Ren'Py Contagion Crisis [Development Thread]

[WeLoveMonsters]

Welcome to the Contagion Crisis Development Thread
This thread is intended to share with you all of the development of our first adult VN. I'm excited to share what we have in store for you.

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Planned Tags:
3dcg, Animated, Female protagonists, Masturbation, Corruption, Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex, Anal Sex, Horror, Kinetic Novel, Monsters, Rape, Dystopian setting, Group sex, Futa, Creampie

Potential Tags:
Incest, Exhibitionism, Voyeurism, Pregnancy, BDSM

Definitely not:
Vore, Bad End

Influences:
Now and then, Kindred: the Redburns, Resident Evil, Parasite Eve, Captivity, The Pilgrimage, Alien Quest: Eve

Story Overview:
Two sisters, Sarah and Ava, are caught in the middle of an epidemic that turns people into lust filled monsters. The pair will traverse the urban city while attempting to avoid getting caught by those contagious with the plague. They will encounter infected and mutated monsters along their perilous journey who are eager to spread that which controls them. Once they reach the safe zone, they will unravel the mystery of the cause of the outbreak and fight against those that have done them wrong. The story will explore Sarah and Ava's relationship as family. The trial ahead will test their bond: either bringing them closer together or breaking them apart.

Gameplay:
Given this is our first attempt at making a game, we've decided that it will be a kinetic novel. Our goal is to focus on high-quality story telling + awesome renders and animation. There will no "bad end" mechanics. The game is written so that their encounters with the various infected monsters are both tantalizing and explained in a fun narrative way.

Current Plans:
03-18-24 update: We've completed our demos and solicited community feedback for which route we should go: Daz or HS2. The voting has heavily favored the HS2 version. We have since stopped Daz production and are moving full steam ahead, building the final game in HS2.

Our plan is to release the first chapter in the next 4-6 weeks at the latest.

Studio Goals:
Our goal for the studio is to build games like this one where the audience enjoys monster + human content.


HS2 Teaser Renders:

 

[Saint Blackmoor]

Looks very good.
I like the Daz better. I look forward to seeing the progression of the game.

It doesn't sound like it from your post, but if you need help with proofreading, hit me up.
https://f95zone.to/threads/experienced-proofreader-i-can-help-you-with-your-game.155643/

I have experience, and you can expect strict confidentiality.
I wish you much success.

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

Looks very good.
I like the Daz better. I look forward to seeing the progression of the game.

It doesn't sound like it from your post, but if you need help with proofreading, hit me up.
https://f95zone.to/threads/experienced-proofreader-i-can-help-you-with-your-game.155643/

I have experience, and you can expect strict confidentiality.
I wish you much success.

Awesome, thank you for the input! I will definitely let you know!

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

On the Daz front we've been making some good progress. We spent the day yesterday having me do the renders instead of the artist. It cut down our render time from 30 minutes to 2. So we're hoping going forward, everything will be much faster.

 

[Penumbral Evanescence]

On the Daz front we've been making some good progress. We spent the day yesterday having me do the renders instead of the artist. It cut down our render time from 30 minutes to 2. So we're hoping going forward, everything will be much faster.

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Good looking DAZ renders and the plot seems quite intriguing. I, too, personally prefer the DAZ renders. Can definitely see the RE influences and whatnot in your game.

we've decided that it will be a kinetic novel

Makes sense if this is your early foray into adult game programming. Having many character routes can oftentimes increase the complexity of scripting more events and evaluation of different decision trees based on the various routes that you can program into the game...

Excited to see the sister dynamics in the game and the debauchery they will get up to with the infected...

Bookmarked this page for future reference. Looking forward to keeping tabs on this one! Best of luck with your ongoing project.

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

Good looking DAZ renders and the plot seems quite intriguing. I, too, personally prefer the DAZ renders. Can definitely see the RE influences and whatnot in your game.

Makes sense if this is your early foray into adult game programming. Having many character routes can oftentimes increase the complexity of scripting more events and evaluation of different decision trees based on the various routes that you can program into the game...

Excited to see the sister dynamics in the game and the debauchery they will get up to with the infected...

Bookmarked this page for future reference. Looking forward to keeping tabs on this one! Best of luck with your ongoing project.

Thank you for the feedback! And yeah, that's kind of what I decided. I'm pretty familiar with python coming from a scripting background, but I haven't used it in a game aspect with renpy. I want to keep everything simple for this game and then can expand the gameplay aspects in future projects. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, so to speak. And glad to hear it! Thank you for the kind words

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

With the progress we're making with the change in work, we're looking like we'll have all the renders complete for the daz demo by next week. We may be exploring adding animation, which may push things back a bit, but we'll have to see how that goes. Since I'm paying everyone, I need to make sure to keep costs minimal until we can see how interested the community is in these kinds of stories.

As I get more familiar with Daz, I'm learning things every day. I wanted it so that Tiffany (the store clerk) shows a slow progression of the infection after her meet with the guys that were already infected. This is important because the infection plays its own role in the story. After a few hours of google-fu learned how to use the LIE tool in Daz to combine two different materials. I combined Tiffany's base skin with the infection skin we use for the zombies. This has worked out pretty well, I think. We also increased the darkness around the eyes over some scenes. Combing both hopefully shows the player of Tiffany's unfortunate/fortunate turn. Hopefully, you can see the infection progression become more prominent throughout these images.

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

We made some good progress on both the Daz and HS2 side this weekend which you can see below. As we add more assets to daz, the load times are pretty atrocious, typically taking longer than the rendering themselves. I'm currently investigating how to fix that. I've read some tutorials about making individual content folders only for what you need so that it's not having to search through everything once you go to load a scene. That's annoying, but it is what it is I guess.

We should have all the individual renders done for the Daz demo sometime this week. I'd imagine HS2 is probably going to take another two or so. My plan is to start coding both demos this week and start loading some images in. This is going to be a kinetic novel so just for the demo it should go by pretty quick since the script is already done.

As we get close to the finish line, I'm already doing comparisons between the two products.

Daz
Pros:

• Good system with artist.
• Because I'm assisting with the renders, it's making things faster.
• Great number of assets are available to use in the story.

Cons

• No easy way to do animation - Preset animations still require rigging of organs and such.
• I don't feel competent nor have the time to do animations myself. Meaning a higher cost if I want to hire someone.
• Load times for scenes suck even on an NVME SSD.

HS2
Pros:

• Good system with artist.
• Renders and animations in one package which makes things more affordable.

Cons:

• Assets are more limited, which strains creativity
• Based on feedback so far, it seems people prefer the look of Daz over HS2. Does that imply a greater audience? Something to consider.

HS2




Daz:

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

The initial renders for the daz demo are done. We're now working on animations. We may go back and tweak things as time goes on, but we're pretty close. My plan is to begin building that demo in renpy this weekend.

HS2 is continuing to make some progress as well. The animations in that demo are going to be *chef's kiss* I think that's what's really going to set both demos apart.

I also completed a simple title image which will flash between the end of the intro and the start of chapter 1. I wanted it to reflect the RE series which this work is heavily influenced by.

We're sitting at just shy of 200 renders for the demo on the daz side, not including the 3-4 lewd animations. I'd estimate it's going to be roughly the same for HS2 as well. I'm not sure how typical that is, but I hope it gives a solid taste of what's to cum











HS2 Animation:

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[WeLoveMonsters]

With the intro finished, we're now introducing our main characters. Sarah and Ava.

Sarah is former military who works security at Neurodyn Pharmaceuticals after. She's no nonsense, by the book, and stoic. She enjoys exercising, reading, and working. Ava is the younger sister of Sarah. She's a college dropout who currently works as a barista at the nearby coffee shop. She's spends most of her time playing video games, listening to music, and teasing Sarah.

Here are some outfit samples of them both. Let us know which ones you like for each character.

Sarah




Ava

 

[deadbeatval]

Daz
Pros:

• Good system with artist.
• Because I'm assisting with the renders, it's making things faster.
• Great number of assets are available to use in the story.

Cons

• No easy way to do animation - Preset animations still require rigging of organs and such.
• I don't feel competent nor have the time to do animations myself. Meaning a higher cost if I want to hire someone.
• Load times for scenes suck even on an NVME SSD.

The Daz benefits tend to go beyond the rendering aspects, though. You're allowed to sell on Steam if you fall under their rules (e.g. no underage), and it tends to have more staying power than Illusion games do. There's a reason why it's by and large more popular among devs with the proper hardware to use it.

 

[metalblinga]

I really like this render

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

The Daz benefits tend to go beyond the rendering aspects, though. You're allowed to sell on Steam if you fall under their rules (e.g. no underage), and it tends to have more staying power than Illusion games do. There's a reason why it's by and large more popular among devs with the proper hardware to use it.

Very true. But I took that into consideration beforehand. I may be wrong, but I don't think our game would be allowed to sell on steam. Do they allow r#@e or dubcon?

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

I really like this render

It's creepy isn't it,

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

While I wait on the rest of the art, I've been spending a lot of time on the little things like splash art, ui, age verification, etc. It's funny how small things can add up when it comes to time sinks.

My goal immediately is to look into sound. I have some horror ambience from one of the members here that's working well. But having some nice sound effects to play at critical moments would be good. It's odd for me since I don't typically play VN's with audio on. It's probably sacrilegious to say, but it's the truth. So going through some games with audio turned on has been interesting to see what most games do.

But every day we get closer and closer to the initial demo release. I'm excited to see what everyone thinks about the Daz version vs the HS2 version.





HS2 Progress

 

[kidicarus]

I'm excited to see what everyone thinks about the Daz version vs the HS2 version.

The DAZ images are way fuckin better. HS stuff always looks so dead inside.

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

The DAZ images are way fuckin better. HS stuff always looks so dead inside.

Thank you for the feedback!

 

[WeLoveMonsters]

The HS2 artist finished the demo/intro this week. I've finished putting them into the game and doing my first pass of edits. I'll need to do the same thing on the Daz side. As a reminder, both demos are using different artists I am working with. They both did a phenomenal job.

In my review of the two versions the following is very apparent:

The current daz edition is lacking in the number of animations. This is mainly because HS2 comes with pre-built stuff that's easily to incorporate. Whereas the Daz version requires animation packs or hand key framing. Personally, right now, I don't think it would be a fair comparison between the two if I were to release them. The daz version also requires post-processing work for things like gunshots, bullet wounds, splatters, etc. This obviously slows the process down and adds even more expense.

But since all the feedback has leaned toward daz being favored, I'm hoping it will all be worth it. As we wait for the post-processing to get done, I'm working on adding ambient music and sound clips for various scenes. The plan is to also have all of the animations SFX'd as well. So depending on how all that works out, we may need more time before we can release the demo. But I'd rather release a solid demo which shows our vision rather than something half-assed. Each day brings a new win and a little progress which makes this whole process fun.

Some ending renders for HS2 demo:

 

[melwen]

As a Resident Evil fan I'm looking forward to play this game. DAZ models looks great IMO. Good luck!

 

[deadbeatval]

As a Resident Evil fan I'm looking forward to play this game. DAZ models looks great IMO. Good luck!

If you give players a choice, it's always going to be Daz. It's just far easier (and less tedious, at times) to look at for longer periods of time.