Chapter 2 update

Lets start with some thoughts on Chapter 1.

There was no workflow or organization of the work that needed to be done to publish a finished product. It was very much a step by step production. Pecker PI being the first AVN I have created, it was expected.

Writing

First I wrote (this is probably the way to do it:-) and finished chapter 1-2. Not really anything to condemn in that, if anything I’d probably like to be a little further ahead with that. The over all story arc isn’t changing, so there will be no surprises come chapter 9 in terms of writing. I quite enjoy this phase of the production and I spend some considerable time making it as good and interesting as I can. I don’t have any tolerance for dialogue that means nothing. Please don’t tell me that “this is how people speak in real life” because most of us can’t tolerate how the Kardashians speak. There is a real difference between writing just to add “lines of text” and caring about the reader’s enjoyment and the character’s voice. Writing sets a good AVN apart from the hack job in my book, not the render quality. Anyhow, I plan on the first Case to span 10 chapters and had a goal to have a Case span a calendar year, but that seems like wishful thinking. I know I can speed some parts of production up simply by better planing and time management. But since this isn’t my job, I will probably spend 2 months on every chapter.

Graphics/Rendering

I started on a Mac Air and every render took 24+ hours AND there were still “fireflies” in the highlights! I decided that if I wanted to try to accomplish an AVN I needed to upgrade. Still don’t have a monster rig, hard to justify spending that much money at this point. With the exception of the posing part, this is my favorite stage of the process. It is also the most frustrating, because I can’t really speed it up. I want to produce quality images with interesting framing and dramatic lighting. It’s always nice to see how much better the daz models look when lighted appropriately. Now, I didn’t test the models I used extensively before I started using them in scenes and my biggest regret is the model I used for Giovanni (mob soldier at bar, who gets taken down a peg by Pecker). No amount of lighting could help that model and I should have just swapped it out right away. The upside is that Giovanni doesn’t have to be in future chapters…maybe we find him at the bottom of the harbor? For the first chapter I rendered all the images before I even bothered to look at Renpy, which was dumb. I’m not a programmer, have no interest in becoming one, but necessary evil in the process. My guess is that it will probably be 3-4 updates until I have what I feel is necessary in terms of Renpy skill (and that will be laughable to anyone with any sort of skill). The major items that I'd like to include are a gallery and an in game “case file” with pictures of love interests, the other major players and notes on the current case.

Post and Coding

The two should not be a group for me. I can easily handle photoshop and I think I have already described my lack of coding skill, but they are both part of the last major step. I think what I learned here was that there is no reason to stop coding. As long as you have the script for the current chapter, just start plugging that in. I know some devs just write right into renpy, but that seems like a terrible idea. How do you have any overview when looking at the story with renpy formatting? Maybe that's just me?

Release

The moment we all wait for, the release. I guess it went about as well as I thought it would. 1 chapter isn’t going to draw a crowd, especially from a unknown developer. To commit as a reader, you want at least some chance of seeing the end of the story. I get it. I’m happy that 4 people decided to become patrons, and I cherish the 2 I have left for a the second month…and truth be told, I will do everything I can to make sure I publish chapter 2 before the next time they get charged. Other than that, I guess I had what I already knew confirmed…it will take some time to get the convoy moving.

What’s next that the reader will appreciate.

The second chapter. I’m happy with the writing. It’s more fun than the first chapter and a little longer. It focuses on one of my personal favorites: Det. Turis. I’m rendering, post processing images and coding at the same time now. The recap, scene 1 and 2 are done 100%, and rendering s3 and writing scene 8 (chapter 3) at the moment. I am going to make a promo video at some point soon, but the second chapter renders are priority 1 atm.