Development Update 03/03/2025

It's been a while! Hope everyone is doing well. In this development update, I will discuss what I've been up to, what I planned to do, and what I've been struggling with lately. I expect this to go for a little while, but what can I do? I love writing shit.

Progress:

Let's talk about where I'm at with the game. So far, I've accumulated 894 renders. Now, imagine my joy when I see this number, but then I realise, there are close to 20 more scenes to render. Good fucking job on writing the script, Tom, you've fucked yourself over. Anyway, I plan to finish the renders very soon, because it's hindering every other components that I need to work on. By the next development update, I'm sure we will hit the 1,000 milestone. Right now, I'm doing everything I can to fasten the rendering process. I'm trying to better optimise my scenes so I can cut down on some more render time, aiming at around 5-8 minutes per render. This shit is killing me man, why can't I just materialise these render out of thin air. On a side note, I decided to rewrite one of my scenes. I'm constantly trying to find flaws in my writing and see how I can improve them, and this is one of the cases. Luckily, this won't add much to the development time, because I also had to delete a scene.

Action in chapter 2:

You may or may not have noticed, but I love action scenes. And trust me I'm going to put lots and lots of them in the game. For chapter 2, we will have as much as 7 action scenes. Some short, some long. Some intense, some mild. Of course, it won't be easy posing these scenes. This is also another major block that has added quite a bit of extra workload to the development, but I'm proud of the time I have spent. Here's what I'm aiming for... I want to put something out there that has yet to be seen in the AVN community. I want to bring high quality action scenes into this special format of story telling. And as I progress further into the development, I get an even clearer vision of this goal. It's entirely doable. If fact, it's so doable that it would be a shame to not do it. I plan to incorporate a wide variety of martial arts and other combat techniques, including hand-to-hand combat and weapon-based combat. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. I need to finish what's in front of me first. Can't talk about revolution without the work to back it up. You'll see what I'm talking about when chapter 2 releases. Hopefully, you will find this game to be something different.

Animation:

I touched on this topic briefly in my previous few devlog. Now, I want to expand a little bit more. While animation doesn't play a major role in an AVN, they act as a special ingredient for enhancing an already well-established visual buffet. And to achieve this effect, I need to dedicate as much effort as I need for my static renders. But there's a problem. What I use to create my static render does not work well with animation, like I'd mention in my last devlog. Before, I would animate in Blender and export it back into Daz3D for rendering. This process is not only lengthy but treacherous. So, I came with the conclusion. I should create my animation entirely in Blender. Now, that means, there are a few things I need to start working on at the start of chapter 3. First, I need to figure out skin texture. Materials in Daz3D cannot be fully transferred to Blender, which is why I need to learn how to edit the skin material to achieve a nice, realistic looking skin. Second, I need to edit the render setting to achieve optimal render quality. I believe Eevee will be the render engine I'm using for animations. As for why, because of the low render time, of course. But the problem with Eevee is, it takes a lot of time and knowledge to make the end result look good. Though, it beats having to encounter a problem every 5 minutes with Daz. Third, the actual animating. Frankly speaking, my animation skill suck donkey balls. Quite evident in the animations appeared in chapter 1. There are so much detail I haven't considered and looking back, I just want to redo all of it (Might do in the future.). During the development of chapter 3, I will focus more on animation and hopefully you will see a difference.

Mini-games:

I've been thinking about it. Since my game is playing out like a comic book with minimal choices that affects the plot, it's unavoidable that, at times, there will be moment where you may feel burned out. So, why not add another form of entertainment into this, since it's supposed to be a game anyway. I've discussed the phone system in one of my previous devlogs, and perhaps I would add a few mini games there for entertainment purposes. This will be entirely optional and not forced for the purpose of the story. And what better game there is then gambling. Here's an idea. Along the story, you will encounter moments where you receive a certain amount of money from a certain event. This money will have no effect on the story, but you can use it to gamble on your phone. While there will be no pity system where it will prevent you from losing all of your money, these games can also make you very rich. Now, what can you do with the money? Surely that hard-earned cash has to have some kind of use. What about wallpaper for the phone? Exclusive wallpapers that can only be unlocked through purchasing. Right now, I can't think of anything else, but we'll leave it at that. There are more important things to deal with. Not going to implement this mechanic in chapter 2, certainly. I'll figure it out in chapter 3.

Acknowledgement:

Thank you to all of my supporters. Whether if you have supported me through generous donations, I appreciate the attention all of you have paid in this game. As always, I want to know what you think about the game and how it can be further develop. You can join my discord, where I am most active in, to discuss and express your ideas. Anyways, I hope everyone is having a good day. I'll see you in the next development update.