Common sense should tell you there are NO porn games (inc. SS) with a significant portion of players that:
- Play them for their gameplay.
- Or enjoy when a new release imposes replaying of all past content without an ability to:
- Fly over and only stop at what's new (like you can with CTRL in Ren'Py)
- or skip ahead to see only all new content.
If you disagree then you are in a safely ignorable minority, like the guys who read Playboy for the articles.
The rest of us play porn games just to jerk off to new stuff and very rarely do it by replaying old stuff. We don't rerererererereplay porn games for sport like they're Counter-Strike.
Considering the impact of above realities on dev priorities, remaking past content is an extreme luxury that devs should grant themselves only under extreme circumstances. To be clear, this luxury includes: Reworking the visuals (redrawing 2D games, remodelling & rerendering 3D games) and reworking the gameplay.
There are good faith ways to achieve any adjustment of past content that you might ever need:
- Split your game into a new executable that starts a new chapter every few years, when enough content piled up that you're bumping into your [team's] current limits of handling everything in the same executable.
- When the time comes for a new executable you are again the Master of the Universe. You can redo gameplay however you want, you can change whatever technical aspect you want (e.g. native resolution or aspect ratio), you can start with a new "engine", you are in a green field at a new technical start. All you need is a way to import the major state variables that define what happened so far. If you were not wise enough to define this state in the old game (to be able to import it automagically) you can literally just ask the user what his major choices were. For porn games this is REALLY simple. Everything can be described in 10-30 variables (MAX) and next time you'll know to track variables like these and import them automatically.
- This shows respect for your player's time and a proper focus on new content and a tight chase of stories that need telling. It's the opposite of charging for redoing garbage that nobody asked for.
- DmD did all of the above well if you want an example.
- BuT WHat iF I nEEd tO reDDDOOOOOO IAM SUCH fULL of vISIon 4 muh poRN GAYEEEMS!11!!
- You can do it in good faith. Now that you isolated a chunk of past content you have safe options depending on your finances:
- You can assign a chunk of your time to literally rework whatever you want.
- Frankly, I don't think any porn game dev has enough time for this path except when talking about the simplest projects. If it took you 2 years to do the chunk in normal time, it'll take you just as much if not more to redo it according to your latest ideas as a side-project (depends how wild your latest ideas are) and you will VERY likely NOT see the ROI in that. There are just not enough erections demanding such an effort.
- You can hire third parties exclusively to rework said chunk because their target is very clear and requires minimal or no creativity, it only requires raw, repetitive, well defined work.
- This is VERY possible when you make millions of $ like SS did.
- Yes, this was also possible for SS despite its 2D artwork. Competent devs can redo your codebase VERY quickly when they have a clear technical target to hit and all your artwork can be technically upscaled. When the technical upgrade of your code base is done you're left with just a bunch of images that need retouching and filling up to look good at the new resolution and/or aspect ratio, something that DC always claimed it's NOT a problem because he always alleged he is years ahead in drawing vs. the imaginary coders he blames for the disaster.
- Most importantly, you can track the ROI for whatever option you choose and tune your investment accordingly without pissing off anyone.
Time and time again we've seen projects fail because they went the REMAKE road. It's an extremely seductive and dangerous road.
When you burn to do new stuff that impacts old content you need to do it as described or just move on to the next project, something that most sane people feel a natural need to do every few years to escape the unavoidable swamp any long stretch of work will lead you into.