Well... it is been more than one month since the last development status report. Let's get into the monthly report. This is going to be a very lengthy and somewhat pointless report. But I think that it is important that I am transparent about the state of affairs and you can take it as some sort of "developer's journal".
I say pointless, because it is a bit disheartening doing this journal, since I won't be talking about The Theater much. But well, I started this other story and I have gone through some sort of "five stages of grief" while doing it. We'll get that in a moment.
Let's start with some warm-up. So, there I am at the end of July, ready to take a plane direction XYZ. The previous night I almost finished with the 0.2.alpha, but I am still missing some renders which I consider important. So I take my old 'gaming' laptop with me (RTX 2050) thinking that I will be able to finish what's missing in timely fashion and release w/o issues. The idea is to release and go "cold" until I am back home in October, since the Theater characters are pretty heavy and the 4GB of the card very limiting.
I manage to release after lots of issues. Hilariously slow internet connection (200kb/s) and somewhat unexpected electricity cuts (imagine spending over 2 hours in uploading the 4 GB of 0.2.alpha and then BAM ! electricity booms !). I even did some renders with CPU... crazy stuff. Sometimes I felt like Ulysses during his Odissey. Hardship after hardship.
Anyway, I manage to release and then reading some comments I realize that people missed Paula. Damn, even I missed her. What's even worse, I am not going to do anything until October. People deserve some Paula ! So, I include the last Mr. Smith event which defines which route Paula is going to follow from now on (either full submission, or a more forceful hate route) which by the way I think it turned out a pretty cool event. I even made an asset. The razor in the box is 100% mine (textures apart). Luckily, Paula is not as heavy as Rebeca and Agnes since I found a hair that made her look exactly how I imagined and I could scrap her previous version with three ! hairs.
We are now around the third week of August. The Theater of Sinners gets its 0.2.final release. I open a second beer and smile. Around the fourth beer I am looking at one ventilator spinning on the ceiling at 2am and it hits me... what am I going to do until mid October ? I could download other people's games and check their code, see how they do all those amazing eye candy effects. Freaking attractive notifications, cool menus and so on. I shake my head. No way, that is fucking boring. Let's make a short story with a simpler model, not many morphs, close ups, simplistic scenarios, tons of depth of field and degraded textures.
That brings me to...
The five stages
1. Enthusiasm
I have all these crazy ideas about scenes which I cannot fit in the Theater. So, it is not difficult to find a theme. I sit for a while modelling the character of Clara. I say to myself, let's make it a bit of a challenge. Let's try some incest. I write a very high level version of the script and think. Not bad, not bad at all.
I start working pretty happily. I like it overall. Everything is going great. I expect around 200 hundred renders and a somewhat completed event/story. Nothing too fancy, but hot.
2. Hitting the wall
After quite a bit of development I notice that nothing makes any sense. The script which I thought was good doesn't hold, the transitions are crap. The overall story makes zero sense. Moreover I am doing a bit of "vanilla", together with incest and it is not a theme I am that good at. What the fuck am I doing ?
3. Regret and procrastination
I know I should sit and re-think the idea. Make it better. But I cannot come to think anything other than why the heck am I doing this shitty short story when what I really want to do is more Theater. So, I procrastinate. I have a revelation about Olivia. I write it down. I also think about how exactly is the season one of The Theater finishing from a scene perspective. I hardly manage to sit and do some renders for the short story.
4. Motivation and re-enthusiasm
I finally sit down and re-think the short story. I re-plan the feelings of the characters, the transition from one point on the story to the next one. How things are related, etc. Moreover, I include a LOT of back story for The Theater. That motivates me quite a bit. Now I suddenly want to do all this scenes because they have a meaning. Everything starts making sense.
The vanilla, the incest are not looking that weird anymore... it is starting to look actually good. It doesn't make full sense, but it is a porn short story. Of course it will have some licenses.
5. Greed
Here is where I am now. The last stage. The short story has overgrown itself and turned into some small project. I am actually starting to like the characters. I want to finish it on a high note, I don't want to feel any regrets. Releasing something I am not satisfied with. So I give me a grace time until the end of October to finish this project. The idea was to arrive back home, have the short story ready, release it and go back to my beloved Agnes. But I am greedy, I want to make this one work. So that when I release, I can have a cold one and smile.
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Well. I hope I didn't bore all of you to death with my rambling. Take it as an insight to a porn developer "creative" process.
To make up for all this nonsense. Some pearls I found in my old render back-up folder...
Second version of Paula (the current one is the fourth). Blue eyes, 3 hair combination.
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Yet another one.
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Rebeca also went through a lot of changes. Curly hair where ?
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She and Olivia had a bit more fun the night they met. Which didn't make the cut into the game (yet).
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And Agnes... she was not going to be playable at first but I liked the character so much that I gave her the spotlight she deserved, and re-design her to be a bit more flashy.
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Last but not least for the upcoming story. Clara having second thoughts about her dress of choice.
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And if you made it down here. Thanks for reading.