Marvellous Lunatic

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Mar 22, 2018
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Good work on her. Regrettably, you'll need to either make the original 4 "girls" optional content for the especially deranged, rework their renders, or delete them. They are crispy with old age. I guess it's due to frost bite from the bad cryogenics. That, or I belong in a group that's especially difficult to please, visually.
Thanks. I'm sorry, but I fail to understand the rest of the comment. Who do you mean by "the original 4 girls"? The people in the cryo pods? There are 7 other people in the room with MC's cryo pod, 6 female (2 mother's, 4 young adults) one male. I don't understand the phrase "especially deranged" in this context.
I assume you don't like the renders from the cryo pod events in the end, but I'm not sure why you don't like them. Are the models or the textures / shading an issue to you or the render quality? I fail to see a gap in quality between those images and the rest of my renders.

However, I won't make their current content optional or even delete them, as those events are instruction's of their characters. For later events with those characters I won't make major overhauls on their models or textures. If I can make improvements to my shader's in the future, the appearance could be slightly different, but it won't be something major.

Not sure what you mean with "They are crispy with old age. I guess it's due to frost bite from the bad cryogenics.". Do you think the characters look like they are of old age? Personally, I don't think so. Well, the two mothers maybe, but I don't think they look to old.
 
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SoberSphagghett

Well-Known Member
Sep 14, 2018
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Thanks. I'm sorry, but I fail to understand the rest of the comment. Who do you mean by "the original 4 girls"? The people in the cryo pods? There are 7 other people in the room with MC's cryo pod, 6 female (2 mother's, 4 young adults) one male. I don't understand the phrase "especially deranged" in this context.
I assume you don't like the renders from the cryo pod events in the end, but I'm not sure why you don't like them. Are the models or the textures / shading an issue to you or the render quality? I fail to see a gap in quality between those images and the rest of my renders.

However, I won't make their current content optional or even delete them, as those events are instruction's of their characters. For later events with those characters I won't make major overhauls on their models or textures. If I can make improvements to my shader's in the future, the appearance could be slightly different, but it won't be something major.

Not sure what you mean with "They are crispy with old age. I guess it's due to frost bite from the bad cryogenics.". Do you think the characters look like they are of old age? Personally, I don't think so. Well, the two mothers maybe, but I don't think they look to old.
First on the answer list: The 4 girls in the preview pictures. If among them are the two mothers, sure, I can agree on their renders, the wrinkles, the large cheek bones, the excess in freckles, even the blatant demonic eye shadow of the dark redhead.
But why put that redhead in almost half of the preview pics? Why spoil the cryogenics ending? Yes, why the huge gap between the quality of these 4 and the fifth who is drop-dead gorgeous?
Why imply the presence of a second male character with a single, very difficult to understand picture of both males sleeping in a cramped place, like some gay couple? The story may be interesting, but the preview pics imply none of that.
You shove that redhead grandma's face with over-saturated textures and left next-to-nothing for the initial presentation of rest of your cast. ;-;
I didn't even need to play the game and I'm already ignoring it.

Second on the answer list: "especially deranged" means the cultured viewers/players,
who appreciate(for lack of a better word) this kind of rendering,
of the characters in a realistic, life or death scenario who make a relationship work despite their overall decrepit looks.

Third and final answer: Of course I think the female characters in the preview pics look old. I doubt people need to play much of the game to find signs of malnutrition and side-effects of bad cryogenics in the renders of moms 1-2 and gals 1-2.

My shock came with the reveal of gal 3, whose renders look better than those of the first four combined.
Hell, the simplest detail, her hairstyle is better than theirs. Longer than theirs.
People sleep on this fact, but hair portraits character. Depth of character, insecurities, focus, goals, ideals.
If ones hairstyle does not match their character, they are either poorly made, or supposed to be misleading for plot reasons.
 

Marvellous Lunatic

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Game Developer
Mar 22, 2018
302
1,878
First on the answer list: The 4 girls in the preview pictures. If among them are the two mothers, sure, I can agree on their renders, the wrinkles, the large cheek bones, the excess in freckles, even the blatant demonic eye shadow of the dark redhead.
But why put that redhead in almost half of the preview pics? Why spoil the cryogenics ending? Yes, why the huge gap between the quality of these 4 and the fifth who is drop-dead gorgeous?
Why imply the presence of a second male character with a single, very difficult to understand picture of both males sleeping in a cramped place, like some gay couple? The story may be interesting, but the preview pics imply none of that.
You shove that redhead grandma's face with over-saturated textures and left next-to-nothing for the initial presentation of rest of your cast. ;-;
I didn't even need to play the game and I'm already ignoring it.

Second on the answer list: "especially deranged" means the cultured viewers/players,
who appreciate(for lack of a better word) this kind of rendering,
of the characters in a realistic, life or death scenario who make a relationship work despite their overall decrepit looks.

Third and final answer: Of course I think the female characters in the preview pics look old. I doubt people need to play much of the game to find signs of malnutrition and side-effects of bad cryogenics in the renders of moms 1-2 and gals 1-2.

My shock came with the reveal of gal 3, whose renders look better than those of the first four combined.
Hell, the simplest detail, her hairstyle is better than theirs. Longer than theirs.
People sleep on this fact, but hair portraits character. Depth of character, insecurities, focus, goals, ideals.
If ones hairstyle does not match their character, they are either poorly made, or supposed to be misleading for plot reasons.
Ah I see, didn't realize you were talking about the preview pictures. One of them is the mother of MC. About beauty, I guess that's mostly a matter of taste. Personally, I like them all very much. I'm still trying to improve light setup's right, which are the most important for portraying characters. At least in my opinion. With the new character addition I guess I just did a better job on that than in some other scenarios. In some scenes the skin details are maybe a bit to prominent, in others to less. I guess that's mostly due to postwork. But again, I personally like them.

I didn't saw the cryo pod pictures as major spoiler, but I see why you could think about it like that. I choose those preview pictures the show some content of the lewd scenes, a variety of characters in the game and some for the artistic style of the game. Pia and Selene (both redheads) are in most of the preview pictures because they simply have to most content in the current version. I'm still at the start of the story and want to create an arc where more and more characters will be included over time and each one will get enough room. At least that's what I'm aiming for. As this is my first time creating a story like that, I dont expect it to be a masterpiece, but at the moment I'm still very happy how it comes along.

I fail to understand how the portrait of the other male character in the cryo pod (like nearly everyone else) indicates anything gay related.

The characters from the cryo pods arn't randomly put in, obviously, they will get more screen time later on. So yes, this is a spoiler on purpose. I wanted the player to know that MC isn't 'alone' on this ship. This will be of matter later in the game.

For ignoring the game you give a lot of feedback ;) which I'm thankful for btw. Critics are always welcome, so I know where I have room to improve.

I think we have a very different view about the age presentation of the characters in the game. To me, none of the redheads appear to be old. None of them is a mom or even a grandma.

I choose every hairs-style with a purpose and I think it fits their character.
 

Marvellous Lunatic

Member
Game Developer
Mar 22, 2018
302
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1637427045264.png


[Episode Canopus] Progress Update VI

A little shorter update this week. I focused on rendering and scripting too see how the current images fit together. At the moment everything seems fine. With a few images I'm not really happy but I'm not redoing them right now. If I have time in the test phase, I may change them a bit. However, for now I will keep continue to focus on rendering story scenes.

Current Status
~ 45% of the script is finished
~ 285 rendered and edited images


1637427053454.png


[Episode Canopus] Progress Update VII

Greetings,

this week I worked on a new location, a new engine feature, some bug-fixes, more renders and osanaiko helped me with the script-editing.



Current Status
~ 50% of scripting done
~ 350 rendered and edited images
 
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Marvellous Lunatic

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Mar 22, 2018
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[Image of Selene showering (nude, patreon only)]


[Episode Canopus] Progress Update VIII

Greetings,

nothing too much too tell this week. Been working on rendering and posing mostly. The gym scene is nearly finished, either today or tomorrow. After that I will continue rendering other dialogue scenes.

For a few shower shots I created a new wet shader because I wasn't satisfied with the one from the last episode. I think it looks much better now, at least I'm pretty happy with how the shots turned out.
As can be seen above I also created vertical scroll images with a higher resolution. 5 shots with a resolution of 1920 * 4320. As the render time for those shots were already pretty long I decided to not add volumetric fog and "real" water droplets, but I created a dynamic template in after effects with a rain and fog effect. It's not perfect but I can quite easily reuse it now for other scenes.

Current status
~ 50% scripting done
~ 405 rendered and edited images




1636374485768.png

[Episode Canopus] Progress Update IX

Greetings,

I've finished the gym scene and a few other smaller scenes. One particular gave me a few headaches and cost me a lot of time, more on that below. Did some more scripting as well and things come along quite good I think.
Coming week I'll focus on some more fill in scenes but another bigger scene is coming as well. Not sure if I can tackle it next week already, but I hope so. It's a scene I'm looking forward to create as it will feature a bit more vfx shots.



Current status
~ 55% scripting done
~ 460 rendered and edited images
 
Last edited:

Marvellous Lunatic

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Mar 22, 2018
302
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1636374506105.png


[Episode Canopus] Progress Update X

Greetings,
other than rendering more images and scripting I did some feature enhancements to the engine and included another environment.



Current Status
~ 65% scripting done
~ 500 rendered and edited images
 
Last edited:

Marvellous Lunatic

Member
Game Developer
Mar 22, 2018
302
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1636374530210.png


[Episode Canopus] Progress Update XI

Greetings,
nothing much to say this week, other than the usual. Rendering and scripting progressed quite well this week. I managed to complete the bigger scene I targeted this week. For this scene I created 5 animations as well, all non lewd.

Upcoming tasks


Current Status
~ 80% scripting done
~ 580 rendered and edited images
- 5 animations
 

Raksha17

Newbie
Jan 23, 2018
45
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I enjoyed this so far. Seems like an interesting Twist on the "Passengers" Plot with as far as I can tell unique models. An active Dev here is also a plus.

A Comment regarding Sandbox:
Be mindful of how you use it. I personally dont like searching for Storysnippets and feel it can disconnect a story to much.
 

Marvellous Lunatic

Member
Game Developer
Mar 22, 2018
302
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1637425113926.png


Greetings,
The scripting and most of the rendering for the main story of this episode is done. The 2 lewd animations I rendered this weekend have to be rendered again, because they are too noise and have flickering.
There won't be much to-do in the free-roam after this episode has finished. I will add a scene where some of the non-lewd animations can be re-watched and a few secrets.
Just as a reminder, till act 2 there won't ever be much to-do in the free-roam mode, because until then the story will be quite linear. With act 2 the free-roam mode will get a bit more attention, but this is still far away.
This episode is nearly finished. Depending on the feedback from the testers the roll-out could maybe start next weekend.

Pre-Release (Test-Build)
today I released the first build for high tier patreon's. The build still has some content missing but the whole main story can be tested.

4K Render-Reward
The render is created, but will be published only after final release of this episode.

ToDo's
- secrets
- access to the location 'Observation' in free roam mode.
- repeatable event in the observation (to re-watch some of the animations)
- 2 animations for the bigger lewd scene.
- updating the help tab
- fixing minor bugs

Current Status
~ 95% scripting done
~ 615 rendered and edited images
- 5 animations
 

Marvellous Lunatic

Member
Game Developer
Mar 22, 2018
302
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1637425408278.png


Greetings,
episode 'Canopus' is finally done and I'm pretty happy with it. This episode is very story driven. There is a lot of character development going on and more attention is paid to the backstories and emotions of the current main characters. Elios (MC) and Selene get to know each other better and better and are working on plans to remedy their situation.
As both move forward with their plans and get closer to each other, you will get a glimpse of the other side of the story from time to time.
Of course, lewd content is not missing. The episode features a hot scene with the girl who won the Patreon poll a while back. Also, there is plenty of other hot content featuring Selene as well.

Content
  • 617 Images (8 vertical scroll images)
  • 7 Animations (2 lewd)
  • 3 Secrets
  • Mini-game: "Hacking"
  • 4 new location (1 visible in free roam with a repeatable event)
  • ~ 2300 lines of dialogue script
  • file-size 1,02 gb (packed)





Downsized_Reward_Canopus_1.jpg



Greetings,
as an addition to the regular render reward I also added the full high resolution vertical scroll images from the last episode (Betelgeuse). The render reward for the next build (Daneb) will then feature the vertical scroll images of the recent released episode (Canopus) beside the regular 4K render reward of course.

 

Marvellous Lunatic

Member
Game Developer
Mar 22, 2018
302
1,878


Greetings,
in case someone want's to create a translation on it's own, here is the compact file of the default language file. It's a json file, so it should be easy to adjust. If you place your name in the node "translator" your name will be automatically added to the credits and the language will be available under settings.
Put the file in the following folder and it will be loaded at run-time:
%userprofile%\appdata\locallow\Marvellous Lunatic\A Long Journey\userData\Languages
The filename must be unique and it cant be 'en.json'.

p.s. I know there are a lot spelling errors in the labels but sadly I was too lazy to fix them all :/ I'll try to fix them in the next release.

 

Draverik

Active Member
Apr 21, 2017
992
2,402
Perfect setup to tease us with incest, but then put it on hold completely and eat around it, and when the time comes and there's nothing else left on the plate, dig right into it when it's already cold and stiff from all the waiting. :D
 

Raife

Active Member
May 16, 2018
620
1,080
Looks intriguing, but I cannot get the Mac version to open... it's an extremely common problem with Mac games (ever since Big Sur, really) and I just don't have the patience to hunt for a technical solution in order to explore a new game like your effort here.

My advice is to plug away on the PC version, and forget about a Mac version for now. Mac users like me are niche players...
 
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Marvellous Lunatic

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Game Developer
Mar 22, 2018
302
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Perfect setup to tease us with incest, but then put it on hold completely and eat around it, and when the time comes and there's nothing else left on the plate, dig right into it when it's already cold and stiff from all the waiting. :D
Initially I planed act 1 to be shorter, but I like the story, how it unfolds and the setup it builds for the later part of the game where incest will/could be part of the game (depending on your character configuration). I don't 'tease' on purpose. I just try to be open about the development and what kind of kinks i plan to add.
Ohh, just figured you probably meant the cryo pod events. The main reason for this to be a part quite early in the game is to show that the MC is not by himself on the ship, he has companions. This will be of matter later.

Looks intriguing, but I cannot get the Mac version to open... it's an extremely common problem with Mac games (ever since Big Sur, really) and I just don't have the patience to hunt for a technical solution in order to explore a new game like your effort here.

My advice is to plug away on the PC version, and forget about a Mac version for now. Mac users like me are niche players...
Thanks for bringing it politely too my attention and really a shame it doesn't seem to work. Sadly I don't have a mac to test it myself. I'll try to find a way to make it work, like I'll try it with android. I don't expect you to hunt down, I'll try to find a way.
 

Marvellous Lunatic

Member
Game Developer
Mar 22, 2018
302
1,878
Good afternoon.
I have a question
In which folder are the game saves located?
The save-files are in this location:
%userprofile%\appdata\locallow\Marvellous Lunatic\A Long Journey\userData\gameFiles

However, they are encrypted and not easy readable or easy to manipulate. Is there a problem I can help with?
 
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Humlebien

Active Member
Donor
Nov 15, 2016
555
1,141
Good start. Engaging story. Could use a bit more backstory on the frozen veggies, maybe when you see them, as you're don't seem to get much connection to them, at least for now. Don't need to be anything major, could be a single memory of from before. As for looks, I saw others commented, looks good and fine to me. Taste is subjective, and it's "far" future sci-fi.
 
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