VN Ren'Py Abandoned Futagenesis Unveiled [v0.06.2] [TessaXYZ]

[Solomon Grundy]

Well you can be rite. But for heavens sake hop you are not!

For the record, I hope I am wrong too. And I will happily admit it if I am, but I have serious doubts at this point, because it simply does not add up.

 

[Interesting_name82]

How's the content so far? Especially for the mom/sis

 

[daisukeee]

View attachment 5107341 View attachment 5107342

It was always in the back of my mind, from the very beginning, that I wanted to redo my logo and the game's title design at some point. So here they are. Far better than my hastily created ones when I released the prologue.

Those were certainly different times. As I said in December, the VN is not abandoned and Chapter 3 development continues to chug along. As to why there's such a delay... there's no short answer. Before I get into details, note that I address some of the comments I've seen here at the bottom of this post. Read that first, if you'd like.

The initial chapters were developed during COVID days. I was working from home and found myself with hours of free time, even during the work week, to dedicate to VN development. But that has changed, and I'm now in a job that demands more from me — far more than in pre-COVID days. I think I estimated each of my previous releases to require roughly 600 hours to produce, give or take a hundred. Chapter 3 will end up probably double that. I've honestly lost track of how much time I've spent on it so far, other than... it's significant.

I also took a full hiatus for about 7 or 8 months last year, for personal reasons that I don't wish to share. All of us have experienced hardships in our lives, so I hope most of you can empathize when I say my priorities had to radically shift for a while. My hardship is still ongoing, but VN development resumed late last year, albeit at a slower pace than before.

Another (more technical) contribution to slower development is the nature of Chapter 3. It takes place almost entirely within the club sequence teased throughout the game so far. It's a custom environment with thousands of objects and many, many manual adjustments to models and textures. It took me a long time to get it ready for rendering, more than I had anticipated. But that's not the main issue.

Before explaining the main issue, I should describe the usual workflow in Daz. Within the environment I've set up, I place and pose my characters and camera in the scene, and then save the scene to a new file. I don't immediately render it, rather opting to set up several scenes to sequentially render the whole batch of saved scenes while I'm at work or sleeping. I believe the most renders I've completed in a day this way was 24, but it's usually 10 or so, or occasionally less during complicated sequences. In a smaller scene with limited characters, this workflow works great.

But here, the main issue is... just how many characters are in this environment. There are ~300 girls in the club. Of those, 40 are actual unique characters (Jenny, the main crew, the girls in the Chapter 2 photos, club staff, etc) and the rest are background NPCs. To ensure the background NPCs don't look too similar, I created an array of character models, outfits, colors, and poses to mix and match from. Those background NPCs were then turned into props and instances, and then grouped by region, since loading a large number of native character models simultaneously takes forever and uses too much memory. One trade-off is that these prop characters take up more storage space than native models (over 100X).

I found that loading a saved scene that includes the environment AND the region's background NPCs AND the foreground characters takes so long (literally hours), and that saving all my scenes for Chapter 3 would be over 1 TB of data (Chapter 2 was "only" 80 GB), that the usual method of queuing renders simply would not work this time. I have to load everything in segments to get it to work (up to an hour to load it all, depending on the scene composition), and then restart the entire process every dozen renders because Daz has a memory leak issue that eventually turns it unusable or outright crashes it. Usually not a problem with sequential renders since it restarts the program for each image, but here it very much so is an obstacle.

Anyways, that's a long-winded way to say that rendering this chapter has been enormously inefficient. I don't have an exact number of images to declare completed, since they're in multiple folders, often require splicing multiple renders (24 GB VRAM still not enough in this sequence; I can't imagine trying to do this with the RTX 3070 that got me through the prologue and Chapter 1), and in multiple stages of post-processing. But it's currently about 700, I think. Chapter 2 was ~950. Chapter 3 will be substantially larger.

How much larger? Not entirely pinned down just yet. I've discussed this before my hiatus, but much of Chapter 3 is a sequence where Jenny freely roams the club in first-person. As in, you — the player — will navigate her around the club, interacting with people and objects as the night progresses. The environment will adjust as the party continues. After this sequence ends, the story collapses back down into the typical linear VN style, and I should hopefully be able to revert to the usual method of batched renders. I'm currently still writing and rendering all the interactions she has in the main sequence, of which there are many. Multiple conversations with everyone, environmental storytelling, and... spicier occurrences. Jenny's in for quite the night.

The most difficult part — namely the images that depict her first-person walk around the club, with all the variations of other characters as they too move around the space — is completed. As is the code that governs that chaos. I've also finished re-rendering some images from previous chapters, like redesigning Aimi and putting a (skimpy) top on Claire during Chapter 1's beach sequence. In hindsight, it didn't make much sense for Claire to be completely topless (among other reasons, she rode her bike through the city to get there). I also want to redo the UI and journal, but that will wait for a future version. Music is partially completed, where each track has a progression similar to how I handled the music in the dressing room scene. Some of the puzzles are done, and thankfully the code for the new puzzle type introduced this chapter has long been implemented (thanks to Deathbetray).

So, in short... things are moving. Slowly, yes, but they're moving. I know it sucks that it's taking this long, but Chapter 3 will be to the standard you've come to expect from me, and I really think you'll enjoy it when it finally releases. No one wants it to come out more than me, I assure you. This chapter closes what I consider the "first act" of Futagenesis Unveiled, and I can't wait to show you what comes after.

With love,
TessaXYZ

P.S. — A few lightning-round comments:

• No, I'm not dead. Nor am I in a war-torn country, as one comment suggested.
• No, my account was not stolen and then used to post a holiday image where the thief somehow perfectly recreated Jenny and used my editing style to trick everyone into thinking I was back.
• Payments to my Patreon are still voluntarily frozen. I don't feel comfortable accepting money for this because I still don't know how long Chapter 3 will take and I can't commit to all the bonus material I promise the various tiers. I'm still using basically all my free time on the VN, though.
• I'm posting this here and not my Patreon because this is likely where my post will get the most attention. And because, again, I've frozen my Patreon activity and don't want to indicate otherwise for now. I trust that my message here will reach everyone who still cares about FgU.
• As to why I'm still disconnected from the community... I've not been on Discord because I had to remove it from my phone. I'm not working from home anymore. I'm surrounded by people, and can't have NSFW content spontaneously appearing in that environment. Why not evenings and weekends? Well... it's a complicated continuation of why I went on my hiatus. There's a lot more to this, but (as I said in December) please know that I have my reasons. I know I need to clean up the Discord, and appoint a moderator to keep it from getting spammed with nonsense. I'll get to it eventually. And hopefully I'll be able to be more engaged with the community in the future.

I believe in you MOTHER TessaXYZ, the game isn’t abandoned is all that matters. i set up a shrine just to worship your game ☝

 

[mnemosynememory]

I implore people to ignore obvious trolls, they want attention and y'all are giving to them, Tessa is back and, shockingly, has a life (which most of these trolls don't have) that's all that matters, she's not charging anyone at the moment and keeping the project alive on the side whenever she can (shows her passion/commitment to the project, I can name tons of other developers on hiatus and still collecting payments), we'll get more when we get more it is what it is, be patient and if anything, spread the word we back

 

[MalLiz]

I implore people to ignore obvious trolls, they want attention and y'all are giving to them, Tessa is back and, shockingly, has a life (which most of these trolls don't have) that's all that matters, she's not charging anyone at the moment and keeping the project alive on the side whenever she can (shows her passion/commitment to the project, I can name tons of other developers on hiatus and still collecting payments), we'll get more when we get more it is what it is, be patient and if anything, spread the word we back

I'm sorry, but what the actual fuck? Since when is healthy skepticism even remotely synonymous with "being an obvious troll?" Do you always believe everything you are told and take literally everything at face value? Because if so, there are several very nice and completely trustworthy Nigerian princes and absurdly wealthy CEOs I'd like to introduce you to...

-Mal

 

[BaeScout83]

I'm sorry, but what the actual fuck? Since when is healthy skepticism even remotely synonymous with "being an obvious troll?" Do you always believe everything you are told and take literally everything at face value? Because if so, there are several very nice and completely trustworthy Nigerian princes and absurdly wealthy CEOs I'd like to introduce you to...

-Mal

Don't you know? Everyone who disagrees with my view, or questions a statement's validity, is an obvious troll.

But anyway… some healthy skepticism is warranted, but someone just flinging shit for the lulz could/should be considered a troll, sure.

If Discord spontaneously popping up with notifications was the issue, she could just disable notifications and/or use the web version. Seems odd that F95 should be safe to use, but Discord wasn't.

 

[Motoko Kusanagi]

"

• I'm posting this here and not my Patreon because this is likely where my post will get the most attention. And because, again, I've frozen my Patreon activity and don't want to indicate otherwise for now. I trust that my message here will reach everyone who still cares about FgU.

"

Once again another post on F95zone only and nowhere else. This doesn't make any sense at all, were still stuck at the trust me bro phase once again.

 

[f95poke]

"

• I'm posting this here and not my Patreon because this is likely where my post will get the most attention. And because, again, I've frozen my Patreon activity and don't want to indicate otherwise for now. I trust that my message here will reach everyone who still cares about FgU.

"

Once again another post on F95zone only and nowhere else. This doesn't make any sense at all, were still stuck at the trust me bro phase once again.

Why would they post anything on patreon if they officially haven't released any content? Do you want them to take in the donations while they still figure out their schedule, which may take weeks or months; they did say they aren't comfortable with taking money for no work. As for, why not make a patreon public announcement, we are back again to the main argument of they aren't ready to fully commit to proper schedule.

It appears they want to get back to this project, and wanted to provide some light that this project is still on their mind and they haven't given up.

As for no discord, they don't have a moderator team and don't want their discord to be spammed with non-sense or be infiltrated by bots due to no moderation.

 

[FrostyFree]

Why would they post anything on patreon if they officially haven't released any content? Do you want them to take in the donations while they still figure out their schedule, which may take weeks or months; they did say they aren't comfortable with taking money for no work. As for, why not make a patreon public announcement, we are back again to the main argument of they aren't ready to fully commit to proper schedule.

It appears they want to get back to this project, and wanted to provide some light that this project is still on their mind and they haven't given up.

As for no discord, they don't have a moderator team and don't want their discord to be spammed with non-sense or be infiltrated by bots due to no moderation.

They said Development resumed last year at a slower pace this isn't just on their mind..and you have no bone of skepticism

 

[Solomon Grundy]

Why would they post anything on patreon if they officially haven't released any content? Do you want them to take in the donations while they still figure out their schedule, which may take weeks or months; they did say they aren't comfortable with taking money for no work. As for, why not make a patreon public announcement, we are back again to the main argument of they aren't ready to fully commit to proper schedule.

It appears they want to get back to this project, and wanted to provide some light that this project is still on their mind and they haven't given up.

As for no discord, they don't have a moderator team and don't want their discord to be spammed with non-sense or be infiltrated by bots due to no moderation.

You are aware that a creator can post to Patreon without resuming payment processing, right? This is a thing that can be done.

Your point about Discord makes zero sense. It's already a spam bot fest over there. If the owner doesn't want that to happen, appoint a mod. It's not that hard.

The "I want so hard to believe" credulousness in this thread is wild.

 

[KyoukoSakura]

No, my account was not stolen and then used to post a holiday image where the thief somehow perfectly recreated Jenny and used my editing style to trick everyone into thinking I was back.

For everyone who still somehow believes the announcement was just fake or whatever.

 

[Kontralta]

Since when is healthy skepticism even remotely synonymous with "being an obvious troll?"

Since when did denying obvious simple things without arguments become healthy skepticism?

 

[Kontralta]

I don't believe this post is real any more than I did last time. I think it's a troll who's enjoying stringing people along.

I will admit I was wrong when Tessa posts on her own frigging Discord or Patreon and not before. Yes, I too read the excuses why that hasn't happened, but I don't believe them.

"I can't post on Discord, because I'm surrounded by people, but I can post on this site that has porn banners because reasons. I'm not putting up a simple message on Patreon that says payments will not be resumed, but I am alive and well. Also because reasons."

Sorry, that just doesn't track.

Bullshit. A troll wouldn't describe the development in such detail, he simply doesn't need to.

 

[TessaXYZ]

Some needless conspiracy thinking in here. For those saying it doesn't fully add up — like I said in both my previous posts, there's another part to it that I don't wish to talk about, so you're not seeing the whole picture. But to (hopefully) put the matter to rest, here's some proof. I've never posted these before.

A render from Chapter 2, along with its unrendered Daz viewport image:


Claire as shown in Chapter 1, along with the recently updated re-rendered version with a bikini top:


Anyways, here's a few more new images from Chapter 3. I still want to keep Jenny's club look a surprise, but here's a tease with her hair down as she gets ready for the party in a flashback sequence at the start of the chapter.


One of the new girls, Vivian.


One of the staff members at the club's reception desk.


Aurelia and Tara by an alley behind the club.


And now to get back to post-processing literally hundreds of first-person club renders.

—TessaXYZ

 

[WzS]

Just remember that the silent majority here is cheering for you, Tessa. I for one couldn't be happier that you're back.

I also hope that loading yourself with so much work, has taught you some novel-making management skills.
Though, it seems we might get something unique in the end and that'll make it all worth the trouble.

 

[StormPaws]

Cheering on Tessa.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

Looking forward to what you will do Tessa. ♥♥♥

 

[NeoEros]

Huh, where are those "healthy skepticism" people now? no conspiracy spamming anymore?
Anyway, glad you're back Tessa! As a lover of futa-protagonist AVNs, your game holds a special place in my heart. I'm so looking forward to seeing new chapters coming!

 

[RajniCD sis]

Good luck

 

[lalarpzd]

nice to hear the dev is back. hope the original feel and style wont change