It is Sunday, typically for those who work a standard 9-5 schedule, this is a day of rest. For me, however, it's an excellent opportunity to work on my game! That, combined with Monday being free from work, allows me to dive right into v0.40.
On Saturday, I worked up until around 3 PM before heading home and began working on the C&C (Choices & Consequences) prologue in preparation for upcoming events. As a result of my efforts, the prologue can end a bit differently, differing from previous experience. The changes to the prologue will be included with v0.40 release, as I believe it will offer a more cohesive experience when paired with new events rather than being presented in a standalone format.
With most of the C&C prologue now complete, I can focus on the exciting aspect of development: writing the actual script for several upcoming "events" and shooting scenes if necessary. Though the game has already been designed up to its conclusion with various paths and endings, implementation and creation of believable dialogues while considering previous choices is actual body of my work now.
Sometimes when you write, you realize quickly that a prepared rough design needs to be revised, and while an event can be either revised, changed, or outright scrapped. Something like this happened to Event 017, which doesn't exist in the prologue for that reason. That event was supposed to be what Mistress did in Event 014 (first scene with Mistress at night). I quickly realized that in order to establish better differences in culture between Mistress and Jack (player), it was necessary to move toward such a scene more abruptly, rather than through a gradual step. The original Event 014 was supposed to hint at those differences and it got cut.
SPOLER ALERT: Watch it after playing prologue.
You must be registered to see the links
for E022 looks like in RenPy script.
SPOILER ALERT END.
As I mentioned in my previous post, v0.40 should contain a few scenes. However, they are mostly connected into something I call
"Crisis." Crisis is essentially a chain of closely related events that takes choices made before the crisis into account, forces you to choose during the crisis as well, and results in consequences based on those choices. These crisis events often lead to changes in character attitudes towards other characters, which then serve as a foundation for what comes next.
Now how much time does it take? From my experience, if there are no issues with rough design, it takes approximately 4-6 hours to write, create character emotions, implement choices and alternative outcomes, and determine whether some parts need custom scenes for memorable moments.
What if something requires a custom scene? Then, I need to do it in VAM obviously. Thankfully, VAM is an easy tool to work with and its physics-based engine makes it easy to set up scenes. On the other hand, lighting can sometimes be challenging; without proper lighting, some scenes can look outright bad. It usually takes about an hour to a few hours depending on the number of scenes to render or if they are disconnected or connected. Animation work is more difficult but, thanks to VR and using my hands instead of a mouse for key animation, it's also pretty easy for someone like me to satisfy my tastes as well as yours (I hope).
Now, when it comes to the release of v0.40, a tricky part here is C&C as players can make several important choices and set up character relations between characters. Additionally, a few events combined into a crisis must showcase this. In v0.40, there should be around 4-5 new events, which will be approximately 1/4 the length of the prologue (which has 20 events). However, due to the degree of branching, it can be played faster or longer.
TLDR:
- increased amount of C&C in prologue which will be part of v0.40
- working currently on scripts for few new events, v0.40 should come with 4-5 new events.
- ETA for v0.40 is early march, hopefully no slip to middle of march.