stonefoxstudios posts
Posts: 153
Files: 71
Cross-Promotion: "The Restaurant" by Xell
I think this is our third cross-promotion since starting Chasing Sunsets. It's not something we do often, not because we don't enjoy other titles, we're just too busy to play most of them.Kentyrr tipped me off to this one a few months back when he mentioned he and the dev were trading a few art tips. We often remember where we started and in a saturated market, boosting aspiring devs with follow-through and plan to execute on their vision is something we need to do more often.To our eye, Xell is the real deal, and we wish him muc...
Chasing Sunsets: March Dev Update!
Another month, and a ton of development later, the finish line continues to sharpen into focus.I'll reiterate a point from the last update, without belaboring it: It's clear that closing the story out was a spicier meatball than we anticipated. At the same time, we're not going to allow "good" to become the enemy of "perfect" here, and we recognize that there's a point where scope creep becomes a liability rather than an asset.With that said, the scene list is locked down with no "new" content slated for ...
Chasing Sunsets Development Update - Mea Culpa and Status
It's been waaaaaaay too long since we've made an update, and there's absolutely no excuse for that.I'll start by saying that development of Chapter 10 is going full steam ahead, and we're trudging doggedly toward the finish line.One element of wrapping up our first game we've struggled a bit with is saying good bye to characters we've become attached to over the game's development.As such, we've seen a bit of "scope creep" in our closing chapter, with a steadfast determination to give each ending its ...
Chasing Sunsets Chapter 10 Progress Update
As we ease into the holiday season, Stone Fox has been hard at work on the final content update for Chasing Sunsets.As of today, the last artwork not specific to any ending is rendering, and all remaining artwork and scripting will be to flesh out the path terminus for the player's choices.As previously stated, these will include glimpses of the present, near-future, and a longer-term future for the protagonist and whomever he chose to end the story with.Stoya isheaded out for a tropical vacation tomorrow and will be out of pocket for about...
Stone Fox Endorses Sexbot in 2024! (Now on Steam!)
We don't do a lot of promotion for other games. Not because we don't appreciate the quality and effort of other developers, but mostly because we hate marketing even our own stuff.That said, Kentyrr and I played this one a few months back and had a lot of fun with it. Llamamann Games has put a ton of effort into it, and it shows in both the amount of available content and the quality of its execution.Above all, this is a fun game with lots of humor, great writing, an interesting plot, and solid production values across the board. ...
Chasing Sunsets Ch10 - Development In Full Swing
While we've been quiet since Ch9 launch, we haven't been idle!Development of Chapter 10, titled "Chasing Sunsets" has been going pretty much since the day we pushed the bugfix, and one of our two side projects is closing in on delivery:Specifically, I'm talking about the updated release of the Prologue through Chapter 9 with many bugs, inconsistencies, broken forks, and other improvements aimed at making the gameplay experience consistent from beginning to end.This will be release v1.02...The QoL update and front-to-back bug...
Chasing Sunsets - What's Next?
Now that patch 1.01 is out (and still fails to account for one world state due to a Ch7 bug) and Kent and I are enjoying our traditional week off from development, I thought I'd take a moment and post about the future of our first title. (v1.01 is available at the pinned download links.)Here is the planned release cycle and what to expect with each:v1.02 - Sept 2024: This will include bug fixes for all chapters, including the one mentioned above from Chapter 7. If this update adds new content, it will only be to patch bugged paths, such as ...
Chasing Sunsets v1.01 - Righting a wrong
I just wanted to make a small announcement about the upcoming v1.01 patch for Chapter 9.Some of the feedback we've received has indicated that named saves were causing compatibility issues on Steam Deck and that the animated main menu was stressing some lower-end hardware.As such, I've created new options in the preferences menu that can disable both features with a click. Now onto the big reason for this patch:For those of you who felt burned by the outcome of the casual path for the two main LI's, we know we dropped the ball.Whi...
Chasing Sunsets - Chapter 9 (v1.0) Released
Well, here we are near the end of a journey that began three years ago.Tonight, we release Chasing Sunsets Chapter 9, which brings the main story arc to a conclusion.There remain several updates before we move on, however.The next update will be an effort to stomp out any bugs or other inconsistencies in earlier chapters, eliminate duplication of any assets, and settle on a compression method that Kent agrees is a fair balance between visual fidelity and file size.Chapter 9 will lock in the player's ending, which will be explored in greater...
Chasing Sunsets Ch9 - Release Imminent
We're in our fourth day of beta, and most of the outstanding issues have either been identified and corrected, or will be in the next 24 hours.In fact, I've been so busy tying up loose ends, tweaking, and correcting items identified in beta, I almost forgot to post my promised Thursday update tonight before it was Friday (for me.)Outstanding items at this point remain the completion of the closing credits crawl, some sound work, and a few more bugs to run down.As of now, we're shooting for a release on Saturday or Sunday (this weeke...
Chasing Sunsets Ch9 - Beta Imminent
As promised, I will update every week until we have a release ready.Since last week, we have completed all static art, and have all art successfully folded into the script. We identified a continuity error that required a small scene augment, and we've re-rendered the entire crossover scene because of an error with another developer's asset settings (causing her to look non-canon.)Here's what's left to do:Re-dialoguing one scene that didn't quite hit the note we were looking for (about 100 lines)One animation remains pendi...
Chasing Sunsets Ch9 - Close but no banana!
Judgy Mallory is Judgy. Why, you ask?Soooo...Here we are on August 1, or one day after the targeted release from our last update.I wanted to post a quick note to share where we're at. As you can probably guess, a few issues have conspired to cost us time.The first is that we felt one scene delivered less impact than preceding scene, where we should have seen some escalation. As such, we expanded it.The second is that we've been fighting some issues in our shared DAZ library with morph persistence. In short, Kent typically poses sc...
Chasing Sunsets Ch9 - What to Expect
As we close in on Chapter 9's release, I figured it's well past time for another update. As of today, our render count sits at 1200, with one remaining scene requiring animation, and about three remaining scenes requiring art.Chapter 9 will feature two crossovers from other popular titles, both of which leave a mark on the story. This chapter is taking a bit more time to finish, but it's also a somewhat longer chapter, as you will know your playthrough's ending when the credits roll. This will be the last time you see the ...
Chasing Sunsets Ch9 - The End is in Sight!
And I'm not just talking about for the lucky bastard behind Mallory!We apologize for the quiet out of Kentyrr and I, as we've waded through some challenging artwork and bug fixes.That said, we're fully in the integration phase of chapter development where artwork, music, sound, and features come together to create a beta build.While we don't have an anticipated release date yet, we are quickly closing in on our target, and as you know, our intent is to get the final chapter out in 2024.We're looking forward to putting the fi...
Chasing Sunsets Dev Update: Power surges suck!
Spring is here, and Stone Fox Studios wishes all of you a happy Easter!In what I wish was an April Fools joke, we had a massive development system failure mid-March. To make a long story short, a power supply failed in such a way as to smoke the motherboard as well. Given the unique storage setup, only two AM4 motherboards on the market provided the right combination of M.2 slots and GPU slots, both of which are out of production.Emergency replacement parts were ordered the same day, but have taken some time to arrive and finalize installatio...
Chasing Sunsets Ch9 Dev Update - On Target
February's been a challenging month, both from the development perspective and with real life doing its best to sap development hours from Kentyrr and I. Without going into detail, a combination of vehicle woes, health issues, and the utter hell I put Kentyrr through in my art demands have tested our limits.In one case, an entire scene had to be redone when we both saw flaws in an asset that could not be mitigated.While this may sound like bad news, we've managed to stay on track in spite of all that, and none of the setbacks were so ma...
Chasing Sunsets Ch9 Development Update #2
Chapter 9 has borrowed a page out of Mallory's playbook and really taken flight!I won't sugarcoat it, It has been a pretty stressful month for Kentyrr and I on the development front. Two long-planned scenes that I've asked Kent to deliver turned out to not have any assets available to create them.Normally, if we're doing something a little unusual, we'll check well in advance to ensure the store has adequate choices for the scene, but every once in a while we want to do something relatively pedestrian, only to find what we n...
Chasing Sunsets Chapter 9 Development Cycle 10 Update
Kentyrr and I have been hard at work on Chapter 9 since shortly after the Chapter 8 launch in November.Obviously, the holidays are a busy time for us both, but that hasn't prevented us from hitting the ground running for the penultimate update to Chasing Sunsets!Threads will continue to converge until the end of the chapter brings us to the threshhold of the story's long-awaited conclusion.For those who would have liked more Mallory and Jaye in the last chapter, you'll be happy to know that they return with a vengeance in our next u...
Chasing Sunsets Chapter 8 Released to all Tiers
A very happy Thanksgiving from the bros at Stone Fox Studios, hopefully setting off your holidays with a bang (or two.)Chapter 8 has arrived, and the main download links have been updated to the Mega and WeTransfer content distribution networks. The binary is over 6GB now, and we're aware that poses issues for free Mega users. We are currently messing with the quality/compression sweet spot to try to get the binary below 5GB again.If you find bugs, please remember to use #bug-reports on the Stone Fox Studios Discord. This channel is open to...
Chasing Sunsets Chapter 8 Release Candidate Complete!
Stone Fox Studios is excited to announce that our release candidate is currently under review. The sole remaining items barring any major issues discovered in QA are the creation of the Steam binary and updating the closing credits movie. As always, if you're a patron, and you'd prefer not to have your name in the credits, DM Stoya in Discord or reply to this post with your wishes stipulated.This will be the "expansion chapter" since we were unable to close out the Tonalu arc in Chapter 7 as originally planned. Chapter 9 will pi...
Chasing Sunsets Chapter 8 - Beta Imminent
This is just a quick update to say that the Chapter 8 beta is coming together nicely, and we're hoping to have it out to testers next week.Kent and I will review the script from front to back this weekend before clearing the beta for our diligent beta crew.From this milestone forward, it is usually between one and three weeks to release, and we're going to do our best to get it out in that timeframe.This is the most hectic time of the dev cycle, as we're bringing all of the bits and pieces that have been worked on individually and s...
Chasing Sunsets Chapter 8 is in post-production!
Chapter 8 is hopefully *this* close!While some supplemental art remains, we are in the process of pulling the big picture together and moving toward beta.Over the next few weeks, we'll be evaluating the chapter pacing and run our path testing. While this sometimes results in scene rewrites or additional unplanned content to flesh out areas we feel were weak, it's an important milestone on our road to release.The Chapter will be called "Conflicts of Interest, and picks up shortly after the post-credits scene in Chapter 7.There will b...
Chasing Sunsets Dev Update - And a Look Ahead
The dev cycle is starting to head into its final stretches now!As of tonight, we have just shy of 1500 renders complete with between 3-500 to go.There are two remaining scenes to create art for, including a lewd one, and animations are nearing the 50% complete mark.This weekend will be the first look Kent and I have of the art and dialogue coming together into an integrated whole as the v0.9 binary transitions into a playable framework.As stated before, this is trending to be a larger chapter than the last one, and we're working hard to pul...
Chasing Sunsets Dev Update #3 - Over the hump!
As the dog days of summer continue, Kent and I are plugging away at Chapter 8, which is shaping up to be even bigger than the last one.As of today we're sitting at over a thousand images rendered, with four large and four smaller scenes left to go in development.This is the point in the development cycle where we begin art and script integration and plan animations. While we've been somewhat quiet, it hasn't been for lack of effort. We're at the point in development where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, not only f...
Chasing Sunsets Ch8 Dev Update #2
Happy Summer!With the weather heats up, so does the development cycle here at Stone Fox.Chapter 8 is progressing with no speedbumps so far, and a focus on showcasing some relationships that may have been simmering in the background for a while now.That doesn't mean there won't be quality time for our two main girls as well!Kent has over 500 renders complete covering the first four scenes of Chapter 8, and is taking next week off from his day job with the intent of testing what full-time development feels like.Sound and music selection a...
Chasing Sunsets - Chapter 8 is in development!
Dev Cycle 9 has begun!It's hard to believe we're closing in on the finish line of our little project, yet here we are.Tonight, Kent and I selected two new characters for the first scene and began picking up where Chapter 7 left off.Beginning tomorrow, Kent will begin building art off the first Chapter 8 dialogue, and we're off to the races.As previously stated, Chapter 8 will be the final one on the island of Tonalu before the story moves back to the States for its conclusion. Entitled "Smoke and Mirrors," the Campbells will...
Chasing Sunsets Ch7 Bugfix v0.8a - Updated
Following release, several bugs were discovered, two of them game-breaking.For those who have already completed Chapter 7,we encourage you to play through on this updated version from the end of Chapter 6 before our next releaseto ensure all variables are set properly.While none of these were critical to the central plot, they could result in some incorrect dialogue in future chapters.The patch has been updated to include a few more fixes, but they're not important unless you are on the "never did anything naughty with Mallory path."...
Chasing Sunsets Chapter 7 Released!
Stone Fox Studios is pleased to announce the release of Chapter 7 for patrons!Titled "Cause and Effect," the player will navigate the main character through the gradually-unraveling consequences of the decisions made through the preceding story, while opening up new branches to explore as his time on the lush Pacific paradise of Tonalu approaches its end.Chapter 7 is easily our largest yet, weighing in at:2033 original static renders4 animations10 new Songs7000 lines of code/dialogue23 achievements2 cameos/crossovers with other titlesOf...
Chasing Sunsets Ch7 Complete!
Just a quick note to let everyone know that while we're a few days late, we are done with the update.Today is wrapping up a few housekeeping items such as the closing credits movie and finishing the achievement icons for Steam.Kent and I will do a line-by-line playthrough or two, and if we're satisfied everything is as it should be, you can look forward to a weekend release!Next post (very soon) will be a chapter availability link.Thanks for bearing with us while we hammered out the last stubborn bits!Best,Stone Fox Studios
Chasing Sunsets Ch7 Release Update
Well, here we are on April 30, and while I'd hoped we be posting download links tonight, we're just not quite there yet.Kent has whittled down the outstanding artwork like nobody's business, and the last of the content is in (minus one scene in post-prod), but we just don't feel like we've hit the level of polish yet where we're comfortable with a full release yet.What's left? -A few bits and pieces of art. Some supplemental renders may be necessary when we've exited beta with whatever re-writes are necessary the...
