So while messing around with the codebase, something interesting happened. I attempted to use the ffmpeg mp4 videos as standins for the still images due to slow loading times that were occurring in the animations.

However, it turned out that there were some problems associated with having the mp4’s play as movies instead of still image animations.

So I tried converting the png images to webp files to see if the reduced size helped with load times.

Which it did. Each of the png files were typically reduced from approximately 3-4 megabytes each, to 300-400 kilobytes.

This also seemed to reflect in the load times.

I ended up using a command similar to the one below in each of the animation directories:

for file in *; do cwebp -q 80 “$file” -o “${file%.png}.webp”; done

This leads me to believe that the load time bottlenecking is due to disk reading times, which, due to the 10x size of png files, it roughly translated to the much larger, noticeable performance lag.

The image above might look like one I posted previously. But there was a small detail mistake I had made. So I ended up re-rendering it. Not sure if anyone will spot it.

All in all, pretty happy with the changes.

Now, if only I could get the audio transitions to flow more seamlessly and less jarringly.

I’ve taken a page out of Moochie’s book, and started looking at Ashamaluev’s music at https://www.ashamaluevmusic.com/ in hopes of potentially finding more consistent sound music that hits the proper moods.

Probably going to end up spending some significant time tweaking, and testing various musical combinations to see if things will end up melding together in a more tasteful manner.

Then, there’s also a need on my part to work on elongating some of the sex scene dialog, some modifications to the menu during the sex scene for the repeatable scenes, work for elongating certain elements, which I feel might at this moment still be a bit too short to convey gravity, and then more rework/additions to the vanilla scene.

Then, hopefully in mid-December, I can take some time to reassess the state of the script with a fresh perspective, potentially peppering in proper interruptions, pauses, moments when ideas click for the separate characters, voice, subtext, innuendo, generally conveying that very context through the separate activities they are doing at that very moment.