Oh my god. I just realized 26 days later that I forgot to post my 2nd Progress Report here on itch.io for all of you lovely followers who aren't active on Patreon or SubscribeStar. SORRY ABOUT NOT POSTING HERE! I WON'T FORGET AGAIN LOL. Here it is verbatim:

💎 Hello, everyone! Happy New Year! Finally, here is my second Progress Report after a busy Q4 2024. ⭐

As a reminder, my first few progress reports will be publicly available since I don't really have that much great traction to justify paywalling these quite yet. Speaking of traction, I want to apologize for the lack of any updates or solid progress since my 0.1.1 patch release. I've been pretty busy with my day job, personal gaming, other hobbies, and other life responsibilities after my fortunate release of STELLA in September. Again, I cannot thank everyone enough for the positive reception of my first update! It fills me with great happiness, gratitude, and confidence seeing everyone who enjoyed what I have made so far.

Anyway, the main setback for my lack of development is my day job being incredibly busy and actually making me WORK (crazy, I know). For context, I work from home, and my busyness has peaks and valleys due to being assigned different projects throughout the year. The projects I've been staffed on for the last quarter of 2024 have been an incredible pain and have not allowed much time to work on STELLA development like I was able to in the first half of 2024. For more context, most of STELLA 0.1's development was done during January through May, when my projects were mostly were pretty easy. During that time, I was able to knock out my day job responsibilities early and then work on STELLA, easily spending a few hours "on the clock" developing the game daily. Fortunately, my tough projects are getting near the end, so I should be able to have this privilege again.

I want to highlight that AVN development is only a hobby right now, but I would love to work on it fulltime in the future if given the chance. I find it quite fun, and I would love to continue telling the stories I want to tell (in future games after STELLA too). Seeing the positive reception of STELLA 0.1 has filled me with the confidence and satisfaction to say that now. But for now, development is only a hobby, and I need to find a way to balance it to not keep everyone waiting too long for the next releases!

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On the topic of balancing time and hobbies, I've been pretty caught up in my personal gaming again too. I'm sure you could tell from my 0.1 script, but I play a lot of games, and that's always been my main hobby. When I was developing STELLA, I actually paused most of my personal gaming since I really wanted to hustle and get my 0.1 update out. After releasing, I was able to finally go back to enjoying my favorite games again. This was especially needed in the latter half of 2024 since I would work long days and just wanted to unwind with games instead of using my "creative" brain and working on STELLA. For people who care, these games are mainly Teamfight Tactics, League ARAM, Final Fantasy XIV, Minecraft, and whatever else my friends are in the mood for that month (also my gacha games lmao). However, I've had my fill of the latest TFT set by hitting Masters again, so I think I'm ready to lock in and start developing again.

But please don't worry! The past few months have not been entirely wasted. I have made meaningful progress in many other aspects of the development cycle:

For the script of 0.2, I have drafted a pretty solid update, and I need to flesh it out more to make it more enjoyable. I have a huge list of things like events or situations noted down that I want to include, so I need to brainstorm a way to fit them into the update while being consistent with the timeline, continuity, and especially MC's relationships with the girls.

For the music of 0.2, I been spending many days finding new music that I could use in STELLA now or later on. I have a lot of amazing songs fit for romantic, sad, and even lewd scenes that I can't wait to use. I'm sure some of you noticed in the 0.1 update, but I don't care about the copyright issues, so I'm working with any song I like. It might bite me in the ass eventually, but I'd rather deal with it when that happens than avoid it forever. After all, my AVN about IDOLS would be pitiful if I was stuck with the same copyright-free music you hear everywhere. (Also, using any music I want allows me to do some dumb, corny stuff like making the names of the song match the current situation/vibe lol.)

For the rendering/visuals of 0.2, I have successfully upgraded my Honey Select 2 Repack, which is the eroge simulator program that I use to make the girls and scenes of my game. However, I'm sure many of you playing my small-time HS2 AVN are familiar with this aspect already. I don't want to yap about this too much since most people won't care, but it was a pretty tedious process that I have survived. Only a few of my paid sponsors have seen it, but I managed to make a beautiful render of Rin for December 2024's monthly wallpaper using this new repack and visual preset. Fortunately, the visual upgrade between 0.1 and 0.2 will not be drastic. It looks pretty similar, but there are a lot of small improvements that definitely help. Moreover, I will be rendering in 4K resolution from now on and downscaling it to 1080p for the release, so it should be a lot more crisp and help with not destroying my Depth-of-Field on my renders!

For the wardrobe and scenery of 0.2, I am actually pretty happy with how people have reacted to the girls, their outfits, their aesthetics, and the maps I've used in the 0.1 update. This has pushed me to invest even more into 0.2 by commissioning CUSTOM outfits and maps from our beloved HS2 modders. This should help me avoid ones that I'm sure some of you have seen before in other HS2 AVNs. Spoiler: the first scene of 0.2 will take place in a custom map made just for STELLA with a cute girl in her very own custom outfit! However, keep in mind that the map and outfit probably won't be JUST for STELLA forever, which would be greedy. I'm sure you'll see them in other games eventually since HS2 is a community where we happily share our commissions and mods. After all, nobody would be able to reasonably make any HS2 AVNs if people didn't share their commissioned maps, outfits, and other mods with the community and repackers.

💎💎💎💎💎💎💎

Lastly, I want to thank everyone once more for playing my game and supporting me this early. I still cannot believe the amazingly positive reception I have received from my very first AVN release. It was incredibly nerve-wracking at first, but I have been instilled with much confidence that will ultimately push me to continue developing! I know most people do not like to play a game's initial release since there isn't that much content, but I am happy to hear from those of you who were willing to be invested so early. I will try my best to make your support worthy of the long journey we have ahead of us with the STELLA girls.

Much love,

🐣 eggrik