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Grab a cup of something and take a break. A large chunk of text without a tldr incoming.
First off... Boom! The 5000 render milestone was reached this week. Now episode 10 has more renders than episode 9 - the previously biggest episode in the game. And because I reached this milestone, I had to try and estimate how much is left in terms of development.
I have been working on art and coding all week. I started by completing two smaller scenes and one free-roam event. The better part of the week was spent on creating the last free-roam event of the episode. Since it's a new environment, there was environmental design to carry out first, and also preparation of the characters for it.
The dialogue for this free-roam event was written months ago, so it's a matter of creating the art and coding the events and buttons. It's a labor-intensive yet easy free-roam event to create, so I should be able to maintain a good speed without any speed bumps.
After the recent weeks of playing and polishing the game, my flowchart has been updated, and the following checklist is what the current state is like.
As I develop these episodes, I always ask you to take numbers with a grain of salt because the scene/render/animation count will change until the last few weeks of development. This is why it's always hard for me to give accurate estimates.
As you will notice below, the scene count is larger than I reported earlier because of the addition of some scenes that were needed to make some branches feel whole.
Checklist Episode 10
This is the current checklist of what's left to do before beta testing can begin.
Scenes
Three lewd scenes - One is written. Neither scene has any art.
Three free-roam events - One is almost complete, another has a few scenes left, and I'm ~70% through the last one. All writing is done. All need a different degree of testing and additional phone content.
Three normal scenes - One is written, one has partial writing, and one is planned. Neither scene has any art.
Art
Based on the scenes above, I estimate I must pose an additional ~600 static renders and 70-100 animations.
Current static render count: 4892 produced. 220 posed renders in the render queue.
5112 renders total.
Current animation count: 237 produced. 28 posed animations in the render queue.
265 animations total.
Code
Pack Quest - In the planning phase.
Vault - Ensure that numbers are placed and work as intended.
Rewards/2D art - 70% completed. The rest will be placed in free-roam events, story scenes, and the Vault. Testing and possibly correction of code are needed.
Gallery - The lewd gallery has been coded but can't be tested until all lewd scenes have been made. Some art remains for miniature images.
Phone content - There's some work left with the Rooster and Chat apps. Also, the new phone gallery will get additional planned content. The music app needs updated code to include new songs.
Bios - I always leave bios for the last part of the development.
Episode end screen and report - In the planning phase.
Credits - I haven't added new patrons to the credit section yet.
Sound
SFX work has been done as I play-tested parts of the episode; I estimate it's ~80-90% done.
For music, it's the same as with SFX. Most of the scenes that are complete have songs in place. 25 new songs have been added so far.
Testing
I haven't played the episode from start to finish yet because of gaps in the episode and missing content near the end.
My personal tests and polishing remain. How long they take usually depends on how much I have played the episode during development and whether new features are involved.
Episode 10 is packed with new things for the game, meaning testing might take some extra time to ensure high quality.
My thoughts on the checklist.
The animations will be the most demanding part, but cannot be skipped or trimmed as the scenes are essential for the episode.
The static render estimation can change in either direction but is likely lower than stated.
The code tasks are all fast tasks to complete. I estimate that I could get all of them done within 1-2 days of work, but they depend on the art content I need to produce first.
The remaining work on SFX and Music won't take too long, 1-2 days here as well.
Testing is another demanding part. I have lots of new features to test this time around. And we are talking about the five main branches on top of some very ambitious branching within them.
As always, there will be waiting time for animations near the end of the development, and this is when I plan to perform my personal tests and polishing.
Hopefully, I have covered all aspects of the checklist, but I may have missed something minor - all big tasks are accounted for.
My plan going forward.
I plan to work with art until I need to write the last scenes. Animations will be posed intermittently.
I plan to be done with my testing as the final animation frames are produced, thus minimizing the time between the PCs being idle and the start of beta testing/proofreading. As usual, at least two weeks will be allotted for private beta testing and proofreading before the episode can be released on Patreon.
Next up for me is to continue with art on the free-roam I'm working on and hopefully be able to move on to other scenes later next week.
Have a nice weekend, and thanks for reading
Dr PinkCake
