Evaluating 2023, what's in for 2024 and stuff

First of all, Happy New Year!

I had a lot of time to reflect and the past and future, although I'm still recovering from sickness and depression.
A lot were achieved in 2023, and some plans were not seen the light of day, or got implemented partly/poorly.

BEHOLD, MY WALL OF TEXT! (This is not everything, just the things I found important)

TLDR:
There is no TLDR. Put on your reading glasses!

Biggest Wins :)

Significant growth in support on Patreon
With this many support, it is worth considering doing this project full time. Being a full time entrepreneur can be tricky(and expensive), so I have to consult some bookkeeper before I commit to this. Being full time also means that I can do commissions too.
Cum system
A lot of experimentation and trial and error led to the currently used system. There are still multiple ways to improve and optimize this, and while it's not as realistic as a very heavy fluid simulation, it works.
Main menu/UI rework
Many might remember the old main menu, where you could walk around in VR and select a statue. The idea was fun, but as I added more content, navigating the main menu was more like a chore. A full main menu rework was made before the anniversary release.This was more like a "sit down and code" situation, it took at least a month of heavy refactoring to make the old menu and UI look like today. The ingame menu also got a rework shortly after that, since the old menu started to get cluttered, and left little room to add more options. This was a good time to implement a visual position and location selection, instead of the old "text only" selection.
Improved animation quality
I still have lot to learn, but I feel my animation quality is more consistent than before.
Tons of content
Although I released less voice packs in 2023, there was many more characters and scenes than before. 2024 will start with the full rework of the MizzPeachy voicepacks, so that's a good start.
Creation Tools
I managed to completely seperate the game logic and the creation part, allowing me to create content in a seperate project(instead of using the core project for content creation too)
The tools are available for everyone to download, but I only made one file building tutorial and a sample scene with a game ready character. I need to focus on making more tutorials in 2024.

There were many more smaller features that was not planned, but added by suggestion/inspiration,so that's also a W.

 
Noteable Fails >:(

Voicelines
There was an experiment with some voicelines that got triggered when entering a scene, leaving a scene and during position change. In the end I was not satisfied with the results, and making it work as I wanted took more time and effort than I could afford at that time.  It's possible that it will be a feature in the future, but I have more interesting plans to complete first.
Not enough new position for old releases
I decided to release the next characters with more animations, which meant old releases got less love(Due to my time limitation). Although I don't want to cut back on the 3-4 position on release, I do want to give more animation for older characters too.
Male partners
Although I really wanted to make a male release in 2023, I always pushed it back in favor of other content. I started looking for male VAs way too late too.  It looks like it a possibility now in early/mid 2024, depends on how things are going.
Quest/Android version
As good as it would be, I simply don't have time to make/maintain a separate android build version. Not until I have more time to work on stuff, at least.
NPC System
I totally underestimated the extra work a fully working NPC system would take, hence the NPC system reduced to some background characters only. The original plan was to create NPC spots on maps and spawn characters randomly on these positions, but due to time limitations, I decided to focus on sex animations mostly, instead of making idle positions for NPCs.
I do plan to add more NPCs to some maps,especially the ones that could use more life(beach, strip club, etc).  

So, what's next?

Touch system
Full body colliders are already implemented, time to experiment with the VR hand collisions. This would mean your VR hand could collide and touch the character.
Kiss system
Technically every system is ready to make some sort of kissing system, I just need to allocate some time and effort into it.
Ultimate POV Avatar
An avatar than be be more than just male, which will give more customisation options and more tools to animate. More on this later, it will be fun.
"GOAT HD"(aka graphics improvement)
This term has been thrown around since the first months of GOAT's release. GOAT HD, A version that make use of the improved rendering pipeline.  I need to experiment with more render pipelines before I can decide which one I can commit to.
Harem system
Evolved from the NPC system idea, this feature would allow you to spawn any character into the scene and place them around you, select their position and stuff. I'm optimistic that everything is available to make this system a reality, but it will probably take a huge amount of effort to implement.

Outside of these plans of course, you can expect random new features and improvements, as always.

Oh wait, I haven't even talked about the January plans. Guess I save those for the first WIP post of the year.

Anyway, see you around in 2024 too!

xoxo
Garwaron