BEW - Ongoing Dev Thread (DAZ Artists Still Wanted)

[crossy]

Oct 4, 2013 - Released part of the office scene last weekend, and made good progress this week, after beating GTA V, of course. I have the Main Emily erotic path story-boarded through the full office scene and rendering to that storyboard is in progress. I'm also partway through story-boarding one of the alternate erotic paths through the office. Two more erotic paths to go, although a couple of them dip in and out of the main path a bit. It will be interesting to hear from playtesters after I release the full scene since it will be the first example of how the game varies based on actions within a previous scene. There are differences by scene already in the game, i.e. going to the strip club instead of the bar, and their effects on day 2, but here we will see the variations within a scene caused by what happened at the bar. We'll also start to see how the 'best' solo ending at the bar can prevent the player from being able to achieve the 'best' ending at the office. Sometimes the 'best' ending on one scene will be required to achieve the 'best' ending in a later scene, and sometimes it will prevent that and force players to a lesser path later. It depends on the situation, path, and woman. Finally, I've added a section below that describes my work process, so my progress update may make more sense. By the way, does anyone actually read this?

Yes, I read the game progress updates.

Yeah, gotta watch out for when I might be called up for play tester duty!

[tlaero]

Hey Wolf, you should post a quick note at the end when you update the status. I missed that you released an update last week. I'll try to get to it soon.

Tlaero

[Super]

Yeah, I would read your updates if you posted that you did update

[Wolfschadowe]

Yes, I read the game progress updates.

I'd say many people are following this thread carefully. You are doing great and the periodic updates are really helpful to keep the interest

Yeah, I would read your updates if you posted that you did update

Thanks all. I'll keep that page updated about once a week since I know that people are actually reading it. The continued interest from everyone is part of what keeps me motivated to keep working on it.

J'imagine qu'avec tout le travail que tu fais sur la suite, cela va être grandiose !
....
Bon courage et merci pour les informations en continu

Bonjour whynot,
Il s'agit plutôt d'une continuation de la version 0.0.8 qu'une suite. 0.0.8. était une preuve de test de concept pour le jeu complet.
Merci pour les encouragements. Je vais essayer de fournir informaiton chaque semaine.

Yeah, gotta watch out for when I might be called up for play tester duty!

I look forward to bringing you onboard crossy. Your group is a little ways out still. I'll update the first page with information about which playtest group will come on along with the version. Yours is group 4, which is the last group, unless I sign on 2 more playtesters. If that happens, I'll bump everyone up a version or two because I want the last group of playtesters to come on at version 0.6.0. Later than that, the complexity will be too high for new playtesters to get up to speed and operate efficiently overriding the "fresh eyes benefit"
If I get enough playtesters to fill out group five, they will come on at 0.4.0 and everyone else will bump up a version or so.

Hey Wolf, you should post a quick note at the end when you update the status. I missed that you released an update last week. I'll try to get to it soon.

Hi Tlearo, the new version is more a consolidated patch of fixes along with the current new progress on the next scene than a full update for playtesting, which is why I didn't do a post here to announce the release where testers may be tracking with notification emails. Still, I appreciate any input.

Note to Playtesters: When I finish the day 2 office scene and build in achievements for it, I will standardize all the achievement reporting to one of the 4 modes that are currently in the game. My post 3/4 down page 10 has information about each of those modes in the spoiler tag. My personal favorite is Mode 2, which is used for reporting the Diner and now day 2 coffee scenes.
Hopefully by now you all have enough achievements and sub-achievements to give an opinion on which of the four status reporting modes works best. You can also enter debug mode and assign yourself all the achievements and sub-achievements to see how each mode works more clearly. I'd appreciate it if you could give opinions and observations here within the next couple of weeks so that I can take that into account when I standardize the achievement reporting system and lock it in for the rest of the game.

Wolfschadowe.

[tlaero]

I played through the current drop in the Bar route and it's really tight. Jasmine is a great character. You could do an entire game with her. I'm curious, did you edit the texture for her dress, or was that the way it came?

One thing I've noticed is that when you exit the game and come back to it, you don't have access to the quick restore. You need to do a restore and then quick restore. Not the end of the world, but something you might consider changing.

Tlaero

[Wolfschadowe]

I played through the current drop in the Bar route and it's really tight. Jasmine is a great character. You could do an entire game with her. I'm curious, did you edit the texture for her dress, or was that the way it came?

Which clothing? Jasmine has a tank shirt and Capris, but I think you mean her shirt. It came as is, but I tweaked the morphs a bit to make the transparentcies supporting the straps fit her better. I also used a D-form to pull the shirt away from her chest for the look down her shirt when she bends over. The lighting is the key for that texture though.

One thing I've noticed is that when you exit the game and come back to it, you don't have access to the quick restore. You need to do a restore and then quick restore. Not the end of the world, but something you might consider changing.

Nice catch. I'll put a quick restore option on the two start screens. That should make it easier for restoring a quicksave.

Wolfschadowe

[tlaero]

I was talking about the smooth part of the gray shirt. It's edgy and cool.

Tlaero

[Wolfschadowe]

Yeah, it's pretty cool. That shirt has several unique textures that are different from just standard colors and patterns I normally see. It's the "Cutaway Shirt" by Silvant3d at the DAZ store, part of the Charlize for V6 package.

Jasmine is a custom character on the V6 base. They made some nice tweaks to Genesis 2 when it comes to posing and how they grouped pose controls. The Genesis 2 figure is growing on me the more I use it. I was less than impressed when it first came out. As a result, now the game has characters (main and supporting) using the following bases: Victoria 4, Victoria 5, Victoria 6, Stephanie 5, and Aiko 5, Michael 5, Base Genesis and Base Genesis 2. The variety of using different bases makes it easier to give each character a unique look.

Wolfschadowe

[tlaero]

Yeah, she stands out. Did you buy the morphs for Gen2? That V4 skins don't work on Gen2 really turned me off.

Tlaero

[Wolfschadowe]

Yeah, she stands out. Did you buy the morphs for Gen2? That V4 skins don't work on Gen2 really turned me off.

I got most of the morphs for Genesis 2 in a bundle as a special sale about two weeks after Gen 2 came out. Jasmine is using the "Growing up" morphs to set her as a young adult/older teen, plus I tweaked the face, stomach, breasts and other aspects to change her from the original character. I tend to do that for all of them.

Also, you can use V4 skins on Gen2 and V6. The 'gotcha' that most people miss is that the V4 skin texture has to be in the new .duf format. Older textures in .dsa or other formats just need to be re-saved.

Step 1: Apply the V4 skin mats to a V4 figure first, and then save the mat as a material preset, which saves it into a .duf format.
Step 2: Apply that skin to V6/Gen2, which looks like crap, unless you do step 3,
Step 3: Change the UV map in V6/Gen2 figure's surfaces tab (Sometimes listed as 'legacy surface) to Victora 4 and now it looks Great!

That's it, the whole process takes less than a minute, and the re-save only has to be done once.

Wolfschadowe

[Wolfschadowe]

Page 1 progress update

Oct 12, 2013 - Another week of travel for work, so mainly got storyboard work done this week, and most of that was for Day 3 & 4 stuff, and a little bit of evening day 2. I had some ideas that I wanted to make sure I got captured before I forgot them. I'm trying to decide how much to dip in and out (pun intended) of the main erotic scene for the office. Part of me wants each of the four erotic scenes for the office to feel unique, but that's a LOT of work. Another route is to have 3 of the scenes share some elements, for example take three branches (A, B & C) and four phases of the erotic scene. On all three branches, Phase 1 is a little different but they all converge on phase 2, with some minor differences. In Branch A Brad rubs Emily over the panties for a while before moving on to phase 3 where they both stand up. On Branch B, during phase two of the erotic scene, Brad rubs Emily over the panties, pulls them off and then fingers her a bit before moving on to phase 3, and on the 3rd branch, phase 2 starts with Emily's panties already off, so he pretty much goes straight to fingering her, but that advances to cunnilingus before advancing to the next phase. For branch 1 & 2, phase 3 would be very similar, but for branch 3, it would be very different. Branch 1 & 2 would end after phase 3, but Branch 3 has the option to move to phase 4. The other option is to make all 3 of those scenes completely unique, but it would also take about 2-3 times longer to finish out the overall office scene. Consider that each phase of the erotic scene is 20-40 pages long. An example to what I mean by phases, if we consider the Bar scene, Phase 1 of that erotic scene is when Brad & Emily move to the Booth. Phase 2 is when Faith either starts watching or not. Phase 3 is when either Brad or Emily starts rubbing her between the legs and ends with either Phase 4, or Emily orgasm. Phase 4 is when Faith either joins or not, and ends with both Emily and Faith orgasming. And Phase 5, for those who find it, ends with Brad cumming. The later scene with just Brad and Faith is only one phase long. Sharing resources between phases and branches equals a lot less work, but may detract from replayability a bit. Even in the bar scene, a lot of phases 2 and 3 are shared between the 3 different branches available for those parts of the erotic scene. Did that shared content bother anyone too much?

Wolfschadowe

[M]

Obviously multiple completely unique branches would probably be the ideal situation, but I doubt anybody was really bothered by the way the bar scene worked. I definitely wasn't.

[ares]

I'd suggest sharing resources. I think replayability is mainly determined by how different stories turn out to be and not by whether you reuse some images or not. The bar scene worked very good. And there is a long way to go till you finish the game. I would try to refrain from adding stuff that might be considered "extra" to your original vision just because the game might feel slightly better. Perfectionism is very fine but at certain points better to focus on the goal I'd say.

[tlaero]

You've already got more content than most full games and, even with no intercourse, your game is more erotic than 9/10ths of the Genre combined. I don't think you need to worry about doing more. Reusing scenarios and footage is fine.

Tlaero

[Wolfschadowe]

I'd suggest sharing resources. I think replayability is mainly determined by how different stories turn out to be and not by whether you reuse some images or not. The bar scene worked very good. And there is a long way to go till you finish the game. I would try to refrain from adding stuff that might be considered "extra" to your original vision just because the game might feel slightly better. Perfectionism is very fine but at certain points better to focus on the goal I'd say.

Thanks for the feedback ares. I am always going back and forth on content, and I have cut a lot in the interest of finishing the game. I often worry that I am cutting too much and making the game feel hurried just to finish it, but when I look at what I am still keeping, the reality is that I"m probably keeping too much still. I'm over a thousand web pages and 40,000 words (granted a lot are duplicates on happy, mad and sad results pages, but still...), and only on day two. A lot of games are through a full week and over in less than a thousand web pages.

Obviously multiple completely unique branches would probably be the ideal situation, but I doubt anybody was really bothered by the way the bar scene worked. I definitely wasn't.

That's good to know. I have to balance the ideal and the realistic. If I do the ideal for my thoughts of the full game, it may take me 10 years of constant work to finish. I would rather be working on my 10th+ game in 10 years, not still working on BEW.

You've already got more content than most full games and, even with no intercourse, your game is more erotic than 9/10ths of the Genre combined. I don't think you need to worry about doing more. Reusing scenarios and footage is fine.

That's high praise, thanks Tlaero. I think, realistically, I have to share portions of the erotic scenes between some paths, just to get the game out the door. There still will be one fully unique branch in the day two office, along with the three shared branches though.

Hopefully it won't be too distracting on a second or third playthrough to have, say, 10 pages of "I saw this last time", followed by another 20 of "whoa, this is new" and a few "uh,huh, seen this," and more "woot! New!" Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Wolfschadowe