worked on the events inside that fancy place where our heroes arrived. I created about 400 new renders and 30 animations. Overall, almost 1,000 new renders are ready for the next update.

Talking about animations, I continued using the amazing script by Esteban Gonzales that I mentioned in my previous report. Creating generic cyclic animations of vaginal, anal, or oral sex is quite easy and doesn’t take much time. These animations are even better than what you see in most NSFW games. However, when you try to do something special, something really good that you would like in both sexual and aesthetic ways, it takes more time. I talked to Esteban about some limitations I encountered, and he said he is working on a new version of his script that would solve them.

Besides that, I used some of my ideas in practice. First, it’s a cyclic animation of clothes. DAZ 3D Studio has an engine named dForce that allows it to emulate the natural behavior of clothes, making them fit the characters, create folds, and so on. DAZ 3D also allows one to animate it, emulating the natural movement of clothes when the character changes their position. But if you want to create a cyclic animation where the beginning and end of the animation are perfectly equal, dForce seems useless—it’s absolutely impossible to make dForce clothes look equal. However, I found a solution. It’s not as straightforward and requires using some additional techniques. I may create a tutorial one day, but not now. For me, there’s something vaguely mutual between creating tutorials and writing memoirs, and I’m not ready for that yet.

Here’s the result: https://zegamez.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ezgif-4-d4b0f674dc.gif

Sorry for the link, but the animation is too big to post on Itch. Please pay attention to how the kimono moves. You don’t see any abrupt transitions, do you?

Another thing I used in practice was animated custom morphs. My renders have improved significantly since I added custom morphs to my routine. But making this morph animated is a bit more complicated. In my previous report, I mentioned that I purchased the “Buttocks Ripple Effect” asset, and then I figured out how to reproduce it on my own. The purchased asset creates a ripple effect on the buttocks, but what if I need the wave to propagate from another place? That was what I was working on, and the final result you will see in the game (I can’t show you every animation, right? I don’t want you to play the next version and feel like you’ve already seen everything due to spoilers).

I created a few events with Hunter and Amy.

For Hunter’s route, I created one more big event. Its analogous to Amy’s route I’ll work on next week.

And the last news: due to some promotional work in July, my Patreon made it into the top 500 in the Adult Game Rank. Allow me to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who supports me on this journey!

See you later, pals! Your zegamez