- Jun 17, 2017
- 5,705
- 28,884
Sooo, I've been working on a game. We've all heard that before, but really, I'm working on a game!
Here's where I'm at with things at the moment. I'm fairly well along, but my laptop is sloooooooow when doing renders. I decided to go the Daz route, and am proficient enough with Daz to do what I need to do. However, as my laptop is slow (no 'cuda cores for Iray, and I like Iray), it takes a while for each render. It'll be a while longer before I buy a decent rendering machine. While I've taken a break for a week from rendering, I'll hop back on the render schedule soon. But, yeah, it'll be a while before I have enough renders for the release I have in mind. It'll be RenPy based, btw.
Plus, I like to do a few 'fun' renders on the side every so often, to help keep me from burning out on game development and to help improve my skills a bit.
I decided NOT to go the Patreon route, as the financial incentive (i.e. generating funds) isn't something I'm worried about, plus I don't want to have to worry about dragging people along, and have them grumbling about the lack of progress.
I did start a thread for the game on
The reason for not just cranking out a bunch of basic renders and popping out the game as fast as I could is that, once I acquired a good feel for what I could do in Daz, I decided that simply 'pasting' characters on top of 'stock' backgrounds wasn't going to work in a lot of cases for the artistic vision for the game that I've since developed. Some may call that feature creep, but in my case, I like seeing my gals in the hot tub, not pasted on top of it...
I designed my game interface a few months ago, and indeed have some 'operational' code ready to go for my artwork, along with a fair amount of story, but of course the story has evolved a bit in the last few months, plus I need to produce a fair amount of artwork for the multiple gals involved in the storyline.
The reason I'm confident about the game structure for my game ties in with Lab Rats. In the earlier days of that game, a few things in LR were frustrating me a bit, so like most modders I tweaked a few things to taste, and then began to add new/add to scenes. Pretty soon I had added over 10,000 lines of code on top of Vren's 15,000 (at that time)... just for a personal mod. At that time, Vren had a disclaimer in his code noting that any personal mods should NOT be shared. He's since changed his stance and now encourages those, but I've moved on and the LR game has had five new version releases/significant changes since then, so even if I were to release it as a mod, it'd be very outdated at this point.
This did help me become very comfortable with working in RenPy, so it was an awesome way to learn how to do things like animation and working with a farily complex variable structure.
Anyways, in the process of working on my personal LR mod, I created a new stat system with my Lab Rats mod in mind, which isn't an element of that game (Vren doesn't use 'traditional' stats in his game). The stat structure which I came up with in that context, along with a few other 'new' conventions' which I came up with for some interesting elements, I've since ported over to my own design (without borrowing any of Vren's code of course, I don't have any need for any of Vren's code in my design), and I'd like to showcase it in my own game first, before releasing an updated Lab Rats personal mod. Besides, at this point, I'm focused on my own thing, so the LR mod can wait...
My storyline, while not entirely unique, really doesn't have a lot in common with the Lab Rats game, other than the fact that multiple gals are involved, and a few of them are at the same college you go to. It has some 'generic similarities' to a number of other games here, in that a mom and sis are part of the 'cast of characters'. And it'll be more of a 'sandbox' style story, where you have multiple options to pursue/aren't locked into a single storyline. A lot of the storyline will take place away from the college campus in my story.
I know better than to make any bold claims about how cool the game is going to be, or how awesome the art is going to be. There are waaaay better artists than me, but IMHO my skills are sufficient to tell the story I have in mind. Doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.
But enough about that. I love getting feedback, but to be honest the game I'm working on is still months away from what I would consider a solid first release (tech demos are all fine and good, but I'm not going to do that). I want to share, but don't want to get people's expectations up unnecessarily. And we've all seen too many games die in development...
Yes, technically I'm sharing a bit with this thread, but mainly I'm just giving background for this question:
For adult games like those featured on this forum, do you find extended development threads annoying, or do you enjoy following them (as long as they eventually get released)?
Thoughts?
Here's where I'm at with things at the moment. I'm fairly well along, but my laptop is sloooooooow when doing renders. I decided to go the Daz route, and am proficient enough with Daz to do what I need to do. However, as my laptop is slow (no 'cuda cores for Iray, and I like Iray), it takes a while for each render. It'll be a while longer before I buy a decent rendering machine. While I've taken a break for a week from rendering, I'll hop back on the render schedule soon. But, yeah, it'll be a while before I have enough renders for the release I have in mind. It'll be RenPy based, btw.
Plus, I like to do a few 'fun' renders on the side every so often, to help keep me from burning out on game development and to help improve my skills a bit.
I decided NOT to go the Patreon route, as the financial incentive (i.e. generating funds) isn't something I'm worried about, plus I don't want to have to worry about dragging people along, and have them grumbling about the lack of progress.
I did start a thread for the game on
You must be registered to see the links
, but I have since let that thread go dormant, because I felt like I was stringing people along unnecessarily. I did get some good feedback on a few of my character designs though at least. Plus what I originally had planned to have completed in a couple of months has turned into a number of months...The reason for not just cranking out a bunch of basic renders and popping out the game as fast as I could is that, once I acquired a good feel for what I could do in Daz, I decided that simply 'pasting' characters on top of 'stock' backgrounds wasn't going to work in a lot of cases for the artistic vision for the game that I've since developed. Some may call that feature creep, but in my case, I like seeing my gals in the hot tub, not pasted on top of it...
I designed my game interface a few months ago, and indeed have some 'operational' code ready to go for my artwork, along with a fair amount of story, but of course the story has evolved a bit in the last few months, plus I need to produce a fair amount of artwork for the multiple gals involved in the storyline.
The reason I'm confident about the game structure for my game ties in with Lab Rats. In the earlier days of that game, a few things in LR were frustrating me a bit, so like most modders I tweaked a few things to taste, and then began to add new/add to scenes. Pretty soon I had added over 10,000 lines of code on top of Vren's 15,000 (at that time)... just for a personal mod. At that time, Vren had a disclaimer in his code noting that any personal mods should NOT be shared. He's since changed his stance and now encourages those, but I've moved on and the LR game has had five new version releases/significant changes since then, so even if I were to release it as a mod, it'd be very outdated at this point.
This did help me become very comfortable with working in RenPy, so it was an awesome way to learn how to do things like animation and working with a farily complex variable structure.
Anyways, in the process of working on my personal LR mod, I created a new stat system with my Lab Rats mod in mind, which isn't an element of that game (Vren doesn't use 'traditional' stats in his game). The stat structure which I came up with in that context, along with a few other 'new' conventions' which I came up with for some interesting elements, I've since ported over to my own design (without borrowing any of Vren's code of course, I don't have any need for any of Vren's code in my design), and I'd like to showcase it in my own game first, before releasing an updated Lab Rats personal mod. Besides, at this point, I'm focused on my own thing, so the LR mod can wait...
My storyline, while not entirely unique, really doesn't have a lot in common with the Lab Rats game, other than the fact that multiple gals are involved, and a few of them are at the same college you go to. It has some 'generic similarities' to a number of other games here, in that a mom and sis are part of the 'cast of characters'. And it'll be more of a 'sandbox' style story, where you have multiple options to pursue/aren't locked into a single storyline. A lot of the storyline will take place away from the college campus in my story.
I know better than to make any bold claims about how cool the game is going to be, or how awesome the art is going to be. There are waaaay better artists than me, but IMHO my skills are sufficient to tell the story I have in mind. Doesn't need to be any more complicated than that.
But enough about that. I love getting feedback, but to be honest the game I'm working on is still months away from what I would consider a solid first release (tech demos are all fine and good, but I'm not going to do that). I want to share, but don't want to get people's expectations up unnecessarily. And we've all seen too many games die in development...
Yes, technically I'm sharing a bit with this thread, but mainly I'm just giving background for this question:
For adult games like those featured on this forum, do you find extended development threads annoying, or do you enjoy following them (as long as they eventually get released)?
Thoughts?
