MH Demon Arc 1 - Progress Update.

Just a post to let you all know where I am at with the next MH update.

   Currently At 2,000 lines of dialogue. Where most lines in the script are a paragraph in length.
I have almost everything in the storyline finished. Like this update is going to cover, the Atofe incident, buying a new Rude Merc Company building in the demon continent.
   Player customization of that building, loads of special scenes if players pay attention. If the player Finishes getting the character what they want for their room they will unlock a special scene
   I finished mapping out the completed version of the Rude Merc Company - Demon Branch, the Inn used in the beginning of the update, The city used in the update, all locations used in Kishirikas dates.
    I am essentially done with all maps, and dialogues for the update.   I am currently getting the images and animating everything for the update.   One big change going forward is I am working on adding a proper storyline to the game. 
  The best way I can think of to put it is Arcs. So in the Ranoa Arc, which had the Base Game, Linia Update, Pursena Update, and the Nanahoshi Update, the storytelling was basically entirely either:
       A. In the intro section of the game.
       B. During the Romancing of the characters
       C. Honestly non-existent.
   But which option you go with, or combinations of options it really didnt feel like there was much of a story to follow. Mostly just battle and sex simulator.   So during this Demon Continent Arc there is a well thought out and properly planned storyline. Though I will warn those of you who are not fans of the cliffhanger motif used in many stories. I do have 2 planned cliffhanger endings for 2 of the 4 updates.   
But because of this storyline based content it is taking me a lot more work to animate the scenes. Because I am not using the paperdoll strategy right now. The thing where you see a scene that has people just sitting there,    
then an image pops up on the bottom left of whoever is talking, followed by an image on the bottom right with someone else talking. You know that kind of style? But because I really don't enjoy doing that I am doing the animating in the same way I have been doing the patreon scenes/the intro.   Which while yea that takes longer, it also does look better. In my opinion anyways.   So what kind of things can you expect the story to follow in this update? Without going into too many spoilers.   
Just know this is all new content, I am doing a hard pivot away from anything that has ever or will ever come up in the Anime, while some points may get close to things that have or will happen, since during the intro I changed a few key points, I am telling a story based on those changes.   So it will not follow the actual story at all, meaning for you all that are following the Anime don't worry your fine.   So during this update, Roxy has a bad feeling and feels a sudden urge to rush to the demon continent.   Rudeus decides to only go with himself and Roxy, After a family discussion Aisha comes along too, so that she can set up a 2nd branch of the Merc Company.   While in the city of Rikarisu, he runs into Kishirika again. During this update I flipped the normal dating framework I used up until now. As it is Kishirika trying to get with him, and Rudeus basically ignoring her advances, as he has a lot going on right now.   Eventually the big bad of this Arc shows themself, Rudeus saves Kishirika, and some shit goes down. Sorry but no spoilers at all for that.   
So there will be the actual storyline going on, while there is also the side story of building up the new branch of the Rude Merc Comp Demon Branch.   Right now I have I would say I have all of the main storyline written, and the side story is around 95% complete. There is also going to be some random world building aspects added here and there which is not done yet.   But in the main and side storyline stuff, it covers Demon Continent Chapter 0-11, and Kishirika chapter 1-17, Today I created  images, no animations yet as those are mostly all in the side storyline content. But even with all of that done. I have only finished animating Demon Continent Chapters 0-4.   So Far.
All of the demon continent storyline chapters are not going to be in the sandbox mode. They will be more like the Pursena and Nanahoshi storyline stuff where the game would just start playing the content, then drop you off back into the sandbox mode when its done. With a hint on where to go next.   But just so everyone knows while they are seen as 2 different storylines happening at once, they do interact and while the Demon Continent Chapters are the main ones, you can not reach the end of the update without going through the building up of the Rude Merc Comp, and dating Kishirika.   The last Chapter of this update happens during Kishirika's Date 5. The only big thing I havent sorted out yet, is if this update is meant to end on a cliffhanger, How can I tranisition back to the sandbox mode and make it feel fine? I imagine I won't be able to. So I can either do it in one of 2 ways.   
Sorry I am thinking out loud now. I can either, just do a hard fade to black, with a screen saying to save the game that this is the end of the update. OR fade to black, and put the player back into sandbox mode, with a pop up saying its the end of the update, but feel free to explore more....?   
Which the first option would more sense story wise.
But the 2nd option would be the only way I could add the sex scenes with Kishirika as those would all happen after the 5th date....? Thoughts? IDK we will just see what I decide on when I get to that part.   But yea Back to work I guess... Also do you guys want early images like normal? Should I avoid images that could be viewed as spoilers to the update? Hmmm....
Well I guess right now the images I have done, only really cover the first 10 minutes or so worth of content of the update.   
So it should be fine to show some of those. So I guess here are some random images I made over the course of the last 12 hours. So far I am at 500+ images. Though this update will probably be somewhere near 4500 at a guess.
That is also not counting the images used for imagebuttons and all that....   This update may be a bit too big lol. Crazy that I have only covered 300 lines of dialogue and it translates to 500 images though. But that is ~1/7th~ish of the storyline already animated. Most of which was done today. If I can keep a pace of 400 Lines a day I will be happy. The only reason I didn't reach that today, was because I had to stop and go back, and remodel some of the characters, Made 4 other versions of Kishirika. and another 2 versions of Rudeus. The Kishirika Variants were made for when she is and when she is not wearing a cloak. And when she has her normal eyes, or her demon eyes. Would have been cool to have the spinning eye thing they do in the anime, but yea that's probably not possible? And the Rudeus's were just because I recently updated his model, and also I needed to have 1 version with 1 Demon eye, and 1 version with 2 Demon Eyes, as he does get a second one in this update.

If anyone individually wants a bit of a sneak peek at the conversations I have done, feel free to message me on discord and when I see it I will send you something. BUT Onto the sneak peek images. Sorry but I did not get to any sex scenes so there is nothing spicy yet. But there will be a couple of scenes tomorrow, so I can definitely show some Roxy stuff later.