2019-06-12 Update

I just realized it’s been awhile since I posted a status update. My sincerest apologies. Keeping up with the community was a lot easier when I was only doing half the job.

But the reason you haven’t heard from me is because I’m busy jamming away at the game.

On the upside, I’ve got everything sorted out and the pipeline is flowing smoothly. For the last two weeks I have felt more organized with this project than ever before and each time I sit down, there is no wasted movement.

Last week saw the completion of some 75 renders for the update which puts the total over 250 images completed so far. A quick word estimation also puts this update at around 35,000 words across all the branches and pathways.

So if you want to know where I’ve been. Writing and Render. Writing and Rendering.

I will say, this update has introduced more complexity than I’ve done previously. It’s been a learning experience managing all the branches and variations on the scenes, but I’m carrying away a lot of education from this one. Next time around I’ll have a much better feel of how to manage the flow of the story when reaching one of these multi-path scenes.

Some of the branches led to inconsistencies in the story while others created odd loops that introduced new inconsistencies. To clean this up, I’ve started doing all of the writing in Scrivener (an excellent product I’ve used in the past on creative writing). The real benefit now is that I can select passages in Scrivener and line them up sequentially and read through them to ensure that the flow is good and the story consistent.

Then I can quickly and easily swap out other passages and reread them to simulate a player making different choices and see whether or not the story flows and make corrections accordingly.

This of course lead to much rewriting as I had to clean up these loops and branches. But now that I have a system and some experience doing it, next time around we’ll be able to do it correctly from the start and avoid the need to go back and clean house.

I really wish you could all see what goes on behind the scenes and how much education I’ve had to acquire in the last couple of months to take over this project fully. It’s been a hell of a learning curve, but I’ve flown through the knowledge acquisition pretty swiftly. Faster than I thought I would at least.

So what’s the hold up? I’m calling the “Beast of Scene 4”. The next update consists of seven scenes. Scenes one thru three have been released for testing and have been done for some time. But Scene 4 is where all the complication occurs. It’s where the story branches between Lita and Lola, and also where the different choices of tactic comes in.

These choices include things like, “Do you engage with them sexually?”, “Do you rely on Nanami’s help in achieving your goal?”, “Do you ignore Nanami and tackle the problem yourself?”. Several things that turn the story in different directions and that all come back at some point in the future to haunt, hinder, or help you. I’m about 85% on completing scene 4. Once that’s done, it’s a downhill ride to the release.

Scenes 5, 6 and 7 are predominantly dialogue (quick to write, and quick to render) with one final sex scene at the end (an easy task with the new and improved sex menu).

So that’s where we’re now. I’m so close to completing scene 4 I can taste it. This afternoon, I’m back in the “Real Job Blues” and this evening, I’m hoping to drive that up to 90% complete.

Then I can start rendering out the images for the next Emily, Cassie, and Jane chapters. I got a lot of it already written, just have to put that sweet, sweet art together.

In the meantime, thank you for your continued support!

Your encouragement and enthusiasm is fuel in my tank!

Salute!