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Hello everyone, as always, let me start off by thanking everybody that supported me during Chapter 5 and a welcome and thank you to anyone new that sees this, I’m always glad that you all took the time to play through this visual novel. I always appreciate that.
Now this Chapter is the most pivotal one for me so far. Not because of the storyline content or anything, but because it will implement some RPG and other programming elements that I have mentioned working on before. In other words, it should be a test of my skills, and I hope I pass it. Because then, I can do a lot more and focus on more interactivity; utilising stats, randomness, menu choices to an even greater extent. Though for an erotic AVN or game, I understand there is a nice balance between interactivity and sitting back to enjoy the content that I should aim for. Too much control and player input would keep your hands full too much of the time – "y’all know what I’m sayin’ G?" But I’m not worried about anything like that with simple clicks. Later on down the line, I might mess around with other types of inputs beyond clicking (not in CotN though) and I can consider this a reminder that the point of adult games is to have everything in it, serve the erotic nature of it, ultimately.
Anyway, if that was a bit vague, let me state the things I would like to get done over this Chapter more clearly, there is: a tutorial fight, your first regular fight, a ‘horniness’ game and a drinking game all in this chapter, if I have my way. I’ve already got the renders done for the tutorial fight and first regular fight, I think.
I say I think, because it is harder to do renders for something that is partially non-linear like this; the beginning and end is easy to plan out, but I’ll have to make sure I have everything I want once I've made the programming fit in with the renders. In a earlier post a few months back when I mentioned these fights, I said they were non-sexual so you would be able to skip them if you lost, or lost 3 times or something, but I did manage to make the first proper fight titillating, with stuff going on around the sidelines with a buxom lady. This will also lead to a potential distraction mechanic and/or ogling said buxom lady to get a boost, again, if I can make it so. I wasn’t planning on this mechanic being present until the last fight I had planned out, but if I can implement now, I will. I’ve already got some bars ready and the stats linked to them (‘health’ ‘energy’ ‘lust’), moves, crits etc. and have that working correctly, but with a random side image I used to just check things. I need to test it with the proper images that are going to be in CotN to confirm it fully works. Don’t worry if I’m not being super clear sounding here, it’s some simple RPG mechanics that I’m going to implement so I can test myself and be a better programmer. It’s not particularly complicated or anything, it will be pretty simple.
Yeah, also Provisions will finally have a use, I added that stat at the start of this just because it seemed the thing to do because other AVN’s and such had more stats than I did, but I didn’t really want to tie it to failure or anything like that. I even thought about having the choice to bait women into naughty stuff with food and drink, but, that needlessly overcomplicated things in a way I didn’t want to deal with and had no impetus for making interesting or fun anyway. So that stat just existed, floating through the programming void I had made. Until now, I’ve already set everyone’s Provisions stat to the new number during Ch.5, and it will be now used for fights (and potentially the lust ‘battles’) for recovering health or energy. As I get further and further into this Chapter I’ll explain more as it comes, but for now I’m giving you the basics.
So, by this Chapter’s end, I hope to have improved my programming skill further, that’s the big aim with the completion of it anyway. I’ve improved my programming here and there with more menu choices and implementing basic stat requirements, but this will be the biggest jump yet, and is my main focus for this Chapter. It's worked out nicely, because I have already improved the renders themselves, post-processing, lighting etc. so now is a good time to get better with the coding itself. I think that is the most important thing for me to do, if I’m successful it will set me up nicely for the future, so I hope I am.
Anyway, other than the programming plans for this chapter, I have already got the first part of the first scene rendered for Chapter 6. A quick and awkward exchange between Celeste and Kyra, then a conversation between Valtier and Mira which I will have done as of this day. They act as some set-up scenes and dialogue for this Chapter and beyond. After this it’ll be off to the farm and then while Valtier is reminiscing, this is where I plan to have the RPG tutorial. Within a memory of an unarmed fight during the war, hence, this will be an unlosable fight for you, as it has already happened.
In any case, I am going to be busy working for this one. I hope there are no severe monkey wrenches being flung into the works while I do this stuff, and can complete it all in a timely manner. So far, so good though I will say, for the preliminary testing I’ve done.