also, I kinda get people complaining about new girls taking dev time, even tho Neon argues they're necessary for the world and story, but I'm 100% sure most of the players would prefer to have proper sex scenes with Gabby, Viola, Britt and other maincast girls (esp those without "full" scenes yet) instead of random scene with Dash(?) or Lucius videos. It's not like people expect the whole game world to be limited to LIs, introduce however many characters you feel are needed, just why spend rendering time and your PC lifeblood on scenes with random girls Guy just met (or haven't met at all lmao) instead of making scenes people obviously want?
I absolutely get
why people want more scenes with the main girls. But, I sort of wrote myself into a position where I couldn't quickly/easily get to ero scenes with some of the characters, without it feeling totally unearned. Then, certain events got more involved/required more time, than I really thought they would.
Like, it's worth pointing out my original plan was for the last three chapters to basically be
one chapter: MC wakes up, meets the annoying influencers while running an errand, gives Risa a ride to Lucien's, brings Risa home, visits Alex, encounters Brent, convenes with Nicki and Mason, brings Mason to get glasses, and then goes to get Gabby's dad out of jail.
That all
sounds pretty obtainable, when laid out like that. But, as often happens, once I'm writing a scene I start seeing where else it could go. So, taking Risa home becomes taking Risa to a hotel first, for some different ero options. That then becomes two scenes, because a Good Guy MC probably wouldn't just bring her to a hotel, and hey, why not go ahead and address Pepper's camgirl storyline while I'm there at the diner? Then, it's easy to go down a rabbit hole, and what should have been pretty straightforward, becomes a sprawling series of scenes.
Add in that I
do want to add some fanservice, and even basic scenes tend to expand past their original plans. So, a scene which could have just been MC going to a store, fading to black, and emerging with milk to encounter the influencers becomes.. MC goes to a store, talks to the girl who works there, establishes that he has partial ownership of the business, encounters Brittani and her mom, and has different routes/options to interact with both her, and Isabella.
All that said: I'm going to try to restrain myself a bit, going forward. Before the conclusion of Season 1 next year, Gabby and Brittani will have their big ero scenes. A couple of dangling story threads will be resolved, and the focus will tighten a bit more. We'll see another girl have departed from the dark path. All of that makes things easier for me to move the story along.
I also have a bad habit of over-explaining certain things, or lingering in scenes for too long. I'm going to try to address that moving forward, by using more storytelling shorthand. Now that everyone's relationship is basically set up, that's considerably easier.
Playing this update, I was thinking, "was the animation always this poor?" I couldn't remember. It is disappointing. Dev needs to slow it down or something.
I have no real interest in doing 24 FPS animations right now. They'd take way too much time, for a result which I feel is underwhelming anyway. Once the first season is complete, I'm going to talk to some people about doing some proper animations. Until then, they'd just feel like a distraction. Same deal with music/sex sound effects. It'll be more work to do them poorly, and then go back and re-do them, rather than to just do them right the first time.