Hey guys, so just to clear a few things up.
Background
I'm doing this project for me. While I really enjoy a good deal of the projects here on F95, I wanted something different.
I downloaded by first VN from Itch 18 months ago (shout out to
Midnight Ride) and after tearing it apart and trying to find ways to
customize it, I eventually found that Ren'py games were much easier to edit.
I started following projects on Patreon, like
The Awakening and discovered that a lot of the 3D games were using tools like Poser and Daz Studios. I ended up buying a copy of Poser while also toying around with Daz, and found that I didn't like the rendering performance or output from Poser. I ended up spending hundreds of dollars ($952.10 USD so far) on Daz assets and models, clothing packs, etc, orignally with the intent of just making images and scenes for myself.
I spent a lot of time hacking in
Love & Sex: Second Base, adding custom scenes with existing assets, changing all of the character names, changing dialogue (and trying to fix the unfinished female MC path) and essentially
cheating to reach the content since I wasn't really into spending hours and going through walkthroughs just to reach the good stuff and get my fap on. While there's a lot of fantastic sandbox games, like
Summertime Saga, the idea of 'waiting for a week' for an event, or making a choice which ends up skipping content or limiting the content I can see, doesn't really appeal to me.
The Story
I did not write the story. The About page in the app has the original author and a link to the story as it was originally published.
I'm a programmer/devops engineer by day, not a writer. The Other Woman has the codename
D14, because it's the 14th project I've started on. D13 was looking good but the characters had no
depth. I really enjoyed s_katie's story and wanted to try converting it into VN format, so the end result is
my interpretation of her story. I did reach out to the original author, but the story was written back in 2014 and I didn't get a response, so I'm treating it like a 'reverse-fanfiction'.
The Project
The story is kinetic, and made up of 13 Chapters. So far, only the first two chapters have been converted. Each scene takes me anywhere from 1 to 3 hours to complete. I'm trying to produce highly detailed renders, without fingers and clothing clipping all over the place, which means a lot of time posing individual finger bones, running dforce cloth simulations, and adjusting camera angles.
And then I spend 30 minutes rendering the scene only to notice I missed something, and have to adjust it and start over (like a characters eyes not pointing at who they're talking to). Sometimes I'll fix issues in Photoshop afterwards rather than mess with dforce or smoothing when a leg pose causes stockings to clip for example.
Choices
Because it takes me so long for each scene, the idea of spending 20-30 hours on a sequence that's skippable isn't really on my radar at the moment. I could take shortcuts, use sprites, re-use scenes, but it's not really the level of detail I'm trying to achieve.
I do have some ideas around optional content, but it's not the
Choose Your Own Adventure style of gameplay a lot of you are asking for. It's more along the lines of hiding objects in a scene that when clicked, spawn a 'what-if/fantasy' sequence. For example, in the Chapter 2 scene where Kaitlin is getting her vajayjay waxed there'd be a vibrator on the desk in the background which leads to a lesbian sequence with the Beautician. Or something on the bar in Chapter 2 which leads to a steamy encounter in the bathroom, but it doesn't affect the story. At the end of the night, she's still going up to Blake's room.
Summary
I like the story of Kaitlin and Blake, and I enjoy spending time illustrating it. There's still a lot of the story to tell (if you really want spoilers, you can go read the original).
The result is free and will always be free, despite the amount of money on assets and the time I'm putting into it. It's not crowdfunded, I don't have or plan to have a Patreon, and to date I've gotten a $2 donation on Itch and that's fine.
I'm still also playing and enjoying the other styles of games on Itch and F95, and I throw them support where I can, but this is my personalized project and I don't have plans to make it more gamified.
I realize it's not everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine. I enjoy it (rendering the last dozen or so scenes in Chapter 2 was rough, had to take several 'breaks' in between), and I've shared it with others on the off chance others enjoy it too.
Anyways, I hope at least some of you enjoy the story and are excited to see where it's heading.
