- Thread starter GatewayGames
- Start date
- Oct 29, 2021
- 2,791
- 22,200
Status Report 4/26
It’s been about 2.5 months since Episode 2 was released, and I’m finally hitting a stage where Episode 3 is starting to come together. The last thing I’m gonna do this time around is rush a release, but a clearer goal is starting to take shape and I never want the gaps between episodes to be too significant.
Above are just a couple generic previews of the Episode. I’m going to avoid anything too spoilery but as the finished product gets closer I’ll showcase some more unique renders. The episode is somewhat split between some calmer scenes in the first half followed by more plot-heavy content in the second, so some of those will be previewed soon.
As the progress tracker shows, the script is complete and I’ve done some editing towards a more finalized version. The first 50% of the editing/testing bar is editing alone and the final 50% will be the last thing I do as I test the fully put together Episode once it’s ready. Renders are close to done, I will finish up posing in the next ~week to week and a half, and then my computer will render as fast as it can so post-work can be finalized. Some decent coding has been done, but as mentioned before I have an itch to clean up some of the UI and visuals, particularly the codex, gallery, rewards system, and pop-ups. Again, that will result in somewhat of a delayed release as I will do that once the episode is put together but I’m just not a fan of how certain things look. Now that I have a somewhat better idea of how to code and create UI elements, I wanna do s bit of clean up. I’ve done very early and small work on animations, but that’s gonna pick up significantly once posing renders is completed sometime within the next 2 weeks. There are going to be quite a few animations, so I’ll give a better idea of how long they’re gonna end up taking once I start working on them.
All in all, I have hope that Episode 3 will be an improvement over the past two in a variety of ways. I also have given thought to my long-term plans of BTV regarding the game’s full length that I plan to share after Episode 3 is released. I’m reaching a point where writing future episodes would be difficult if I don’t know where the finish line would be. Regardless, their is a lot of content to come still so thanks for being patient as I develop.
Enjoy your weekend, I’ll be back next week with another report.
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It’s been about 2.5 months since Episode 2 was released, and I’m finally hitting a stage where Episode 3 is starting to come together. The last thing I’m gonna do this time around is rush a release, but a clearer goal is starting to take shape and I never want the gaps between episodes to be too significant.
Above are just a couple generic previews of the Episode. I’m going to avoid anything too spoilery but as the finished product gets closer I’ll showcase some more unique renders. The episode is somewhat split between some calmer scenes in the first half followed by more plot-heavy content in the second, so some of those will be previewed soon.
As the progress tracker shows, the script is complete and I’ve done some editing towards a more finalized version. The first 50% of the editing/testing bar is editing alone and the final 50% will be the last thing I do as I test the fully put together Episode once it’s ready. Renders are close to done, I will finish up posing in the next ~week to week and a half, and then my computer will render as fast as it can so post-work can be finalized. Some decent coding has been done, but as mentioned before I have an itch to clean up some of the UI and visuals, particularly the codex, gallery, rewards system, and pop-ups. Again, that will result in somewhat of a delayed release as I will do that once the episode is put together but I’m just not a fan of how certain things look. Now that I have a somewhat better idea of how to code and create UI elements, I wanna do s bit of clean up. I’ve done very early and small work on animations, but that’s gonna pick up significantly once posing renders is completed sometime within the next 2 weeks. There are going to be quite a few animations, so I’ll give a better idea of how long they’re gonna end up taking once I start working on them.
All in all, I have hope that Episode 3 will be an improvement over the past two in a variety of ways. I also have given thought to my long-term plans of BTV regarding the game’s full length that I plan to share after Episode 3 is released. I’m reaching a point where writing future episodes would be difficult if I don’t know where the finish line would be. Regardless, their is a lot of content to come still so thanks for being patient as I develop.
Enjoy your weekend, I’ll be back next week with another report.
- Oct 29, 2021
- 2,791
- 22,200
Status Report 5/10
Good evening again all. I’ve made substantial progress recently, and as I inch towards having a release goal in my mind I thought I’d use this report to give a bit of detail about where I’m at and a general hope for what remains to be completed. Hopefully, this can give a slight idea of when an ideal window of release would be.
Rendering & Post-Work:
A few days ago I finished posing for the entire episode, other than if any replacements or extra renders are needed after play-testing. It will likely be around ~2 weeks, give or take a few days, for my computer to render them out. Once they’re all done, a couple of days of post-work and I’ll move them all into the game file and be a step closer to the release being ready. I’ll mark post-work down as about 80% at that point, as I will need to post-work the animations as well once they are finished. Once again though, that will only take a day or two.
Coding:
This is the one aspect I don’t have the best idea of how long it’s likely to take. The first 50% of the coding bar is coding the episode itself, which should be finished up in a couple of days. The other 50% is related to retouching the UI screens and codex/gallery, creating the codex updates for Episode 3, rewards, etc. I’m relatively optimistic that I can work pretty quickly, but I won’t know for certain until I begin on it. I’ll likely start the codex and rewards soon, then I’ll give an update on the status of the UI touch-ups.
Animations:
With posing the renders now finished, I’ve begun posing the numerous animations for Episode 3. While the renders are completing overnight, I’ll be able to spend some time during the next 2 weeks posing just about all the animations. Once the renders finish up, I’ll render the animations out and at that point, rendering will be entirely finished. I’m unsure of how long the animations will take to render, hopefully once I get them all posed I can give a better idea in the next report. This episode is going to have significantly more than the prior 2, so I’ll have to wait and see what the times look like.
In regards to editing, I’ve gone through almost the entirety of the script and consider it essentially completed. The final 40% of the bar is going to be for play-testing.
So once again, thank you all for being patient. I don’t enjoy having a release take this much time but I do hope it’ll end up being worth the wait. Have a nice weekend, and hopefully I'll be in a position to share some goalpost dates in the next post.
You must be registered to see the links
Good evening again all. I’ve made substantial progress recently, and as I inch towards having a release goal in my mind I thought I’d use this report to give a bit of detail about where I’m at and a general hope for what remains to be completed. Hopefully, this can give a slight idea of when an ideal window of release would be.
Rendering & Post-Work:
A few days ago I finished posing for the entire episode, other than if any replacements or extra renders are needed after play-testing. It will likely be around ~2 weeks, give or take a few days, for my computer to render them out. Once they’re all done, a couple of days of post-work and I’ll move them all into the game file and be a step closer to the release being ready. I’ll mark post-work down as about 80% at that point, as I will need to post-work the animations as well once they are finished. Once again though, that will only take a day or two.
Coding:
This is the one aspect I don’t have the best idea of how long it’s likely to take. The first 50% of the coding bar is coding the episode itself, which should be finished up in a couple of days. The other 50% is related to retouching the UI screens and codex/gallery, creating the codex updates for Episode 3, rewards, etc. I’m relatively optimistic that I can work pretty quickly, but I won’t know for certain until I begin on it. I’ll likely start the codex and rewards soon, then I’ll give an update on the status of the UI touch-ups.
Animations:
With posing the renders now finished, I’ve begun posing the numerous animations for Episode 3. While the renders are completing overnight, I’ll be able to spend some time during the next 2 weeks posing just about all the animations. Once the renders finish up, I’ll render the animations out and at that point, rendering will be entirely finished. I’m unsure of how long the animations will take to render, hopefully once I get them all posed I can give a better idea in the next report. This episode is going to have significantly more than the prior 2, so I’ll have to wait and see what the times look like.
In regards to editing, I’ve gone through almost the entirety of the script and consider it essentially completed. The final 40% of the bar is going to be for play-testing.
So once again, thank you all for being patient. I don’t enjoy having a release take this much time but I do hope it’ll end up being worth the wait. Have a nice weekend, and hopefully I'll be in a position to share some goalpost dates in the next post.
- Sep 27, 2018
- 645
- 663
GatewayGames your VN is great, please don't abandon it, I've seen too many great VNs go to the sink.
What I like the most in your VN is that it has a bit of everything for eveyone: drama, mystery, romance, and even quick sex for those who enjoy sluts like Olivia and Cassie. And I can't thank you enough for making choices meaningful, too many VNs are so-called choice-based where in the end they don't matter at all. You just missed a variable with Cassie because the day after the party she talks to the MC as if something happened between them even if you rejected her or invited Mia, it was really minor though.
I soooooo enjoyed rejecting Olivia-the-cheating-slut every. single. time.
She is so obsessed with the MC that it's a great joy to keep rejecting here and seeing her pissed off.
What I like the most in your VN is that it has a bit of everything for eveyone: drama, mystery, romance, and even quick sex for those who enjoy sluts like Olivia and Cassie. And I can't thank you enough for making choices meaningful, too many VNs are so-called choice-based where in the end they don't matter at all. You just missed a variable with Cassie because the day after the party she talks to the MC as if something happened between them even if you rejected her or invited Mia, it was really minor though.
I soooooo enjoyed rejecting Olivia-the-cheating-slut every. single. time.
She is so obsessed with the MC that it's a great joy to keep rejecting here and seeing her pissed off.
Last edited:
- May 15, 2020
- 107
- 234
I gave it a try and it doesn't seems bad at all. True tho, there could be some improvements, like when you have sex with Olivia in her friends house. If you choose to pick her up (this as first option) she is full nude but then when you press her against the wall she has a top on. The second thing is the options at a frat party. No matter if you choose to talk to Mia before it becomes the last option, you still need to talk to Mia again on end to continue with the story. The models are ok, nothing amazing tbh and that's all ok. Plenty of choices to make so it does feel like you're actually playing the game. That's a big plus to me. I also had some errors in chapter 2 but ignoring them did the trick. Bookmarked this game to see how it goes in the future.
- Oct 29, 2021
- 2,791
- 22,200
Status Report 5/25
Firstly, I apologize this post is a day later than normal. A family member had a false alarm emergency that made the last 2 days a bit hectic, but fortunately it seems like it was a very minor scare. I added a pair of previews from a scene I was originally going to keep hidden since I'm a bit late.
Episode 3 Status:
About 25 renders remain for tonight and tomorrow, but the rendering task is just about completed at last. The episode is right around ~1,200 renders but I’ll provide an exact number in the changelog upon release. This makes episode 3 just under the length of episodes 1 and 2 combined. E1 was a bit over 500 and E2’s patch was a bit over 800. About 80-90% were rendered in 4k and the remaining chunk were done in 1440p. I tried some new lighting techniques and settings, so hopefully I can take some feedback after release and continue making improvements to the renders into episode 4.
Now my PC will move onto animations which I expect will take around 2 weeks to render, but that’s just a guess and not a guarantee, could be a bit shorter or longer. I definitely have improved a lot on these since past episodes but still am constantly trying to make improvements in DAZ and learn new settings and tools. Hopefully, these will feel like a fairly substantial upgrade from the ones in the game currently.
While the animations are being done in DAZ, I am going to spend time writing the codex updates, prepping rewards, setting up pop-ups, and coding a few extra screens which will be a small new element for the episode. The overhaul of the UI will be done after all of this as well as some small miscellaneous code, most likely once animations are finished and coded/tested to be working properly.
Finally, I’ll finish with thorough testing. I expect there to be a bunch of bugs after the new UI is put in that will be a bit of headache to fix and I’ll likely find a bunch of small ones after thoroughly testing different decision paths, especially with the new stats being implemented for the first time.
All this being said, I finally have a hope for a release window in my head. Rather than overestimate like prior, my plan is to share a hopeful window in the next public status report after the animations are just about done. I just don’t want to predict anything yet because I’m pretty bad at coding and while I know how I want the overhaul to look and work, coding it to actually operate correctly is another story. All that being said, as the tracker shows the release is on the horizon and I’ll provide more concrete news soon.
Thanks again for sticking around and reading through these, enjoy the rest of the weekend and see you in the next post with hopefully good news.
Firstly, I apologize this post is a day later than normal. A family member had a false alarm emergency that made the last 2 days a bit hectic, but fortunately it seems like it was a very minor scare. I added a pair of previews from a scene I was originally going to keep hidden since I'm a bit late.
Episode 3 Status:
About 25 renders remain for tonight and tomorrow, but the rendering task is just about completed at last. The episode is right around ~1,200 renders but I’ll provide an exact number in the changelog upon release. This makes episode 3 just under the length of episodes 1 and 2 combined. E1 was a bit over 500 and E2’s patch was a bit over 800. About 80-90% were rendered in 4k and the remaining chunk were done in 1440p. I tried some new lighting techniques and settings, so hopefully I can take some feedback after release and continue making improvements to the renders into episode 4.
Now my PC will move onto animations which I expect will take around 2 weeks to render, but that’s just a guess and not a guarantee, could be a bit shorter or longer. I definitely have improved a lot on these since past episodes but still am constantly trying to make improvements in DAZ and learn new settings and tools. Hopefully, these will feel like a fairly substantial upgrade from the ones in the game currently.
While the animations are being done in DAZ, I am going to spend time writing the codex updates, prepping rewards, setting up pop-ups, and coding a few extra screens which will be a small new element for the episode. The overhaul of the UI will be done after all of this as well as some small miscellaneous code, most likely once animations are finished and coded/tested to be working properly.
Finally, I’ll finish with thorough testing. I expect there to be a bunch of bugs after the new UI is put in that will be a bit of headache to fix and I’ll likely find a bunch of small ones after thoroughly testing different decision paths, especially with the new stats being implemented for the first time.
All this being said, I finally have a hope for a release window in my head. Rather than overestimate like prior, my plan is to share a hopeful window in the next public status report after the animations are just about done. I just don’t want to predict anything yet because I’m pretty bad at coding and while I know how I want the overhaul to look and work, coding it to actually operate correctly is another story. All that being said, as the tracker shows the release is on the horizon and I’ll provide more concrete news soon.
Thanks again for sticking around and reading through these, enjoy the rest of the weekend and see you in the next post with hopefully good news.
- Feb 25, 2022
- 370
- 2,612
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Hello all, I hope you had a good week.
Status Update:
I posted about this last week, but to keep it short as a public post to update you all, sadly my grandfather passed away early last week, which has also caused my grandmother to come live with us for a short period. During the last 2 weeks, I have been extremely busy with life and work. The result has been getting about 2 days of progress in 2 weeks time. We have made plans this week for more permanent solutions to my grandmother's living situation that avoid certain aspects, but they won’t happen for a few weeks yet. Due to this, I’m unable to feel confident I can get much work done on the episode. After a couple days of weighing options, I’ve decided it’s best to pause billing for 30 days once again. I had felt somewhat confident that I could make this work and avoid serious delays but ultimately I was just wrong and think this is the best decision for the moment. I didn’t want to do this so soon after re-launching the page, as I had been able to run everything smoothly up to this point, but I have 2 main reasons. One, I would feel a bit guilty operating this page with weekly posts that suggest I’m consistently working and making progress on the release. I hope to get some time to do work but will certainly not be able to work at the same rate I have been for the past couple of months. Second, this release has already taken almost 4 months, which feels like quite a long time. I had wanted to avoid lengthy periods between updates and this delay will only prolong what’s already been slow. As it seems that the release will end up being about 5 or 5.5 months (which seems crazy to me) since Episode 2 due to this unanticipated delay, a 30-day pause of the page feels appropriate again.
The Next 30 Days & Episode 3 Release Plans:
I still hope to be making progress in the next 30 days. When I have time, I’m going to continue working on the coding stuff such as the codex, gallery, music, etc and finalization of the UI overhaul, but the time I have will likely be spotty at best.
The last public post, I was estimating in my mind that the release was about 3-4 weeks away (I had hoped at least) for around June 15-20th. Over the next 30 days, I may not get a lot of work done, but I hope I can at least get a week or so of progress made, ideally more. The goal will be that I’ll make a public post as billing resumes on July 7th, and I will plan to release episode 3 about 2-3 weeks later on either July 21st or July 28th. The amount of time I have to work on it these next 30 days will ultimately determine if it’s anywhere from ~1 to 3 weeks after billing resumes. Those may not be the exact days, maybe I get a lot more time than expected, maybe a lot less, but I expect to be very, very close to those dates based on what I set on July 7th. Due to the inconsistent work, I won’t be making weekly posts over the next 30 days, I’ll probably plan to just post once or twice to update the progress I’ve made, if any. The normal schedule of posts and normal amount of time spent developing will return once billing resumes, which I will post about.
I’ve worked hard to make Ep. 3 feel like an upgrade visually and in the UI presentation, and rather than try to push the release on time despite the circumstances, pausing billing allows me to not feel as guilty delaying for what I know will be a much cleaner product upon release. At the end of the day, I really didn’t want to delay or pause billing but there’s just too many unanticipated circumstances going on to avoid it. I hope you all can understand the situation and are still looking forward to the delayed release, and I’ll check in at some point as a small status update.
Have a great weekend.
- Jun 2, 2022
- 1,824
- 4,176
Status Report
It’s been a bit since I’ve posted, I hope you’re all doing well. At the moment, I’ve paused billing yet again and am unsure of how development will progress in the near future.
I’m unable to commit to real development time each month at the moment due to certain circumstances, and I don’t know how soon that will change. I’m still slowly progressing but not nearly enough to warrant a Patreon page right now. On one hand, I’m tempted to release what’s done right now, which is pretty much the entire episode minus final testing and the UI overhaul, but on the other hand, it’d take away from the quality I want to put out. The release for E3 still remains on the horizon, I just don’t want to give exact dates due to my inability to commit development time. I won’t delay too long if it seems improbable that I’ll be back to developing within a reasonable time frame. For now, there’s not much information I can provide as I don’t have a lot of the answers yet, such as when I’ll be able to return to working consistently. I’d like it to be sooner rather than later, but I also can’t guarantee that. I’m not particularly keen on going into some of the more personal details about why I’m unable to develop consistently, but you deserve to at least know the status of development moving forward. I’ll continue to update you all on any status changes that hopefully will happen soon, but for now, billing will remain paused until I can commit to development time. When billing is eventually resumed, I will post about it. I will also attempt to at the very least occasionally post about the status of the slower progress being made with some previews or if I’m releasing early. -To be clear, this (hopefully) won’t drastically impact Episode 3 since it’s so close to done already, it’s more about the fact that I can’t currently commit to as much development time as I have been, or an amount of time that I believe is worthy of asking for support.- The release will also still have benefits for those of you who should be receiving them, I will just have to find another way of providing them assuming billing is still paused.
As a final note I want to make it clear that I have zero plans of abandoning development, nor do I intend to mislead any of your expectations for BTV or this page as a whole. I enjoy developing and creating a game, but I certainly thought it’d be a lot easier to reach goals prior to actually launching this page. Granted some things have been events I can’t plan for but overall, I still want to release the episode soon and will continue working in spurts, even if it’s less than what I envisioned in terms of overhauling and improving the game’s feel. I apologize that I have provided estimations that have been inaccurate, which is why pausing and staying away from stating any dates is the better option currently until circumstances are more predictable.
I apologize once again and I’ll make every effort to continue making progress and to get the episode out asap.
You must be registered to see the links
It’s been a bit since I’ve posted, I hope you’re all doing well. At the moment, I’ve paused billing yet again and am unsure of how development will progress in the near future.
I’m unable to commit to real development time each month at the moment due to certain circumstances, and I don’t know how soon that will change. I’m still slowly progressing but not nearly enough to warrant a Patreon page right now. On one hand, I’m tempted to release what’s done right now, which is pretty much the entire episode minus final testing and the UI overhaul, but on the other hand, it’d take away from the quality I want to put out. The release for E3 still remains on the horizon, I just don’t want to give exact dates due to my inability to commit development time. I won’t delay too long if it seems improbable that I’ll be back to developing within a reasonable time frame. For now, there’s not much information I can provide as I don’t have a lot of the answers yet, such as when I’ll be able to return to working consistently. I’d like it to be sooner rather than later, but I also can’t guarantee that. I’m not particularly keen on going into some of the more personal details about why I’m unable to develop consistently, but you deserve to at least know the status of development moving forward. I’ll continue to update you all on any status changes that hopefully will happen soon, but for now, billing will remain paused until I can commit to development time. When billing is eventually resumed, I will post about it. I will also attempt to at the very least occasionally post about the status of the slower progress being made with some previews or if I’m releasing early. -To be clear, this (hopefully) won’t drastically impact Episode 3 since it’s so close to done already, it’s more about the fact that I can’t currently commit to as much development time as I have been, or an amount of time that I believe is worthy of asking for support.- The release will also still have benefits for those of you who should be receiving them, I will just have to find another way of providing them assuming billing is still paused.
As a final note I want to make it clear that I have zero plans of abandoning development, nor do I intend to mislead any of your expectations for BTV or this page as a whole. I enjoy developing and creating a game, but I certainly thought it’d be a lot easier to reach goals prior to actually launching this page. Granted some things have been events I can’t plan for but overall, I still want to release the episode soon and will continue working in spurts, even if it’s less than what I envisioned in terms of overhauling and improving the game’s feel. I apologize that I have provided estimations that have been inaccurate, which is why pausing and staying away from stating any dates is the better option currently until circumstances are more predictable.
I apologize once again and I’ll make every effort to continue making progress and to get the episode out asap.
- Sep 12, 2018
- 9,376
- 38,240
translated for those not speaking devs language - "the project is dead, yet im gonna play with it just a bit more"