This post was originally made to Patreon.

July already. Another year more than half-consigned to the dusty drawer of memory. Wasn’t it 2002 the other day? Bah humbug.

My focus lately has been on tech improvements. This has ended up being more work than expected (quelle surprise) but only in a “oh there’s this edge case I need to handle” or “oh let me add this useful additional feature” way. I’ve also had to work around some very annoying limitations of Ren’Py (you can pass a dict for auto-replay but not a list of stores? WHY?), but even so, I have almost entirely avoided bikeshedding, for which I will accept a pat on the head and a cookie.

So the plan is still to finish all the tech stuff this month, and then also write a bit to lead us into the new world introduced by the end of 0.5, and release that as 0.6 before the end of the month. It’s not likely to be a ton of writing due to my focus being the tech, but it’ll reintroduce a fun character, which is always nice.

In terms of hard deliverables, what you’ll get in 0.6 is:

• A full reworking of the stateful side of things, which will be invisible but makes things very clean for moving forward. This includes a robust new save game migration system that moves all old saves into the new data format and will continue to do so going forward.
• A “Gallery” menu for seeing CGs. CGs will also be incorporated into the game itself at the appropriate points. CGs are split by character in the menu, allowing you to see which characters have CGs you’ve not yet unlocked and letting you target them on replays to try to unlock them.
• An “Encounters” menu for replaying sexytime moments. The encounter system is rather good, if I do say so myself: it automatically captures the necessary game state at the moment you first encounter the content, which means when you replay it, it will replay exactly as it happened when you first played it, even if you have continued playing the game and have changed the world state since. It also works even if no save game is loaded. The UI is a bit bleh, but that’ll be dealt with soon (see later).
• A “DLC” menu for seeing all installed DLC (downloadable content) and choosing which ones to turn on and off. DLC is not paid content; I will never create paid content that must be purchased separately from Patreon. You get access to all the latest DLC simply by being a patron, and any DLC you download will keep working whether or not you remain a patron. DLC is simply the most accurate term, and one that people are familiar with. DLC for Lord of the Manor will be single .rpa files that you can download from Discord and drop into the game folder. RPA is the Ren’Py archive format, and includes all content needed, such as text, sprites, Bgs, CGs, etc. All installed DLC will automatically be detected when you next start the game, and you can toggle them on and off as you see fit (or delete them from disk). For now the only DLC will be content you previously had to enable with awkward custom files, but going forward that will be expanded on.
• A Kinks section in the options menu to partly control what content you’ll encounter. This is unpopulated for now, but I am envisioning options like “Domination” and “Submission” to let you decide if you do or don’t want to see Flax be dommy or subby. If you have ideas for kinks that would make sense here, let me know!

There are a few limits to the new systems in this build. CGs and encounters won’t be unlocked the moment you start the build: you will need to load save game(s) to unlock whatever is unlockable. You won’t need to play them, just load them. So if you have multiple saves that followed different routes, you can load each one in turn, and the gallery will show all available CGs when you’re done. Encounters are the same, with the provisio that since I did not track a lot of the erotic scenes as much as I did the CG ones, I cannot auto-unlock many of them even if you played them before. You’ll need to replay the game to unlock most of them. This is all only true for the content up to 0.5; from here on, things will unlock as you discover them.

Beyond that, there are still several more CGs on the way in the next 1-2 months. Coachmen+ will have seen the WIPs in the private gallery channel on Discord. Each character will have at least one, covering their most fun or interesting moments for 0.5 and before. Not all CGs will be NSFW, either; I intend to illustrate some of the more charming SFW moments as well. I have my eye on an artist who specialises in that sort of slice-of-life work to hopefully do most or even all of them, but we’ll see how it goes. The outstanding character designs are also still going on, with a rather special one for Boerewors on the way soon that I’m particularly keen on.

Beyond THAT, I’ve engaged the services of an experienced Ren’Py UI designer to help me create the game’s custom UI. The UI has been ultra-default until now, because I didn’t see much point in making it look good when I knew I’d be redoing it at some point. With the new menu options added and functional, that point is now. It will probably take until the end of the year to finish, but we’ve got some great ideas and I’m super keen for it.

After 0.6, my focus switches back to writing. I’ve set myself a commitment of adding at least one new minor story of 2500-5000 words to the game each month , plus working on one of the manjor routes. With the immense effort of the initial world building and character establishment now behind me, I feel liberated to do some really fun and random stuff to explore what’s possible. Not to mention the DLC system means I can get experimental or ultrahorny without worrying about upsetting patrons or Patreon itself. Though I’m pretty sure most of you are up for anything I’d write :)

Anyway, that’s where things are. For those of you who have stuck with me through the uneven start of this project and the long delays, I hope you’re as excited as I am to see it start to reach the heights it’s capable of. And a VERY special thanks to my Butler and Valet patrons, Ta’kom, Dalarius, Arktisk and Dustafyer. Pretty boys get horny toys~

Zaggy