Love of Magic Book 2: The War News

I alternate story sequences and world expansion events (Act+ updates); this update to Book 3 is a World Expansion event, focused on Edinburgh.



I didn't actually *intend* to make this a super sexy update, but it seems to have accidentally happened anyways. Molly shows a fascination for shoes, triggering her Shoe Fetish sequence after Jenny's Shibari sequence.


Buying Emily's lingerie also opens up a new questline with Chloe, and a sexy scene to go with that. I've got to say, Kath is rocking that outfit.


Nobody's more surprised than me that I got inspired to make a new Sarah scene; there's no sexual content, but a little more backstory on everyone's favorite sex-ed teacher.


The capstone of this update is a big new replayable sex scene with Akane (again, triggered by buying her an outfit). Originally planned to be a short sex scene, I got inspired by how she looks in that outfit, and it... escalated from there. It also spilled over into a small update to her dining room scene (when you order sushi from her, you can now also request she wear the lingerie for you).

There's also a new book to read, and old friends to meet up with in the Crowley at night.

Hope you like it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1992770/Love_of_Magic_Book_3_The_Return/

As always; if you're enjoying my work, please help make it a success by giving it a wishlist before launch. I've now got only 2 acts left, so... the day of it being complete are coming :)

For those of you who have Book 1 on Steam, I also updated it this weekend with new animations. Molly's Chosen ceremony got a big update, there's a new email sequence from her, and a new animation for Chloe on day 100.

Thanks for all the support, and let me know what you think of the new content in the comments :)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Book 3's progress continues, and Act XIV (Dead Man Walking) is now done. With that I've got 2 more Acts (The Return, and Endless Summer) before the epilogue, then the public release of Book 3.

Act XIV saw some changes. I finally managed to get my hands on a 3090 gfx card, and that's made a huge change to my ability to render animations and more complex scenes. I also made some small AI Art tests (most prominently seen in the new Paths of Elsewhere), and played with making movies a cleaner and more integrated part of the story.

Next up is Act XIV+, which will return to Edinburgh. See what your old instructors are up to, grab a drink in the Crowley and maybe enjoy a cup of coffee. But first I've got to see a girl about a pair of shoes.

Before diving head-first into Act XIV I decided to do a small update first.

Part one was an experiment with AI and motion. I suspect it's because my life's been immersed in game development for two decades now, but for the last week it's felt as if the entire world was talking about AI (in a mixture of rage and wonder, depending).

There's been a lot of progress over the last few years, but November saw two really impressive updates, and I diverted into a rabbit hole for a couple of days playing with it.

The first of these is ChatGTP, an AI camouflaged as a chatbot.


It's remarkably intelligent, knows how to respond to feedback, and is very much a child of the internet. It also knows how to hotwire cars, but it really doesn't want to tell you... that's what happens when you give an AI training net access to the internet and let it go.

The second (and far more controversial) one is MidJourney, a text-to-image generator. Where ChatGTP was given access to the internet at large, ChatGTP was essentially handed a very very large selection of images download from Art websites, like ArtStation.

You interact with the AI like a bot in Discord, "prompting" it with inputs to which it responds.

a fairytale princess marries a dark, handsome prince 2D game, volumetric light, dust in air, realistic, ar 1:1 --v 4 --q 2
(In case you're curious, the tags at the end set the aspect ratio to 1:1, uses version 4 of the AI, and bumps up the quality to max).

There's a number of things that are controversial here. The first one is *where* the data came from; like ChatGTP the MidJourney AI has been quietly ingesting information from the internet, in this case hundreds of thousands of art pieces made by thousands and thousands of artists, most of whom never thought their hard work would be fed to an AI.


Well. Damn. Part of the reason most people didn't worry too much was that as late as 6 months ago the results of AI generated art was pretty low-quality, fiddly and hard to access. With MidJourney all of that changed, and a number of artists (understandably) panicked.

While the results look really impressive (especially in terms of lighting and shading), it's not without it's issues.


it can't do text to save its life, it struggles with details (especially hands, feet, swords, etc), and it doesn't really know composition (here is "red ball on top of a green cube").

You can get it to make a really impressive stand-alone scene, but making a VN using it is (so far) impossible; you couldn't get the specific details and composition you need.

You can also prompt it to use an image as input. Here I gave it my background from the Dark Paths of Elsewhere, and asked it for some variations:


Wow... that ended up looking *really* good. It's abstract enough that you don't need to worry about 6-fingered hands or messed up text, it's primarily derived from my image (which makes me feel a little less guilty about the art that went into the training set), and it looks pretty.

Now a sensible person would have said "neat", and either just forgotten about this, or picked one of the images to replace the existing one, and moved on. Sadly I'm not that sensible. So I crank up AfterEffects and go to work.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

There's a couple of things happening here; I'm warping the image from one to the other, then adding special effects on top. I ended up loving it enough that I made two versions (one for the Dark paths, one for the Light paths). I then made 4 small clips (2 looping still images (A and B), and two transitions between them). When it plays, it goes something like: "Loop A 1-3 times, Play A->B, Loop B 1-3 times, Play B->A". It adds a nice bit of randomness, and captures the idea that the Paths are never quite static... they constantly change and morph.

I think AIs are at the cusp of revolutionizing a number of aspects of our society, and along the way we're going to run into various ethical challenges. I don't think it can be *stopped*, though, so at the very least we need to understand it, and know what it can and cannot do.

Apart from that, this update adds in an option for a replayable Chosen 4-some (at night in the KD Bedroom), and cleans up a number of little bugs and typos that snuck in. I've started writing and rendering Act XIV, so that's up next.

Was this kind of "behind the scenes" information useful? Should I do more of it, or less? Let me know in the comments.

It's the Steam nominations seasons again, and Love of Magic hopes for a nomination as an Outstanding Story-Rich Game. Follow the erotic Epic Urban Fantasy tale of Owyn, Emily, Katie and the Chosen as they wage the battle of our age. Come for the pretty girls, stay for the characters and story.

I continue to work on Book 3, and wanted to share the progress so far with all of you. Act XIII+ is a 'world expansion' update, so it doesn't advance the timeline of the game, but adds in new content to play on the side, filling the sandbox with life. Specifically we return to the King' Dragon, and revisit old friends.


Emily gets some new optional content, both SFW and... less so. It's the first time since Book 1's Sword Training content I've made significant amounts of optional content for Emily; hope you like it.

The Black Rose was the biggest side-quest in Book 1, and Collared was the biggest in Book 2. I continue that trend with Jenny's Book 3 quest, You Raise Me Up. Get ready to explore the consensual BDSM relationship with your first worshipper.


Apart from that, the King's Dragon will be host to a number of smaller sidequests; spend time relaxing in the baths, meditating or having a drink at night to advance the story.

With that I'm about halfway through Book 3's content. All of it will be built out on Book 2's Beta Branch as it goes, and then when it's complete I'll launch it as a full game. If you haven't already done so, helping give it a wishlist is super helpful.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1992770/Love_of_Magic_Book_3_The_Return/

With that... it's time to start working on Act XIV: Dead Man Walking. I expect the final saga to be 17 Acts (Act I - XVI, then the epilogue), so it's strange knowing that after 3+ years of development, the end is in sight. I've likely still got 8+ months of development to go, though, before MC, Emily, Katie and the Chosen can have their happily ever after.

As always, hope you like it, and feel free to drop me a comment below, or come join us on Discord ( https://discord.gg/NQrQrht). Come for the pretty girls, stay for the amazing community, good music and theorycrafting.