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I don't think Serena was meant to be a main LI. She is a side chick just like the MMA ring-girl and Katie (I think that's her name at least from the centre). Main LIs seem to be Vi, Kana, Amrit, Els and Ines.
- Thread starter UncleVT
- Start date
Dessolos
Board Buff
- Jul 25, 2017
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fair enough truthfully alot of the reason I like Kana initially is cause I find her the 2nd most attractive LI in the game to me personally. I do like the direction her story is going as well but it does feel like it's gonna be on slower side of things, so I do agree with you how she comes off as a side girl for right now.
Funny thing is usually the childhood friend thing is one of my favorites as well. Yet in this game the way it's portrayed makes me not interested for whatever reason, maybe cause I see the MC as her protector instead of friend I don't know. But you are right I don't have a preference for virgins I just need to like the character and feel something for them which I do for Amrit and VI. Yet something about their interactions makes it hard for me to see them as something more than friends. I think for Amrit and VI it comes down to the MC in why feel that way for VI I feel like a protector and Amrit part of it is the mentor thing but something else I cant put my finger on. But one thing ive learned alot of times in these games second playthroughs end up changing my mind lol.
You're probably right that she wasn't meant to be a main LI since she doesn't have Love and Friend stats, I just think that she seems more romantically interested in the MC than Jenny, Julia, and Katie do. She seemed like she wanted more, but was willing to settle for just having sex with him. Its entirely possible I was reading too much into that, but that's how it felt to me. Also, the fact that she is in the banner image of the game makes it seem like she's a main LI. I was surprised when Ines was introduced because I expected her to be a side girl since she isn't in the banner.
Jacey.ci
Newbie
- Aug 8, 2021
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Any estimate on the next release? Didn't feel like going through the last 15 pages of commentary to see.
Roldez2893
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MF_DOOM
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Sneak Peek 04/18/2024
5 hours ago
This scene is close to my personal favourite in the update. Top 3 at least. We'll learn some important things about our resident little Frenchie. And I think her fans will be rather pleased.
MF_DOOM
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RoryTate
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The dev's attention to detail is impressive as always. In the first image Ines is playing an actual chord on the guitar (G# minor if anyone is interested). I can't recall seeing a VN with a character playing a guitar – and I've seen many musicians portrayed in a number of games over the years – where the fingering was accurate to real life. It's a minor detail, yes, but those details do add up to make or break immersion in a story, and this world definitely has a great sense of verisimilitude to it because of the effort displayed by its creator.
cxx
Message Maestro
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BaDIK also has guitar scenes, no idea how accurate they are though, not a musician myself
Skep-tiker
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There are plenty of games with accurate fingering if you don't limit yourself on musicians...
ThorinKing
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If the fingering is done properly, the LI will sing.
MF_DOOM
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Check In 04/19/2024
6 hours ago
Because of changes to the actual in game renders for the respective scenes the corresponding title screens needed some changes as well, nothing special or all that different, but it gives you something to look at this week.
As I moved through the code this week a scene stuck out to me as being... not good. Now obviously I don't expect perfection but this scene was visually not up to even my lowest standard. So Tuesday and part of Wednesday I worked on getting it fixed and rendered. It was a pretty short scene, only about 70 renders so I knocked it out quickly. Now we're back to regular schedule.
Final batch of animations trucking along. Hoping it should be essentially finished by early next week.
Testing seems to be going fairly well. I'm sure they don't want to strangle me at all...
From a coding/ pathing perspective this is something of a difficult update for the testers. This update is sort of the ground floor for the rest of the game and as such there are a lot of variables from previous updates that are being consolidated into more manageable paths. As a result there's a lot a variables that need to be accounted for. One path in particular my main tester was happy to point out had 24 potential variants to it. He was thrilled with it, not at all exasperated I assure you. But that's just an example of the sort of consolidation this update needs to achieve to ensure that updates going forward are more streamlined. Not only for gameplay purposes, but for everybody's sanity, especially mine.
Otherwise days are pretty much the same, I get fixes, I make fixes. I have a whole list of renders that need to be fixed and have slowly been chipping away at them as they come in.
Nothing else from a work perspective to discuss. I will make a note though that based on the speed of everything currently, I think it's unlikely we'll make the end of April, wanted to tell you that so you have the info. May is for sure though, you have my promise on that. If for any reason it's not out in May I'll be putting all payments on hold until release. Just giving you that info so you can plan around it as well.
I hope you have all have a lovely weekend, and thank you as always for the support.
Sláinte!
ThorinKing
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Depends. If they lead to 24 significantly different outcomes, then probably yes. If they only lead to a handful of different paths, but have variances in the way you get there (language, someone having issues with you before returning to base course, etc.), then maybe not.
Missing a bit of dialogue is not a huge deal to me; if we can get all major events (and most minor) via a half dozen or so courses with a few secondary variants in those courses, then that doesn't seem too bad. It can account for guys that prefer being the "macho man", the "asshole", the "nice guy", and other variants in their actions. I would suspect that's what this is.
pfft0123
Newbie
- Dec 1, 2022
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Liar! She's just giving us the finger, pretending to play.
But yeah that's a barre on the fourth, so g# indeed. neat!
RoryTate
Member
- May 15, 2018
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Now I can't unsee that in the image, no matter how hard I try.
All my minor chords will have to be major from now on, to avoid flipping someone the bird. You know, after playing the guitar for decades, it's amazing I never realized what was going on so prominently with the middle finger until you just pointed it out.I disagree kinda.
Imo you cant really be a perfectionist being an avn dev, you wont get anything done at all. They have to always find/keep a balance between development speed and the love for the details.
I think its a skill if a dev learns to know which things are unecessary for like 99,9% of the reader and the wont even notice it, while the dev himself notices every little thing if he's a perfectionist, no matter if its about the visual or the text.
I would kinda argue that your example is close to unecessary as a overwhelming majority wont notice it anyway, not like it really matters or made things slower for this one example but in general. Some devs invest coutless weeks into setup of locations which are shown in like 10 renders because of their perfectionism.
RoryTate
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You're not wrong about this. And I generally feel the same way too. Getting bogged down in the minutiae is how many projects fall behind, and it is the unfortunate reason that a lot of them don't even finish. Also, I'm a big fan of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle when coming up with the best solutions to all types of problems. I've seen enough overdesigned messes in my day to want to avoid that path forever.
On the other hand though, Red Letter Media's famous quote of: "You may not have noticed it, but your brain did." does come to mind when deciding on the importance of many visual details in stories. And I do think that the developer for STWA: Unbroken does a great job of using this particular medium of visual novels to convey so much about the characters and the world around them. In the case of the Ines teaser image, the fingers and hands had to be placed somewhere on the fretboard, so why not make sure they make musical sense? Sometimes those details do make a big difference, even though they may seem small.
The best example of this kind of big impact from small details may be in the following image, which is one of my favourite in this game:
View attachment MallorcaWalkElspeth122.webp
This is a game render from Chapter 6, during the nighttime walk with Elspeth before the big fight in Mallorca. Notice in particular the interesting placement of Elspeth's hands, which tells the reader so much about her emotional state without any words needing to be spoken. One of her hands is balled into a fist, telling us that she's ready to fight, while the other hand grips her forearm, appearing to the reader like she's holding herself back, and is keeping strong emotions from showing elsewhere. The majority of the audience likely didn't even register this unassuming posture consciously. I mean, her hands are barely even in the rendered frame! But it's definitely one of those "your brain still noticed it" moments. Even without knowing why, it looks to the viewer like there's something...dangerous, or angry, beneath her calm visage that is center frame, and that draws our attention away from the revealing state of her hands. So when she says: "Seen the worst humanity has to offer, I'd wager." at this point in the scene, it lands so much harder because of the great – but simple! – visual storytelling that the dev uses to accompany that dialog.