VN Ren'Py Abandoned Connected [v0.2.5] [ChainZero]

4.60 star(s) 61 Votes

Sharqed

New Member
May 25, 2019
10
13
Well I hope the dev takes all the team he needs ; no rush for that next chapter



Am I the only one who's moderately concerned about that last bit ? :(
I hope it's nothing bad, at least nothing that can't be fixed or healed....
No worries, the dev posted that last bit a few days ago and you can read it on patreon for free. It's pretty light-hearted if you ask me.
 

Uriel ☁

Well-Known Member
Nov 28, 2017
1,464
8,348
The post is public on his Patreon:



So after posting the Dev Report, I said I was gonna talk about something else that I felt was important enough for a separate post. This is that post. I just wanted to take some time to make sure I have all my thoughts in order. And as I said, it's not game development related.
Before I released Connected I was talking about some of the goals I had but I deleted those posts when I posted the first version of the game. This is just me getting my goals out there to the new followers and stuff.
So, I'm a pretty good artist. I've been drawing for as long as I could hold a pencil and I basically taught myself everything I know now and I've always been the top student in art classes in school. I've always enjoyed drawing. Problem is, I stopped drawing right around late middle school - early high school, right around the time I really began to understand just how toxic of a home life I had and I never really managed to regain that love and drive despite wanting to draw so badly. If I have any regret, it's that I couldn't bring myself to continue doing what I loved.
I think my current skill level can be best classified as being able to draw but not being able to sketch. I have a great eye for detail so if you were to ask me to take an image and draw it, I can do it, almost perfectly. The problem is I've never been able to look at a reference image and sketch something completely original without flat out copying from the reference.
This is why I've been heavily considering and researching art schools to see if I can get what I want from one of them. I've bought art books and stuff to learn for myself, but it's hard to be here trying to find the motivation to open the book and get to work when I have nothing but negative influences around me. That's why I'd like a legitimate place of education to give me a positive space to get that focus and discipline back.
I say all this because 3D art was actually never something I wanted to pursue until fairly recently. Tora Productions were the ones who inspired me to do 3D art and game creation about 4 or 5 years ago, ever since Dreaming of Elsa, but I've always wanted to draw. If I had the skill to do so, Connected would have been a full 2D game or 2D comic right now. Not a 3D game.
To me, 3D art is great and visually stunning when handled right, but it's not forever. It's not unique. It's not completely your own. Not Daz3D at least. And a game like Connected I feel is defined by being unique. I personally have all these ideas and thoughts that run through my mind when thinking of Connected and honestly more than half of those ideas tend to fall way short because Daz3D is very limiting. When you draw, you're able to let your mind run free on the canvas. Certain issues I have in Daz I wouldn't have if I could draw them myself. Like right now, with this whole height issue I addressed in the recent Dev Report. That's why I so very much want to continue to improve my art again.
If possible, in the future, possibly when the game of Connected is all said and done, I'd like to be able to draw my characters and continue their stories in various sexy comics. I'd love to do that. I look at what Melkor Mancin, a great erotic comic artist does with his characters in his "Melkorverse". I look at various hentai artists, "pornhwa" artists and that's what I truly want to do. I love 3D art and I've grown to be very addicted to Daz Studio, so I don't think I'll ever really leave the app alone, but I'm 23 years old. I personally don't see myself working with Daz Studio into my 30s, 40s, 50s assuming I'm fortunate enough to experience those later years of life, cause you know, it feels like we're constantly being reminded about how unpredictable this bitch called life is. January's tragedy was proof enough. If you know, you know.
Anyway, that's my future goal. To have the art form I grew up with hopefully carry me for the rest of my years. Drawing is where I've always been truly happy. I'm probably making it sound more poetic and dramatic than it needs to be, but it's true. This is nice, this is great and I've really put time into learning Daz to deliver you guys great quality 3D art with the tools given to me. But in the future, I hope to deliver great 2D art of my own talent and hard work.
I have no regrets delivering the story of Connected in 3D form so far though. I do love the app and what can be done with it and I don't think the designs of Ayana, Charlotte, Michelle, Vanessa, and Nikki could have been thought up if not for Daz3D, so I'm forever grateful for that. But I would definitely tell you guys to look forward to the future because if I am given the power and opportunity, I definitely want to spend the next however many years drawing these beautiful girls and putting them in the sexiest of situations. This game is a stepping stone to open the door for that to happen.
So hopefully sometime in the near future, I end up in a place of education again where I can improve on the one thing I truly love to do. If not that then at least find a space where I can improve on things myself. But until then, all my attention is set on making this game great for you guys.
 

Deleted member 444674

Member
Game Developer
Feb 17, 2018
405
5,475
The post is public on his Patreon:



So after posting the Dev Report, I said I was gonna talk about something else that I felt was important enough for a separate post. This is that post. I just wanted to take some time to make sure I have all my thoughts in order. And as I said, it's not game development related.
Before I released Connected I was talking about some of the goals I had but I deleted those posts when I posted the first version of the game. This is just me getting my goals out there to the new followers and stuff.
So, I'm a pretty good artist. I've been drawing for as long as I could hold a pencil and I basically taught myself everything I know now and I've always been the top student in art classes in school. I've always enjoyed drawing. Problem is, I stopped drawing right around late middle school - early high school, right around the time I really began to understand just how toxic of a home life I had and I never really managed to regain that love and drive despite wanting to draw so badly. If I have any regret, it's that I couldn't bring myself to continue doing what I loved.
I think my current skill level can be best classified as being able to draw but not being able to sketch. I have a great eye for detail so if you were to ask me to take an image and draw it, I can do it, almost perfectly. The problem is I've never been able to look at a reference image and sketch something completely original without flat out copying from the reference.
This is why I've been heavily considering and researching art schools to see if I can get what I want from one of them. I've bought art books and stuff to learn for myself, but it's hard to be here trying to find the motivation to open the book and get to work when I have nothing but negative influences around me. That's why I'd like a legitimate place of education to give me a positive space to get that focus and discipline back.
I say all this because 3D art was actually never something I wanted to pursue until fairly recently. Tora Productions were the ones who inspired me to do 3D art and game creation about 4 or 5 years ago, ever since Dreaming of Elsa, but I've always wanted to draw. If I had the skill to do so, Connected would have been a full 2D game or 2D comic right now. Not a 3D game.
To me, 3D art is great and visually stunning when handled right, but it's not forever. It's not unique. It's not completely your own. Not Daz3D at least. And a game like Connected I feel is defined by being unique. I personally have all these ideas and thoughts that run through my mind when thinking of Connected and honestly more than half of those ideas tend to fall way short because Daz3D is very limiting. When you draw, you're able to let your mind run free on the canvas. Certain issues I have in Daz I wouldn't have if I could draw them myself. Like right now, with this whole height issue I addressed in the recent Dev Report. That's why I so very much want to continue to improve my art again.
If possible, in the future, possibly when the game of Connected is all said and done, I'd like to be able to draw my characters and continue their stories in various sexy comics. I'd love to do that. I look at what Melkor Mancin, a great erotic comic artist does with his characters in his "Melkorverse". I look at various hentai artists, "pornhwa" artists and that's what I truly want to do. I love 3D art and I've grown to be very addicted to Daz Studio, so I don't think I'll ever really leave the app alone, but I'm 23 years old. I personally don't see myself working with Daz Studio into my 30s, 40s, 50s assuming I'm fortunate enough to experience those later years of life, cause you know, it feels like we're constantly being reminded about how unpredictable this bitch called life is. January's tragedy was proof enough. If you know, you know.
Anyway, that's my future goal. To have the art form I grew up with hopefully carry me for the rest of my years. Drawing is where I've always been truly happy. I'm probably making it sound more poetic and dramatic than it needs to be, but it's true. This is nice, this is great and I've really put time into learning Daz to deliver you guys great quality 3D art with the tools given to me. But in the future, I hope to deliver great 2D art of my own talent and hard work.
I have no regrets delivering the story of Connected in 3D form so far though. I do love the app and what can be done with it and I don't think the designs of Ayana, Charlotte, Michelle, Vanessa, and Nikki could have been thought up if not for Daz3D, so I'm forever grateful for that. But I would definitely tell you guys to look forward to the future because if I am given the power and opportunity, I definitely want to spend the next however many years drawing these beautiful girls and putting them in the sexiest of situations. This game is a stepping stone to open the door for that to happen.
So hopefully sometime in the near future, I end up in a place of education again where I can improve on the one thing I truly love to do. If not that then at least find a space where I can improve on things myself. But until then, all my attention is set on making this game great for you guys.
Lol, just as I was about to clarify this was posted. But good God Almighty I never realized the post was this long :oops::oops::whistle: Edit: Wait, nah it double posted. Still long though o_O
 

CrazyRabbit

Engaged Member
Oct 30, 2019
2,128
9,784
Thank God, had me all scared for a moment :)

I do hope you'll be able to find a good place to perfect your 2D art skill to make sexy comics like you wish to.

A proper place to grow and nurture talents is not easy to find but I hope you'll find it.
Connected 's a good game with lots of potential and great art(Lola at the top :D) ; I can't wait to see its future.

And if you're ever interested in showing us some comics of your own, feel free to. A true pervert doesn't say no to fine 2D sexy art.
 

Deleted member 444674

Member
Game Developer
Feb 17, 2018
405
5,475
Great game, 5 star review given. There was just one scene that did not vibe with me.

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and one tiny thing I would not even care if I found out about or maybe I just did not pick up on it.

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Admittedly, I'm not that proud of the first chapter because while the sequence of events was planned, a lot of the dialogue was changed and improvised while Chapter 2 is more focused, so I have to make do with some mistakes for the time being. Thank you for the awesome review and feedback. I hope to keep your enjoyment!
 
D

Deleted member 1931428

Guest
Guest
Have to say I really liked it. The characters so far almost felt alive because of their different personalities. This to me translates into good writing, and not once I felt the need to skip dialogue. There were a few typos here and there, but nothing major. Surely it would be awesome to have this many good looking women in my own life, but at the same time it was not over the top. Cue the different personalities, it was actually possible to see past the outer shell and wanting to know more about them. Not bad for the eyes and ears, either. The models and surroundings looked good, and the background music was not intrusive or repetitive - the chosen tracks worked well for the scenes in which they were triggered. Detected a NYC vibe on the atmosphere and the characters / their dialogue, but if I am reading this correctly that is where the developer is from. All in all - developer, what ever it is you are doing, please keep doing it :)
 

giggitygigity

Active Member
Aug 24, 2019
504
742
I just replayed this for the 5th time in the span of 6 months, then I check planned tags (I never check the tags for this game); Incest and Harem. it's a godsend.
 

Agamennone80

Member
Donor
Jul 19, 2019
308
3,236


Scheduled this post a little earlier today cause I got a wallpaper poll scheduled to post as well, so I want each to get individual attention.

First things first, another month has arrived. We're already in fuckin April people. That's just crazy to me. Thank you all for the March contributions. That was my first successful month. This means a lot to me, truly.

Chapter 3 is coming along. Not at a sprint but at a nice overall pace. On my March 6 Dev Report, I said I had 90 renders completed and a few days after that I mentioned having, what? 5 to 7 animations queued up. Since then I decided to skip past the troublesome posing for a minute and over the last week or so set up another 60 renders and counting, just to give myself a decent sense of progression. Like I said, if it wasn't for the posing issues, I'd be probably 200+ renders deep, but things just didn't work out that way. But now I'm in the middle of posing another sex scene (all of it is technically the same scene, but there is a foreplay half and that's what the first 7 or so animations dealt with.)

To give a little more insight on the posing difficulties I faced over the past few weeks, if you have played a good amount of adult games, you will see that the MC and the girl are almost always the same height. That's just by Daz design. Most characters created by the Daz vendors tend to have their characters stand at similar heights.

I didn't like that, so you notice the MC of my game is pretty tall while the girls are shorter. The tallest girl so far is Michelle and she is at his chin or lips. This will provide some issues when it comes to posing sex scenes in Daz cause you can scale the character to a certain size. That's what's usually recommended for sex poses. You scale their whole bodies. You don't lengthen their limbs cause that will cause issues with the placement of certain body parts. Lengthen the arms and instead of them being on the chest in a certain pose, they're probably up at the head. Issues like that.

Major scaling provides an issue with standing poses though because with the MC scaled almost 20% bigger than Ayana, who is scaled down to 96%, any standing sex pose, the MC's dick will just rest on or faze into her ass. There is no penetration. And to penetrate, I have to bend the MC's dick to basically look down at the floor, which doesn't make sense. But if I bend his knees too much, well, the pose just doesn't look comfortable. This may be a different language for those who aren't familiar with Daz, but I hope I'm making enough sense for you guys to visualize it.

So this is still an issue. As I said, I just skipped ahead for a moment but I ultimately have to get back to this scene. So the only way I can see this scene work is if I scale them closer to a similar size. So please keep in mind, if the MC appears to be shorter in some scenes, or just shorter overall from a certain point in Chapter 3 moving forward, it's to make posing easier. Had I known this before, I wouldn't have made him tower over the other girls, but what you don't know, you don't know. He will still be taller than the girls, but there will be times when I need to scale them differently for posing to be more generous.

That said, the wait shouldn't be that much longer. With this workaround, I can knock it out and then sprint to the finish line. This one is taking longer than I would've liked, but I'll be ready to give a release date in a few weeks. I just need to finish this and hope I don't run into any more shitty obstacles.

Until the next report!
 

supernova25

Newbie
Dec 21, 2017
96
113
i really like this type of games when the mc looks cool and the thinking type like he is so high but most important thing is the dialogues its like watching a tv show i love it keep the good work ChainZero
 

Agamennone80

Member
Donor
Jul 19, 2019
308
3,236

I'm feeling pretty good the past few days. I've been down, but I've had more energetic days than sluggish ones, which is a good thing obviously. And when I feel good, I like to find things to do. Chapter 3 is coming soon, but it will only be the first half. I've been painfully slow with this chapter, but I'm about midway through this last sex scene and I plan to end it there and call it "Ch 3 First Half" or just v0.35. I don't think the length of the half will justify the wait for it, but you can expect it to be the most exciting half. Lots of action! I'm probably overextending myself with the animations and tons of manual posing, but I'll talk about it more when it's ready, but this isn't what I wanted to talk about really.

What I wanted to talk about was my plans for Connected, as in the general flow of the story arcs involved. If you're familiar with anime visual novels, I sorted out Connected to take after that format in a way. To give you a brief rundown of the format, many visual novels are sorted in routes. You have your common route and then multiple character routes.

The common route sort of serves as the introduction to the characters and gives basic info about them leading into each character route. Right now, we are in the common route, but after I finish that we will start individual character routes, where either Ayana, Charlotte or Michelle will take center stage. If you paid attention to Chapter 2, you will find basic info about Ayana and Charlotte's arcs. Michelle is next, but not in this chapter. I'm using this "common route" to highlight the potential conflicts they will face later on.

Ayana, Charlotte and Michelle's arcs are all planned out, it's just a matter of event planning for each chapter and writing the dialogue, but I know how the characters start, what changes they go through and in what ways the characters end. I won't spoil who comes first though, but you'll know it when it happens. I only anticipate the common route to last up to Chapter 4.

To clarify though, no one is exclusive in any character arc. For example, if you are on Ayana's arc, you can interact, flirt, fuck any other character I decide to focus on in that chapter. There are no restrictions. You may also get hints for the next girls' character arc while on Ayana's arc too. This way, I'm not focusing on too many story arcs at once and each girl gets their individual shine and development. So yeah, I'm excited to present all of this to you guys.

Lol, every post I make is an essay. Welp.
 
Last edited:

giggitygigity

Active Member
Aug 24, 2019
504
742


I'm feeling pretty good the past few days. I've been down, but I've had more energetic days than sluggish ones, which is a good thing obviously. And when I feel good, I like to find things to do. Chapter 3 is coming soon, but it will only be the first half. I've been painfully slow with this chapter, but I'm about midway through this last sex scene and I plan to end it there and call it "Ch 3 First Half" or just v0.35. I don't think the length of the half will justify the wait for it, but you can expect it to be the most exciting half. Lots of action! I'm probably overextending myself with the animations and tons of manual posing, but I'll talk about it more when it's ready, but this isn't what I wanted to talk about really.

What I wanted to talk about was my plans for Connected, as in the general flow of the story arcs involved. If you're familiar with anime visual novels, I sorted out Connected to take after that format in a way. To give you a brief rundown of the format, many visual novels are sorted in routes. You have your common route and then multiple character routes.

The common route sort of serves as the introduction to the characters and gives basic info about them leading into each character route. Right now, we are in the common route, but after I finish that we will start individual character routes, where either Ayana, Charlotte or Michelle will take center stage. If you paid attention to Chapter 2, you will find basic info about Ayana and Charlotte's arcs. Michelle is next, but not in this chapter. I'm using this "common route" to highlight the potential conflicts they will face later on.

Ayana, Charlotte and Michelle's arcs are all planned out, it's just a matter of event planning for each chapter and writing the dialogue, but I know how the characters start, what changes they go through and in what ways the characters end. I won't spoil who comes first though, but you'll know it when it happens. I only anticipate the common route to last up to Chapter 4.

To clarify though, no one is exclusive in any character arc. For example, if you are on Ayana's arc, you can interact, flirt, fuck any other character I decide to focus on in that chapter. There are no restrictions. You may also get hints for the next girls' character arc while on Ayana's arc too. This way, I'm not focusing on too many story arcs at once and each girl gets their individual shine and development. So yeah, I'm excited to present all of this to you guys.

Lol, every post I make is an essay. Welp.
God, stop teasing,
 

Uriel ☁

Well-Known Member
Nov 28, 2017
1,464
8,348
First of all, this news makes me happy since I like single girl routes way more than the mixed ones.

Though I'm curious how this news mix with the planned harem content (as of the OP). Will there be an additional harem path other then the single girl ones? :unsure:
 
4.60 star(s) 61 Votes