Progress Report 23-23
June 8th! It's finally coming! Buckle in... This is a long post.
So many factors have played a role in delaying Episode 2... from carpal tunnel (which recently flared up again, so I'm looking forward to a little break), heat wave with no a/c, large complicated scenes that take extra rendering time, and the ever-increasing story size.
But I'm relieved to say that I've finished all the scenes, currently in process of initial revisions to hand off the final beta to my reviewer, and will start final revisions on Monday. There are some additional renders I want to add, so I'll get those done in the next day or two as well.
These aren't the 'final' numbers, but this is the approximate size: 45k words, 1150 images, 12 animations (for comparison Ep1 was 30k, 900, and 2). My play-through speed is likely slower than average since I tend to take my time, immerse myself a little and enjoy images, but it's about 5 hours for me.
There are a little more in-game choices than Ep1, and overall they have more impact on your story. Choices will likely continue to become more impactful as new episodes come out. I'd like to create some sort of help/walkthrough document at some point, but I need to mull over how to make it.
Bonus Content:
My original design for TaH was to follow just the MC, so you only witness events that happen around him.
After experiencing some people being extra generous supporting this project, I wanted an idea to reward them. Hence, I came up with bonus extended scenes that didn't include the MC.
Ep2 has 7 extended bonus scenes that will be available for Fun Fling+ members. These follow some of the side characters and gives you insight to things that the MC won't know about. Usually these will be actual events, but sometimes they are imaginary (a character's fabrication, fantasy, dream, etc.).
I hope this content serves its purpose as a 'thank you reward' that isn't required to play the game, but can help add to the experience if you choose to support at those higher tiers. If you have thoughts on what I could do differently or better, please let me know!
But I think that about wraps it up. Thank you all for the kind words, well-wishes, and financial help you've given to keep TaH going! Everything I've received is appreciated more than you realize :) And next week I'll talk more about the plan moving forward with Ep3.
-ckr
Comments (6)
I always welcome bonus content to get a glimpse of behind the scene events that don't directly involve MC and also as long as it has my fave girls on it, such as Stacy :D
While technically Stacy doesn't receive one of these scenes in Ep2, she's heavily featured in Rachel's... so she kinda does haha. :)
I definitely enjoy the bonus content as well - It's nice to see the insight into the characters. When it comes to Kyes, while its not my preferred story to see it definitely had a layer of doubt, which is why it would make sense for it to be included. Especially to show how (potentially) far the relationship deteriorated. While also showing (potentially if its a true retelling) what type of person the MC was with at the beginning. It also didn't have a large negative effect on the MC so it wasn't a big deal to me, eitherway though I love the game and im excited for the next episode ;)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about it! There's very little concrete information given about Sierra so far, besides the opinions from others that hint she's not the person MC thought she was. As far as future bonus content, a majority of it will be similar to the Stacy & Ashley scenes from Ep1.
This is exciting, almost euphoric news, I can't wait to see how the story continues. Thank you! The bonus content definitely adds to the experience, and I love the additional insight it gives us into certain characters and events. I especially like that sometimes there is an element of doubt, as with Kye's story, whether things really happened exactly as he told them; or maybe it's just me preferring not to believe him. Either way, I'm glad there will be more of this.
I'm happy to hear that this is your opinion on it. It's the sort of reaction I hoped for, but am unsure if it's the popular one. And Kye's story is the most controversial for obvious reasons. It's not normally how I will choose to make extra content, but it was required to tell the story, and so I made the exception to include it. It definitely is meant to give that element of doubt. There are many story threads that I think are better off being discovered slowly throughout each episode so you can piece together the full picture.