Happy Friday everyone! It has been a productive week. One of my more productive weeks in quite a while honestly, and that's a great feeling. Last weekend I re-released episode 3 and I guess a few people seem to need some explanation because people got upset that it wasn't the new content (episode 4). Realistically, you guys know I can't complete an episode that fast. Still, I know these updates take a long time and people can become frustrated or even impatient. I can forgive that because it means I'm doing at least a decent job with this. It means people are anticipating the next release. They want more. That's awesome because I have a lot more to give you.

Explanation: Originally in Last Human episode 3, we had the MC from Serenity visit with the MC in Last Human and bring Lili to him. I heard from enough people and thought enough about it myself to realize that wasn't the right move. In my effort to reduce the number of girls in Serenity, I thought moving Lili to LH would work. The answer to that was 'no'. Looking back on it, I regret doing that because Lili really belongs in Serenity now. She has ascended (Valkyrie), and she fits in nicely with the rest of the girls. Plus, she still has a major part to play in the endgame. But people get so pissed off when things like this happen... You have to bear in mind that these games are 'under development'. That means they are not finished and are ALWAYS subject to various changes and even rewrites as I try to perfect the final product.

Anyway, as a result of that, I rewrote the ending of LH episode 3, removing that whole Lili scenario. But we still meet up with the MC from Serenity. I also corrected an issue in episode 1 where there were no images during their walk through the space station to the Aurora (orbiting earth). I rendered those and placed them, as well as rewrote the dialogue just a bit and corrected a few grammar/spelling errors. Then I added episode images to mark the beginning of each episode starting with episode 2. The images are animated, simple, but I think they do exactly what I wanted them to do. With all that, I also added a very short "N2TheFire Games" logo animation at the opening of the game. It's short, 5 seconds. And you can click passed it. Finally, I added some color and movement in the background of the main menu screen. I think it looks a lot better.

With all those changes, I thought... why not go ahead and build/release it now? Screw it... that's what I did. It was NOT to drum up subscribers. I just thought that folks who really love Last Human would appreciate it. And from the responses I received, they did. Mission accomplished. I said it a hundred times... I'm not in this to get rich (if I were, I'd need to be doing this full time). If people can't or don't want to support me financially, I really am cool with that. The game is free, outside of supporters getting the beta releases first. I have a full-time job; I don't live off of this. I won't do what I did during my first releases of Serenity and change stuff for a few people who bitch about something. I'll tell the story I want to tell and if someone doesn't like it, cool. I have plenty of faithful fans and that's what makes me happy. If you support me financially, thank you for that. Your money mostly goes back into my work, and allows me to pay for music, sub modders and even other AVN devs that I like. It keeps me in this community.

Anyway, sorry I was rambling a bit there... Back to episode 4 work... and there is a LOT of it. One of my tasks this week was to rework the Aurora bridge interior. It's a great looking scene. The problem is that the scaling is just all over the place with that map. So, I had to manually edit the map itself. Specifically, the side workstations and the workstation directly behind the captain's chair. They were way too low. I managed to raise them. It came out great. I also needed to adjust the lighting in there and fix some leaks in the corners that were giving me grief because it seemed like every camera angle I used would 'see' them. I fixed all that shit too. Now... I completed that, shot some scenes and it came out great. Shut down my computer and went to bed - only to get up the next day, load the scene, and everything I had moved were now rotated 90 degrees in the opposite direction. <SIGH> Such is the life of an AVN dev. It only took me about 30 minutes to put everything back in position, but still a pain in the ass. I love that bridge, but that thing is going to make me lose my mind. There are enough bridge scenes in this episode that I already know I'm going to have to rotate those pieces every single time I reload those scenes. So when I am doing those, I plan to do as many scenes as I possibly can while I have the map loaded. One image attached to this post is a rendered scene preview from this episode, on the bridge.

And the other image, is Ecko. She's a half machine, half organic ancient Teldarian. What N2? More new characters??? YES. Why? Because a story needs characters and we're going to meet a lot of them as the Aurora warps through the universe. Ecko is the first. I introduced patrons to her last week and now letting the cat out of the bag. All of the characters we'll meet like this are side characters only. Some will have lewd scenes with MC and some will not. Some will have small parts/events in future episodes, and others will not. I want us to meet other weird alien women and hopefully I've written some unique stories for them. Anyway...

That's all for this week, boys and girls. I have a 3-day weekend and plan on using it to get as much done as I can (on the bridge scenes for sure). So, for the first time, I may render each scene group out of order. Have a great weekend, love you all, ...Fire