After all, if the devs get all the way to the end and feel like they missed some important opportunities, they can always go back and release a 'Director's Cut' patch.
This.
I was about to voice some topics which seem to be related to
TD1900 and
GIL3Ds internal discussions as concerns / criticism of my own for a while now, just never found the time and/or occasion.
Let me be clear on this: i personally don't care how long a single update takes, be it two or four or six months, as long as the content justifies the development time; on the contrary i am rather wary of shorter update circles like one or two months since they often only feature the next "fuck scene of the month with one girl of the cast" made from devs with no idea of how and when to bring their game to an end. Those devs just tend to ride the wave as long as possible, and when this wave dies off, often their games meet a sudden death too.
This is clearly not the case with PC.
However, in my personal life i tend to be extremely cautious to invest effort in projects exceeding a mid-term (let's say over five years) timescale, because, let's be real, life is unpredictable. There may be changes in our private, professional and societal lives which render once highly important issues meaningless. So kudos to everyone who committs themselves to a long term goal or project, because those guys and girls are
bold.
With no intention to lecture both devs on how to structure their workschedule and workload, i want to share my opinions (from a total laymans point of view, mind you) alongside one or two examples which stem back to ch4upd1 and beyond.
IIRC
TD1900 once stated in a post how he usually (correct me if i'm wrong) is ahead
GIL3D writingwise, which is of course on the one hand natural, because he needs to provide his graphical artist with the narrative framework, but on the other hand seems to indicate (without shifting any blame) that the capacity to churn out graphics is the limiting factor in the progression of the game.
It is my understanding (again: correct me if i am wrong) that especially creating animations is a very time-consuming and challenging process.
Now, if your animations are your pride and joy and the very reason to create this game, by all means carry on with them. But if you kinda feel obliged to include animations because it's 2023 and the audience kinda expect them to be in games nowadays, i would consider cutting back on them if this would facilitate to reach your goals regarding the game.
To quote
Takkatakka on this:
Even in scenes in which there aren't actual animations the frames flow into each other during dialogue scenes in such a way that they almost feel animated.
So PC is one of the rare games which don't need to rely on shiny animations, because its storyboarding is just that good.
Without able to proof it with numbers, i do also believe that older chapters didn't contain as much animations as the newer ones, and they were of no worser quality.
To me animations were always just the cherry on top, so if you offer me one more scoop of icecream in my serving instead of that cherry i'd take the former any day.
I already did praise PC as a game with nearly no useless fillers, virtually every line and image serves a purpose inside it's narration with only some minor and one very notable exception: Lucys and Harpers sex scene.
In my understanding it served as a stage to provide a little background to those two side characters and of course to get them some naughty action to cater to the connoisseurs of Lucy and Harper (which at least in Lucy's case is true for me).
However, from my point of view, it was to over 90% the literal definition of fanservice and it still boggles my mind how much effort and time went into a scene which was a) only fully available to those players who chose the 'Voyeur' trait and b) could have been cut down by at least 50% with no harm.
Now this wouldn't have been an issue if i wouldn't had the -perhaps false- impression, our author was cutting corners in that update elsewhere. A suspicion which is at least partly backed up by
TD1900s own confession that there sometimes tends to be an imbalance of content while an update progresses.
I don't envy any developer of a game who would like to include this feature or that content, but has to make the decision to cut off some of the planned stuff (ORS's Ed path comes to mind) and i still hope and trust our creators can include all of their envisioned content, but if you guys would hold a poll i'd rather have a the equivalent of a comic book with a good story than a half baked try to emulate a movie.
TL;DR
If at any time hard choices regarding PC future development have to be made, i -personally- consider cutting back on it's animation load as the least detrimental.
