Getting closer, or the heat is on.

As usual, by the time a release for a new chapter of Light of my Life is drawing closer, tensions and expectations begin to rise, for fans of the project and myself alike. It's been a long wait for you, and it's been a hard slog for me, with well over 1500 hours sunk into it so far, having spent just about every evening and every weekend since the start of this year on it. But it's slowly getting there, and that in itself is reward enough to forget all about that. 

But why is it taking so long? What is it that makes each next chapter slower to release than the previous one? Well, I've been thinking about it,. and I think there's not one reason, but a few.

There's more options now.

As I've been working longer with the tools I'm using, I've been slowly getting better at them. Some of the things I had no idea about how to tackle when I got started are now par of the course, and there's a ton of tricks I picked up that let me make things look better now then when I got started. But there's also a downside to that. As the complexity of visuals rise, so does the work involved in making them. On the other hand, tasks that took me ages when I get started I can now get done in minutes, so quite a lot of that evens out, but still.

Trumping the last chapter.

Then there's of course the need to do better than the last chapter. If in the first two chapters, a key moment might consist of a simple sequence of a few renders, that has steadily grown over time, and now such a moment might take place over multiple stages and number up to a hundred or more renders. And that's as it should be. 

Imagine playing all the way to the end of a VN, only to have finally conquered your love interest and be treated to a simple "You win" message and a single game-over still of them in a saucy pose. That won't do. Each interaction with a love interest in the game should be made to better than the preceding one, or call it quits. 

Still, that means every chapter, the scenes for the love interests take that much extra time to produce.

The characters have progressed beyond handholding.

Hand in hand with the previous one, but there's enough of a difference to name it separately, because it's a different pressure with the same result: the characters have grown closer, and their interactions are now more complex. 

If in an early chapter, a risque pose or slightly cheeky interaction would be enough to get things moving along. But we've passed well beyond that point for our love interests now. As said, these more involved interactions are also that much harder to produce.

So, how long does stuff take, anyways?

It's an interesting question I think, and while there's no simple answer, there's something to tell about it. 

There's a few different categories of scenes in Light of my Life. At the one end of the spectrum, there's scenes that involve available characters, who are just engaging in dialog with you without doing any special interactions, in outfits and locations that have already been made, and a simple scene like that might take a few hours to a day to produce, depending on the length of the scene and the complexity of the dialog. 

Then there's new locations or new characters. That can take up to a few days, to design the character, put together a wardrobe, or create a new set. 

Things get complicated when characters have to interact, with the set or each other. Usually, it's not only the complexity of the interactions, but also the need for quite a few renders as we might have to do multiple variations of the interactions with multiple variations of the characters emotions, depending on the interaction. These usually start out a few days work, but it can quickly ramp up.

But nothing really beats a good lewd scene. While that usually involves already established characters, it's usually on new locations, using new wardrobe (or a bit of a lack thereof that is still quite involved for not being a complete lack thereof), and tons of interactions. 

Where in the early stages of the game, lewd scenes usually didn't even progress to anything that could be considered foreplay, at this point in the game, there's usually several stages, with some opening interactions, some foreplay, the main event, the payoff, and the pillow talk, with endless character interactions and variations. 

I think the most complex lewd scene in the previous chapter was the nighttime sequence involving the main character and both main love interests. It was the biggest thing I ever did and while I didn't clock it, it took well (and I mean well) over a hundred hours to produce. The current chapter contains several scenes that are easily just as involved or more, and while they're beasts to produce, I feel the payoff will be well worth it in the end. 

I truly can't wait to show you and find out if you agree.