VN Ren'Py Onhold The Spice Pirate [Prologue: Remastered] [Tak Mycket]

[Vidal the king of Pervert]

08/09/2024 — Weekly Dev-Log #13​

Progress:

• 399 renders
• 4,730 words
• 0 animations
• 9 choices

Another solid week of progress. A week after restart number 5, and development is going strong. You should expect high render counts and low word counts when comparing my progress to other developers. This is due to the nature of Tides of Succession, which I will discuss below.

Side Note: The woman above (Elva) is not a LI in Tides of Succession.

Visual Storytelling:
This recent iteration of Tides of Succession has a massive focus on the visual aspect of storytelling in many different ways.

The first, and perhaps most obvious way is camera angles and distance. However, I tend not to isolate renders. Instead, what's more important is the difference between each shot. Rather than explain, I will show...

The character in the sequence of renders above is Henricus - our protagonist's father figure and one of the more influential characters in terms of impact on the story. And to those who are wondering - yes, he is not supposed to have eyes. Even without the text, it's (hopefully) fairly obvious that what he is saying is important, and 'story-altering'.

There will be many other visual hints along your journey as well.

On top of all this, there are no thoughts to be read in Tides of Succession (and very limited narration). Instead, you must rely on what is actually said to gain an understanding on what is going on. However, to give you an insight into what a character is thinking, I use (perhaps even over-use) a lot of close-up shots.

As a side-note, the woman present in the above render is not a LI. Alas, while she may not seem like much when you first meet her, but she is the most significant character not just in Tides of Succession, but its sequel as well (Tides of Succession has been planned out as a trilogy of AVNs - with a different MC and LIs in each AVN).

Pseudo-Animations:
Another key feature of Tides of Succession will be what I like to call 'pseudo-animations'. What they are is a few sequential renders which are separated by minuscule pauses. The purpose of the pseudo-animations is to breathe life into this AVN. They will be sometimes used for nodding and blinking, but by far the primary purpose of these pseudo-animations is to show the change of emotion on a character's face.

And for any curious soul out there, the above woman is Lorelei, and she will be a Love Interest in Tides of Succession.

Beta Version:
I have planned for there to be six scenes in the first version of this iteration's beta testing. I have currently completed three scenes, and done half for another scene and three-quarters of another which means if we add it all up, I have roughly one and three-quarters scenes left to do before the next beta version can come out.

It will definitely be all posed by next week's dev-log. Thus, depending on the render time, it will be out late this week, or very early next week.

I've also been doing some play-testing myself of the scenes already rendered and I am a fan. What I am worried about is Tides of Succession plays a lot differently to other AVNs in the sense it almost feels more like watching a movie, as opposed to reading a novel with pictures. Hence, I'm a little concerned players won't enjoy the style... but I suppose I will just wait and see.

I see too bad she's not a love interest she looks mean and tough

and you know that's my type I don't like nice girls

or girls that instantly throw themselves at the MC

I can't wait to find out who's the meanest and most bloodthirsty girl in the entire game and make her my wife and baby mama

 

[TakMycket]

15/09/2024 — Weekly Dev-Log #14​

Progress:

• 638 Renders
• 5,634 Words
• 0 animations
• 11 Choices

Another solid week of progress. I also have a lot to talk about this dev-log...
Demo:
For those of you who are unaware, I released a "demo" on my Discord this Friday. It contained ~18 minutes of content and introduced the player to Lorelei (one of the Love Interests) and the main plot. I did this to get feedback, and I'm really glad I did.
The general perception was "overwhelmingly positive". I say this with quotation marks because at the end of the day, the people on my Discord are the people who enjoyed playing The Spice Pirate, and Tides of Succession is better than TSP in every possible way. So naturally, they should have enjoyed it.
What I loved most about it is many people seemed to love Lorelei, which is great. While I plan for the narrative to be quite strong, the LIs are what will make ToS a great AVN. It wasn't all sunshine however, as there are a couple of areas that needed improvement.

The current banner for Tides of Succession, featuring Lorelei.

Feedback:
These are the areas which needed improvement.

• Henricus's Eyes - For those of you who didn't play the demo of ToS, Henricus is blind in the sense he does not have eyes, but he can still "see" and isn't impaired in anyway whatsoever. At least, that's the impression I hope people would get. The problem is, at the moment, despite having no eyes in the actual model, it looks as if he just has his eyes shut. This can cause confusion for the player, as the player isn't explicitly told that Henricus is missing his eyes. Instead, they're supposed to draw that conclusion. Thus, I've changed the eye asset, so now it should be more obvious visually that he is missing his eyes.
• Lorelei's Reaction - The whole idea during the demo is Lorelei is supposed to become positively intrigued by the MC. Alas, I did two things wrong. Firstly, I oversold Lorelei's distaste for pirates so it came of as strong hate (the MC is a pirate, for those who are unaware). Secondly, I wrote "intrigued" as "connection". This made it seem like Lorelei fell for the MC after spending an afternoon together, despite the fact he's a pirate (among other obstacles). Falling for someone is quite different from "positively intrigued". Hence, I had to change a few lines of dialogue to dial the emotions back a bit in order to prevent the whole thing from feeling rushed.
• Catch lights - Everyone seemed to think the game was visually great. The one complaint regarding the visuals were the overly large catch lights which were being reflected in the character's eyes which looked unnatural. To be rather honest, I'm struggling to decide on how much of an importance to place on this issue. At the moment, I'm inclined to just accept this flaw. The renders look pretty decent and I know how to set up semi-good lighting without spending hours tinkering around in Daz with this style which means I can produce a good quantity with good quality. This is something I'm going to have a think more about over the next couple of days, and do some experiments with.
• Bugs - Unfortunately, there were a few coding errors if you did not pursue Lorelei (even though I imagine 95% of people would have chosen to go after Lorelei). These were just typos and were fixed in two seconds, but it goes to show I need to be more vigilant in my own play-testing process.
• Choices - The other piece of feedback I received that I wanted to address is choices. In the current demo, the choices are quite obvious and practically boil down to "Pursue Lorelei" or "Don't". For those who are wondering, choices aren't going to be as straightforward going down the track. You will have to choose between LIs later down the track, but more importantly, you will be able to choose how the MC reacts to the situation unfolding in front of him, and hence, influence the narrative. These sorts of choices weren't in the demo however.

I am pretty much done with working through feedback, but for those who are still yet to give me feedback, I always welcome more.

Henricus's new eyes.

Love Interests:
For those of you who played the demo, Lorelei would be a familiar sight:

Alas, the other two LIs were not in the demo. I have spent quite a lot of time tinkering with each of their models, and finally settled on them. Hence, I thought to "celebrate" a "successful" demo release, I would reveal them to you.

Kasula - A Ro'l explorer.

Glade - An Adristanian Pirate.

They are set to appear in the story rather soon, and I'm looking forward to finally being able to pose some scenes with them.
Elva:
Another character that appears in the demo is Elva. Many people commented on her looks and said they wouldn't mind "knocking boots with the pirate lady" - Batman_sid. This caused me to seriously reconsider adding Elva as a LI. I was on the fence for a while, but ultimately, it would require a change to the story for reasons, and not just adding in more scenes with her. Thus, I decided to stick to my original plan (apologies Garou).

Elva.

New Computer:
Two dev-logs ago, I mentioned I ordered new computer. Unfortunately, due to reasons, I could not get the parts so the company I had ordered from gave me a refund. At the moment, I'm currently looking at ordering it elsewhere.
In the meantime, it isn't a big deal. I'm only going to animate lewd scenes and kissing scenes, and because this is a slow-burn AVN, I probably won't need a computer to render those animations as my laptop can keep up with the demand of still-renders.

Allesandra - A Dreeskt Pirate (not a LI).

 

[TakMycket]

22/09/2024 — Weekly Dev-Log #15​

Progress:

• 995 Renders (+347 renders)
• 5,977 Words
• 0 Animations
• 12 Choices

Great week of progress in the render department. I spent most of my writing time on planning later scenes in more detail rather than writing the script, which is why the word and choice count barely increased.
Very short dev-log today. By next week, I should be over 1/3 done with Chapter 1!

Elva dressed up for a feast.

Beta Testing:
Next beta version should be ready before the next dev-log. I have one more scene to pose, a bunch of interlude renders to pose and play-testing to complete before I release it.
I'm only going to be releasing this version to my beta team, so if you want to give it a shot, make sure to request to join.

Kasula and MC talking during the feast

A Few More Preview Renders:

 

[TakMycket]

29/09/2024 — Weekly Dev-Log #16​

Progress:

• 1,143 renders
• 6,541 words
• 0 Animations
• 13 choices

Progress was not as great as I would've hoped, but it wasn't due to a lack of effort. I took a short, spontaneous holiday to catch-up with some people which killed the weekend in terms of Tides of Succession productivity, and I've also had an increase in my workload for non-TSP activities. I suppose that's just life.

Beta Version:
The beta version was released to beta testers on Thursday. I was surprised at the length of it, as my play-through took me 40 minutes, though I did forget to ask how long it took the beta testers, but I reckon it's no longer in the "super-short" territory. Of course, I received a lot of feedback, and I was actually in the process of writing a whole essay on each point, but it's probably not wise to make people read my ramblings, so I'll only touch briefly on a few points.
Firstly, I just want to publicly thank Ecco for designing and coding an improved UI feature which wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing feature out there, which was mentioned quite a few times by many beta testers. Unfortunately we'll have to wait until next week for a preview image, as I have yet to copy and paste his code into the actual ToS project.
The second piece of feedback I want to quickly touch on is post-processing. I've never done much post-processing apart from fixing something up a couple of times. However, a few beta testers have mentioned my renders have a bit of untapped potential. Thus, I'm going to invest some time into playing around with post-production effects to see what works best.

Fight Scenes:
There are a few ways I wish for ToS to stand out from other AVNs, and one of those ways is lengthy fight scenes. Without spoiling too much, the next beta version is going to contain a massive fight scene which I've split into three different scenes. It's going to be fun to pose and render, alas, it's going to take more time hence you can expect a longer wait time for the next beta version.

 

[TakMycket]

06/10/2024 — Weekly Dev-Log #17​

Progress:

• 1,250 renders
• 6,988 words
• 3 animations
• 14 choices

The fight scenes are taking some time to pose, and I've had to CPU render an entire scene due to my 8GB VRAM limit. Alas, I'm still moving forward, and I have a lot of things to discuss in this week's dev-log.

Releases:
Chapter 1 will be out sometime during October. I initially had 5 chapters, but I'm splitting each of them in half and I'm currently working on the last beta version before the release of the new Chapter 1. The reasoning for this is the more updates there are, the more attention Tides of Succession gets.

As a player, I'm someone who much prefers longer, more substantial updates than shorter frequent updates. Alas, from a developer's perspective, shorter more frequent updates are much better so at least for ToS, that's the direction I'm going.
I'm not going to give a release date, I'll just release it when it's ready. Since this is the first release, there will be no delays (ie, everyone will get it at the same time), but future releases will have short delays.

The Kraken:
One of the pivotal characters in Tides of Succession is a spice weaver named The Kraken. I want to write a whole essay on how he's going to impact the story, but alas, that would ruin all the fun surprises I have in store for you all. Just know, that there will be some twists and turns, and this character will play a huge role in many of those twists.

The Kraken using his spice weaving abilities

The reason why I bring the Kraken up is because of his skin texture and the skin textures on his crew. Without spoiling too much, the Kraken is a spice weaver whom implants a bit of his spice into the body of the people he's killed, which 'revives' them. These 'victims' of his form his crew, and due to the presence of his spice, these crew members have deformed skin.

One of the Kraken's crew members.

In fact, one of the Love Interests, Glade is also part of his crew. For those of you who are concerned, there is a way to remove the Kraken's spice, and Glade is 'cured' rather quickly. Alas, here is what she looks like with the Kraken's spice inside of her:

Glade in her 'deformed' state.

Lighting:
Another area in which I've improved in recently is lighting. I've been trying to figure out ways to make my renders better, without necessarily spending an hour on each one tweaking the lighting until it is perfect. Alas, I've finally improved.

One of the negatives of my former style was the reflections in the character's eyes were massive, hence looking unnatural. Alas, I've discovered if I have the light above them, rather than at eye-level, the reflections look much more natural. Here is an example:

In the first render, the light source is at a 45 degree angle, looking down on our subject, while in the second render, it's at eye level. I don't know about you, but the first render looks much more natural.

Another improvement I've made is ghost lights. I never knew how to make a ghost light before in Daz, but I finally learned how to do it yesterday. This will allow me with more flexibility in my lighting. For example, I'm now using ghost lights as hair light, by placing a soft ghost light directly behind the character to act as a ghost light. Unfortunately, I don't have any examples yet.

For those of you who don't know what a ghost light is, think of it as an invisible light, meaning it emits lights, but you won't be able to see the source of the light.

Action Scenes:
One of the reasons why progress was slow this week was due to the presence of action scenes. I initially wrote three extremely long action scenes with long sequences of sword fighting to go into this update. Alas, very quickly I discovered that these long sword scenes were perhaps not the right path to take. By long, I was talking ~300 renders of someone whacking someone else with a sword. I think, by my current estimates, this has been reduced down to ~100 renders.

Having balance is important. I don't want to spend hours upon hours on the sword fight scenes. They are fun, but there's going to be many of them, and I would much rather focus my energy on lengthy, romantic lewd scenes. That's not to say it'll be a couple renders and the sword fight is over.

The pacing of these sword fights is something I'll be tweaking overtime as I want to hit the right balance.

Kasula avoiding death

Walk-through:
Whilst I was waiting for a few renders, I decided to make an official walk-through on google docs. At the current moment, it needs an aesthetic upgrade but apart from that, it should explain the consequences for your actions for those who prefer playing AVNs that way.

Having said that, highly recommend playing blind. The major consequential choices regarding Love Interests are fairly obvious, while for the major consequential choices regarding the plot, both options are equally "good".

Lesser Known AVNs:
I also made a post on reddit about lesser known AVNs. If you're looking for a new AVN to try, then check-out the post.

You must be registered to see the links