VN Ren'Py Abandoned Complex Relations [Demo] [Amai Works]

[JayneDoe2]

May 2024 Update
Another update, another major sex scene in the rearview mirror. After the Most Complicated Sex Scene Ever, this latest scene might be the game's most important, but thankfully it's not nearly as difficult to implement. But, it does feature branching based on the player's earlier choices, and I'm not sure any players will actually end up seeing every version of it. My suggestion is that players not stress over it, since it's intended to non-obtrusively reflect preferences the player has expressed over the course of the game so far.


Unfortunately, I still haven't gotten into the meat of the big important scene that comes right after it. That's because a whole bunch of my time this month is being eaten up by moving houses. It's leaving me with a lot less availability to work on the game for the time being, but not so much that I haven't been able to coordinate the development of some new assets for the game in the meantime. Apart from some new CG work, this last month has also seen the completion of important new sprite work, and a new addition to the soundtrack, one of a pair of tracks which have been particularly tricky to nail down. The latest piece captures a feeling I've never really encountered in another VN before, and I'm really happy with the composer's work in putting it together.

By the time of the next update, my move should be fully out of the way, and I'll be back to the usual workflow. The next scene in Vani's route is one of my most-awaited of the game's development, and I'm looking forward to tackling it at my best.

 

[JayneDoe2]

June 2024 update
It's been a busy month for me, but now that I've moved and mostly gotten cardboard boxes out of my life, Complex Relations is back into full swing of development. I'm in the middle of the big dramatic scene of Vani's route, which is probably the most planned-for scene in the entire game. This means I have a very clear idea what notes I want to hit, how it should be structured, and what the overall tone ought to be like, but it also means my standards are at their strictest. This is a scene that's meant to have a lot of impact, and I want to be sure that it lives up to that. It's also led to a slight departure from form in my process. Normally, I write all the scenes which are available from multiple character perspectives in the same order, Jesse, Alexa, Vani, the order in which their perspectives first appear in the beginning of the demo. But for this scene, I'm doing everything from Vani's perspective first.


There are a whole bunch of new elements converging on this specific scene. New sprite art, new background work, and new music. To be fair, a lot of these elements won't actually appear for the first time in this scene. Some of them are going to be retroactively inserted into earlier scenes as well. The time-of-day variations for the master bedroom background, shown above, are something I meant to include much earlier, and I now have available to insert where they're needed. And the new sprite art has a few scattered appearances before this, in this route and the others. But I'm using it for the first time here. Nearly all the game's sprite work is done alongside the scene dialogue, but everything gets additional passes when I incorporate new essential sprite art.

This is one of the most high-pressure points in the game for me, but it's going well so far. There's still plenty of game left from here, but by this time next month, I'm hoping to have what ought to be the most difficult parts of the whole game behind me.

 

[JayneDoe2]

July 2024 update

We're at the height of Summer now. For much of the year, I spend time walking outdoors to do a lot of my planning for Complex Relations, but now, around the time of year that the game actually takes place, it's too hot for me to do that most of the time. But even when I'm holed up indoors, work on the game continues.

The big dramatic scene of Vani's route is in the rearview mirror now. There's still a fair chunk of content left for the route, but at this point, I think I can say that the most difficult parts of what I always considered to be the most difficult route to write are all out of the way.



More recently, I've just finished up a reprise of a character I've been missing for some time now. Clearing out everyone but the main trio near the beginning of the game was always one of the key elements of the plot setup, but still, the secondary characters are quite close to my heart as well, and I wish I could have worked them into more of the game. Thankfully, the secondary character scenes stretch goal means I'll still have some more opportunity to work with them when the full plot is finally wrapped up. That's still a ways off right now, but it's looking closer all the time.

 

[JayneDoe2]

August 2024 update
There are some months where problems just seem to pile up. This last month has been one stroke of bad luck after another for me, with lowlights including having to prematurely replace the computer on which I've done most of the work on Complex Relations, and having an already new air conditioner fail and need to be replaced in midsummer. That last one was a significant obstacle while it lasted, but work on Complex Relations has continued. Not at quite the pace I hoped last month, but it's seen the completion of some content I'm quite happy with.

Some of that content has expanded a bit beyond what I originally planned. Part of that is intentional; I wanted to give players a last chance to exercise some freedom of choice before the end of Vani's route. It's not going to transform the resolution of the plot or anything (I'm not going to take on that kind of additional workload this late into the game's development,) but I've long been dissatisfied with how many visual novels offer choices up to the route branching point, and then leave no more room for player input up to the end of the game. So, I wanted to add a little bit more of what I want to see in the sphere of visual novels.

Part of it wasn't so intentional. A lot of authors talk about their characters doing things they didn't intend, conforming to their own personalities at the expense of the intended direction of the plot. That doesn't usually happen to me, because I try to lay out the plot with careful attention to the characters' personalities in the first place. But, there are still some places where the game strays slightly off track from where I intended. The game's outline has the flexibility to account for it, but the content of the last month has been distinctly more bittersweet than I intended when I first planned it out. It wasn't as demanding to write as the big scene last month, but it was still tough to work on in its own way. All of the routes have happy endings, but some of them wring it out of the characters a bit harder than others. I knew Vani's route was going to be the most difficult for me to write, and this month's work really got to the heart of that.

Also, packs in a bit more food writing at the tail end of the route.

I hope this part of the game has as much of an impact on the players as it's had on me. But at the same time, I hope it doesn't weigh on people too heavily. Complex Relations is meant to be a pretty upbeat game, all things considered. And I hope players come away from each route happier for the experience. The characters do all get happy endings, in their own ways.

 

[JayneDoe2]

September 2024 update
The weather's still warm out here, but summer is finally coming to a close. That's around the point I feel like I'm at now with Vani's route. There's still some meaningful content to get done (which includes the route's final sex scene,) but all the heaviest content, and the most demanding parts to work on, are in the rearview mirror by now. The most recent major scene is one of the most variable in the game, with three versions taking place in separate locations, and separate character perspectives available for each one. While the variations don't have any impact on how the route finally resolves, they're kind of my way of working out my own dissatisfaction with visual novels which only offer choices or variability up to the point of route branching and then none after. Also, they're a chance to get a little bit of extra food writing in, since readers have been a lot more enthusiastic about that than I expected.

I've had a few people playtest the game's most recent content over the last month, and the feedback has honestly been stronger than I expected. "Stronger" is kind of a mixed blessing; even now, with only a few people having seen it, the game has already made people cry, which is honestly harder than I intended for it to hit. But it's a lot more reassuring than a weak reaction.

Personally though, I find the upbeat parts more satisfying to write, and there are some nice ones still to come, in Vani's route and the rest of the game. I'll look forward to seeing if those parts can affect people just as much.

 

[JayneDoe2]

October 2024 Update

The weather's finally turning cold around here, colder than I would have expected for this part of the year. And for one route at least, I can see the end of the summer trip approaching.

Although I wasn't able to get as much work done over this last month as I'd hoped (for a solid chunk of it, I was struggling with a back injury that made it difficult even to sit up,) the work I was able to complete has brought Vani's route appreciably closer to its close. There are a few events that all three routes converge on near the end, although they may differ in their details and perspectives, and Vani's route is currently sitting in the middle of those. There's still some significant content left to write before it's done, but there'll be a fair amount of overlap with some of the events at the end of the other two routes. You'll see why when we get there, hopefully the variations between them can keep those elements fresh each time.



It's been long enough since I last brought this up that a lot of backers following these updates may have forgotten about it, or assumed it evaporated into the ether, but my side project, Comfort and Warmth, is also nearing completion. Like Complex Relations, it's suffered some substantial delays on its art front, but unlike Complex Relations, it's kept a single artist for the full duration of its development. There are a few pieces left to finish, and it's still in a pretty "assembly required" state right now, but I'm looking forward to being able to share it.



Just have to make it over that last hurdle.

 

[JayneDoe2]

November 2024 update
We're approaching the end of the year now. Honestly, this last month has been an anxious, stressful time for me. It's at times like this that the fact that Complex Relations still isn't complete already, so far behind its original schedule, particularly weighs on me. I can force myself to write under any circumstances, but I can't force myself to write well, so there are times when I worry about my ability to keep up work on Complex Relations at the level of quality it deserves.

But, when I step back and give myself the space to replay Complex Relations as a game, and not just as a project I've been immersed in for so long, I honestly feel really good about where it stands so far. Although progress hasn't always been as fast as I'd like, I don't feel the experience of the game has suffered for it. The parts I've struggled with don't feel like weak points in the game; if anything, they've had to become particularly polished before I'm properly satisfied with them.



I don't want to oversell it, because I can't promise anyone satisfaction before they actually experience the game. But at least for me, taking a fresh view of it has brought me a lot of comfort.

With this update, I'm coming up on the last unique CG scene to be written for Vani's route. There's a bit of artwork which gets reused between routes, but this is pretty close to the end now. At least, pretty close to an end, after which Complex Relations will technically be playable from beginning to end, but not all the different ends. There'll still be plenty of work left after that, but it's a major milestone for the project, and one I'll be happy to have behind me.

____________________________________

Personal note: Great example why Kickstarter is a bottomless pit. They aimed for a release in March 2023, and even with one artist leaving the project, still not all routes are written.

 

[JayneDoe2]

December 2024 update

We've reached the last update of the year, and the third anniversary of Complex Relations' Kickstarter launch. It's bittersweet, since if things had gone according to schedule, the game would be long-since released by now. But still, looking back on what's been completed in that time... well, there's a lot of it, and, I'm eager to be able to finally share it with you all.

The last unique CG scene of Vani's route is fully written now, which means her route is nearly at its end. The contents of the various routes converge a bit at the end, hopefully not so much that they'll feel repetitive to play in succession, but the final scene artwork is shared between them. We're finally approaching the payoff I've planned since before the demo was first launched. And then... I'll be going back to finish the remaining routes. The final release is still further off than I'd like at this point, but definitely getting closer.




One thing that's considerably closer though is the release of Comfort and Warmth. I've mentioned this side project in a couple updates previously. At this point, I can announce that the game is pretty much complete. If I'd managed to time things slightly better, I'd have things set up for a Christmas release, but it looks like I won't be able to have it up on distribution platforms by then. But it's fully written, illustrated, and composed for, and should be fully assembled and ready to play before the end of this year. It's not the big payoff everyone's been waiting on, but it's a project I'm happy with in its own right, and I'm looking forward to sharing it.



There's a lot for me to wrap up with the end of the year, but a lot of work I'm really happy with behind me as well. Wishing all of you the best in the next one.