VN Ren'Py The Mansion of Whispering Desires [Development Thread]

4

465135473216

Newbie
Aug 19, 2024
17
10
13
mibc9394 said:
I was thinking to find a way to have the 3D render to have the look of my painting style, but soon I figured it's something that may take me way too much time to experiment with and now my 3D renders are just for me to block out the composition, so it doesn't really matter what I use for my rendering anymore. My custom rigs are not very easy to work with either
Click to expand...
I really like your artsyle and while i'm not a professional but i may be able to help you make a workflow that will still allow you to have a strong direction while making the whole process easier.

Do you redo everthing and only use the render as an inspiration or do you do an overlay on it ?
What software do you use to paint ?

Edit:
1753290635016.png original 1753290892994.png with color
1753290787529.png edited lighting 1753290648921.png with color
I took an old head (please don't mind the quality of the model i just took a speed sculpt available) that was in my folder and applied a painted light workflow.
 
Last edited:
mibc9394

mibc9394

Member
Feb 10, 2025
137
175
62
465135473216 said:
I really like your artsyle and while i'm not a professional but i may be able to help you make a workflow that will still allow you to have a strong direction while making the whole process easier.

Do you redo everthing and only use the render as an inspiration or do you do an overlay on it ?
What software do you use to paint ?

Edit:
View attachment 5071217 original View attachment 5071243 with color
View attachment 5071227 edited lighting View attachment 5071218 with color
I took an old head (please don't mind the quality of the model i just took a speed sculpt available) that was in my folder and applied a painted light workflow.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice. Now to think about it, I'm indeed somewhat taking the renders as inspirations only. I use AI and a few different models to speed up my painting process so the process is not crazily long. For the actual painting, I'm using Krita for image2image, Photoshop for quick masking and color correction and Clip Studio for hardcore painting.

Painting light onto the model is very good for stylized rendering indeed but that may only work for a specific lighting. If there is a specific lighting I want, painting light onto the model may take longer than painting over the rendered image, so I'm doing a lot of paint over currently.

I got an idea about how to make the renders better to reduce my painting workload and to open the possibility of character animation, but that requires me to rebuild the character models and do more experiments. I've been doing them for the past two weeks, so this week and next week I want to make more progress on the game itself.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 465135473216
4

465135473216

Newbie
Aug 19, 2024
17
10
13
mibc9394 said:
Thanks for the advice. Now to think about it, I'm indeed somewhat taking the renders as inspirations only. I use AI and a few different models to speed up my painting process so the process is not crazily long. For the actual painting, I'm using Krita for image2image, Photoshop for quick masking and color correction and Clip Studio for hardcore painting.

Painting light onto the model is very good for stylized rendering indeed but that may only work for a specific lighting. If there is a specific lighting I want, painting light onto the model may take longer than painting over the rendered image, so I'm doing a lot of paint over currently.

I got an idea about how to make the renders better to reduce my painting workload and to open the possibility of character animation, but that requires me to rebuild the character models and do more experiments. I've been doing them for the past two weeks, so this week and next week I want to make more progress on the game itself.
Click to expand...
Godspeed, feel free to DM me if you want help with blender.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mibc9394
Arnav Dasari

Arnav Dasari

Member
Sep 14, 2020
420
703
258
BTW I've been thinking about ways to promote your game, helping the initial release, but sadly, I couldn't come up with anything. I did put links to here and to your Discord on my own Discord server, but it's not that big, so...

I've used to maintain a similar 'solo-promoting' campaign for the Studio Kuma games, mostly by uploading some pics from the games and the R34 from their artist to several Rule34 sites (after getting the approval of Kuma himself, of course) - but it did little good for them... They had hundreds of supporters IIRC, and a couple thousands of monthly income but it still wasn't enough.

So the question still stands - how can we promote your games and gather some initial backers? The quality speaks for itself (just like it did with Kuma), but if people just won't have a chance to see it...
May be a Pixiv page with WIP shots?
 
SirLecherous

SirLecherous

Member
May 2, 2022
351
757
169
Arnav Dasari said:
BTW I've been thinking about ways to promote your game, helping the initial release, but sadly, I couldn't come up with anything. I did put links to here and to your Discord on my own Discord server, but it's not that big, so...

I've used to maintain a similar 'solo-promoting' campaign for the Studio Kuma games, mostly by uploading some pics from the games and the R34 from their artist to several Rule34 sites (after getting the approval of Kuma himself, of course) - but it did little good for them... They had hundreds of supporters IIRC, and a couple thousands of monthly income but it still wasn't enough.

So the question still stands - how can we promote your games and gather some initial backers? The quality speaks for itself (just like it did with Kuma), but if people just won't have a chance to see it...
May be a Pixiv page with WIP shots?
Click to expand...

I've thought of this for awhile and the answer isn't simple if you are not in a money magnet niche (ntr,futa,furry,shota,loli,incest etc).

Will share aspects of what my approach will be...content marketing seek areas...spam great content every , automate where you can. Do sfw imagery/video in places that only allow it , do nsfw in places which allow it.

Ig/tiktok/Youttube/Fb - Sfw imagery and story about the characters , the mansion and their daily lives simple stills with small camera shakes etc with captioned text and voiceover audio with corresponding music(edited in capcut). Make the renders and queue them in daz then have a n8n flow to create and post the videos. Accounts/pages need to be optimized (NSFW GAME ... link in bio 18+ only etc)

Reddit / Renderhub / X - NSFw content 4k high resolution imagery with tags and in areas your content will be appreciated , idk the women look oriental and also Amish (I mean no disrespect) find those tags/subreddits and blast daily. On X i would create one of the characters and have them post daily as if they were real life characters.The tone and characters also give Silent hill vibes I would lean into that to curate their nsfw audience.I'm not saying to rip off silent hill lol and the X post that will also be automated . Renderhub has a gallery which gets alot of traffic , can you convert them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Research kindle books nsfw books and use ai to make a book/series about the story using elements from the story, elements from the best sellers and elements from what reviewers are says they like about the top products. This will likely be a female centric narrative as most of the readers tend to be female...i guess... (yes kindle pays shit $ per X amount of reads but it hopefully snowballs and also gets the name out while making a bit of change).

Discord - make custom bots to engage members in an engaging way (cryptic for a reason it's 2025 and the era of agentic programing...a custom discord bot acting as a character is definitely possible through ai coding alone). That's an image of me and claude brainstorming how to use discord more efficiently Kimi K2 is a new ai model good for coding and said to be comparable to claude4 ( strong arguments for it being the best coding ai - Claude4) it should be able to handle conversational queries easily .I set the chat parameters to the size of an average tweet , there are other variables but just giving an example.

Screenshot 2025-07-27 123815.png


A more detailed view the 120 tokens in and 120 tokens out is kinda high that's like 180 words...Also there is a caveat of the api provider user agreement and goofy people spamming shit like " yeah because of this flood I will starve but I wanna fuck you in the basement" -_- the model will outright error out not being able to answer nsfw questions. Alternatively a bot could be made which has a list of words that can then trigger saved responses ( i guess)....Also never heard of Command R7B did a google search and they exist. But yeah we can def think outside the Box.Also the bot thing would need a strong disclaimer an unfortunate incident happened this year I think with someone interacting with a game character bot.

Screenshot 2025-07-27 132327.png


Strategic partnerships - this one sticky but I know at least 1 dev who has a decent discord and told me when my game is live he will promote it in his discord. I would go one step further and feature one of his character somehow in my game or feature his game in my game . Reach out to popular nsfw art creators and see how you can leverage their audience, this one is difficult because what can you offer them. But any over average peasant can appease a king/queen (no offense on the peasant thing lol).

What i'm saying is possible and will take work also it's different...I think creators should not only focus on the current nsfw userbases but also to expand the userbase...porn, gaming and anime overlaps and intersect.

And yeah I know the response will be...bruh I'm just a dev...no time for all that...well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i'll be doing all of that and more ^_^, solo as someone with a life and responsibilities. Just queue the content up and automate where possible only place you will have trouble automating is reddit and that's because they drop that Ban hammer quick on bots.
 
Last edited:
Arnav Dasari

Arnav Dasari

Member
Sep 14, 2020
420
703
258
SirLecherous said:
I've thought of this for awhile and the answer isn't simple if you are not in a money magnet niche (ntr,futa,furry,shota,loli,incest etc).

Will share aspects of what my approach will be...content marketing seek areas...spam great content every , automate where you can. Do sfw imagery/video in places that only allow it , do nsfw in places which allow it.

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.
Click to expand...
That's some very ambitious plans, heavily involving AI, which might not be up to everyone's tastes, still, good luck to you in your endeavors. And you are right - along with great visuals, the whole "Japanese ghost story" premise and athmosphere is quite unique with AVNs.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SirLecherous
SirLecherous

SirLecherous

Member
May 2, 2022
351
757
169
Arnav Dasari said:
That's some very ambitious plans, heavily involving AI, which might not be up to everyone's tastes, still, good luck to you in your endeavors. And you are right - along with great visuals, the whole "Japanese ghost story" premise and athmosphere is quite unique with AVNs.
Click to expand...
The current dev approach needs an overhaul, too many games have slow/lackluster releases or end up abandoned either more people work together in a kumbaya like fashion or they tool up with ai...or just continue ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but you gotta admit no one would complain having a 1:1 convo with their fav character in discord...."so Sayuri what do you really think about Akira".

Also mibcool11 plz plz plz do audio : suspensful/chilling music & sound effects ...eleven labs v3 api for either a narrator or voices for each character.
 
mibc9394

mibc9394

Member
Feb 10, 2025
137
175
62
Arnav Dasari said:
BTW I've been thinking about ways to promote your game, helping the initial release, but sadly, I couldn't come up with anything. I did put links to here and to your Discord on my own Discord server, but it's not that big, so...

I've used to maintain a similar 'solo-promoting' campaign for the Studio Kuma games, mostly by uploading some pics from the games and the R34 from their artist to several Rule34 sites (after getting the approval of Kuma himself, of course) - but it did little good for them... They had hundreds of supporters IIRC, and a couple thousands of monthly income but it still wasn't enough.

So the question still stands - how can we promote your games and gather some initial backers? The quality speaks for itself (just like it did with Kuma), but if people just won't have a chance to see it...
May be a Pixiv page with WIP shots?
Click to expand...
Thank you for your support. I've been thinking about how to promote my game as well. Currently, if you can help spread my X account (and the contents of it) and this development thread, I'll be grateful.

It's definitely not nice to not have a page for this game. My goal is to get as many people as possible to the steam page of this game. The page is ready and I can publish it any time, but given the current followers I have on X and the number of members in my discord server, I don't feel like publishing my steam page now will get much attention. On top of that, I'm doing small adjustments on the visual style and that may require me to change the key visuals a bit, so I decided to wait a bit.

The current plan is to upload a v0.1 here and publish the steam page simultaneously, so hopefully the game can get more awareness that can be converted to wishlists. I'm planning to have 50% - 80% of the contents to be released in this forum for free, so after v0.1 there will be v0.2, v0.3 and more. I'm also thinking to have the v0.x to be released on steam as demo as well.

The exact date of v0.1 is still tbd but I think no latter than the end of Aug. A lot of game content is ready already. It's just that I'm trying to have a better presentation and a better structure of the game program for easier updates later (translation, patching etc.)

(my steam page being covered by spider webs)
1753732843618.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: Arnav Dasari
mibc9394

mibc9394

Member
Feb 10, 2025
137
175
62
SirLecherous said:
I've thought of this for awhile and the answer isn't simple if you are not in a money magnet niche (ntr,futa,furry,shota,loli,incest etc).

Will share aspects of what my approach will be...content marketing seek areas...spam great content every , automate where you can. Do sfw imagery/video in places that only allow it , do nsfw in places which allow it.

Ig/tiktok/Youttube/Fb - Sfw imagery and story about the characters , the mansion and their daily lives simple stills with small camera shakes etc with captioned text and voiceover audio with corresponding music(edited in capcut). Make the renders and queue them in daz then have a n8n flow to create and post the videos. Accounts/pages need to be optimized (NSFW GAME ... link in bio 18+ only etc)

Reddit / Renderhub / X - NSFw content 4k high resolution imagery with tags and in areas your content will be appreciated , idk the women look oriental and also Amish (I mean no disrespect) find those tags/subreddits and blast daily. On X i would create one of the characters and have them post daily as if they were real life characters.The tone and characters also give Silent hill vibes I would lean into that to curate their nsfw audience.I'm not saying to rip off silent hill lol and the X post that will also be automated . Renderhub has a gallery which gets alot of traffic , can you convert them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Research kindle books nsfw books and use ai to make a book/series about the story using elements from the story, elements from the best sellers and elements from what reviewers are says they like about the top products. This will likely be a female centric narrative as most of the readers tend to be female...i guess... (yes kindle pays shit $ per X amount of reads but it hopefully snowballs and also gets the name out while making a bit of change).

Discord - make custom bots to engage members in an engaging way (cryptic for a reason it's 2025 and the era of agentic programing...a custom discord bot acting as a character is definitely possible through ai coding alone). That's an image of me and claude brainstorming how to use discord more efficiently Kimi K2 is a new ai model good for coding and said to be comparable to claude4 ( strong arguments for it being the best coding ai - Claude4) it should be able to handle conversational queries easily .I set the chat parameters to the size of an average tweet , there are other variables but just giving an example.

View attachment 5083557


A more detailed view the 120 tokens in and 120 tokens out is kinda high that's like 180 words...Also there is a caveat of the api provider user agreement and goofy people spamming shit like " yeah because of this flood I will starve but I wanna fuck you in the basement" -_- the model will outright error out not being able to answer nsfw questions. Alternatively a bot could be made which has a list of words that can then trigger saved responses ( i guess)....Also never heard of Command R7B did a google search and they exist. But yeah we can def think outside the Box.Also the bot thing would need a strong disclaimer an unfortunate incident happened this year I think with someone interacting with a game character bot.

View attachment 5083665


Strategic partnerships - this one sticky but I know at least 1 dev who has a decent discord and told me when my game is live he will promote it in his discord. I would go one step further and feature one of his character somehow in my game or feature his game in my game . Reach out to popular nsfw art creators and see how you can leverage their audience, this one is difficult because what can you offer them. But any over average peasant can appease a king/queen (no offense on the peasant thing lol).

What i'm saying is possible and will take work also it's different...I think creators should not only focus on the current nsfw userbases but also to expand the userbase...porn, gaming and anime overlaps and intersect.

And yeah I know the response will be...bruh I'm just a dev...no time for all that...well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i'll be doing all of that and more ^_^, solo as someone with a life and responsibilities. Just queue the content up and automate where possible only place you will have trouble automating is reddit and that's because they drop that Ban hammer quick on bots.
Click to expand...
Good advice! On top of that I guess the good old way of preparing a good press kit and sending out to media or content creators is still a legit way for marketing. If you don't 50/50 the revenue, partnering with a publisher should also be a decent way
 
  • Like
Reactions: Arnav Dasari
mibc9394

mibc9394

Member
Feb 10, 2025
137
175
62
SirLecherous said:
The current dev approach needs an overhaul, too many games have slow/lackluster releases or end up abandoned either more people work together in a kumbaya like fashion or they tool up with ai...or just continue ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but you gotta admit no one would complain having a 1:1 convo with their fav character in discord...."so Sayuri what do you really think about Akira".

Also mibcool11 plz plz plz do audio : suspensful/chilling music & sound effects ...eleven labs v3 api for either a narrator or voices for each character.
Click to expand...
If I'm gonna add audio for the dialogues I'd prefer actual human voice. Not a big fan of AI voice over. There will be music and SFX for sure, but I don't think I'm able to hire voice actors for the initial full release as I have zero idea on how to direct them. I probably need to get some experience on that first
 
  • Like
Reactions: Arnav Dasari
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom