DevLog 18-Dec-2023
Added 2023-12-18 15:59:39 +0000 UTCHello!
Another week is over and I'd like to take some time to give an overall update. Writing is going pretty well, we're over 7k words and I wanna get to 10k by the end of the year. Now, normally, I'd comment on how much that is out of the projected total, but as I've learned recently, this release is not behaving as I anticipated. What I mean by that is that these 7k words barely cover the introductory part of the release, meaning it's mostly just facing the consequences of what happened in day 3. Moreover, the first 5k of those are fully rendered, and yet it's only something like 300ish images. I think a part of that is that I stopped doing a render for every single line of dialogue, but it might also be the more introspective, relationship-focused nature of this release. There's a lot of talking and thinking going on and not a lot of action. Now, this may very well change by the end of the release, but as it stands now, there might be more text than in the previous release, but fewer images. To complicate things further, I want to expand a lot on the erotic scenes to improve them according to the survey, so the image rendering time saved might be taken by the additional animations. Also, while there's a lot of branching due to past choices, there's a single choice in the first 7k words of story, which doesn't feel right. Now, I don't want to add meaningless choices just to have them, but I also don't want to turn this into a kinetic novel, so I need to find some way to add interactivity to this release. Especially skill checks, those are becoming harder and harder to incorporate due to the lack of action. In short, I thought this would get easier as time went on, not harder, but I do appreciate the constant challenge and that it's not becoming stale.
Anyway, next up: Got a few more scenes to render until I catch up to the writing, which I think I'll manage to do this week, meaning that next weekend I'll need to finish the dating/hangout scenes with the girls. I don't know if I'll manage to finish all of them (there's still 3 scenes left), but I've got the week after off work, so I'll be able to focus on the game and keep writing until I'm done. Once that's done, we can get into the drama, which will be much quieter, but somehow wilder than what's happened until now. Also, I've mentioned this before, I think, but man is it fun to write Lilith <3
Hope you're having an awesome day!
--SR
Comments
You can start with a few main points for a character and then let them tell you what they're all about. They gain a life of their own as you keep writing them, so all you need then is to figure out why they have those quirks, how they got to that point and what drives them forward. You won't get to know them in one sitting, but let them speak and they'll tell you their story.
Wrathfulies
2023-12-20 15:17:44 +0000 UTCI may have a problem with rambling, call it adhd 😂
Jameson Huddle
2023-12-19 12:27:07 +0000 UTCIn some ways, I'm sure the experience is helping! When I think about writing my own stories I just get choice paralysis/procrastinate. It probably helps flesh out interesting characters when you have to take a look into their psychology relating to specific choices that could go either way. But I'm sure it puts constraints on what is possible more often than it sparks a plethora of realistic character dialogue. There are reasons writers rely on tropes and flater personalities for the majority of total characters. Collapsing branches, dialogue changes based on variables, and extra scenes for certain paths, are definitely the best ways for solo/small teams to incorporate "meaningful" choices that I have seen (at least in multimedia formats (more complex ones might work in text only but I'm not interested in that so wouldn't know)). Making 5 - ∞ full length novels for one game is tragically unrealistic. It's also a very philosophical debate, what is core to a character and what behaviors and speech patterns are only present due to certain past experiences/current circumstances. Personally I can't even decide if I was born a masochist or if growing up in the church caused the phenomenon, some evidence was present quite early, but other aspects were not developed/discovered until recently. This whole comment is probably not useful at all, sorry about that, thanks for chatting, also rereading my first one came off much more antagonistic than I should have said, sorry about that. Thanks for writing great stories for us!
Jameson Huddle
2023-12-19 12:25:59 +0000 UTCI mean yeah, I expected that, but I figured it would be offset by the accumulated experience. Plus I started collapsing branches so it doesn't go out of control. I definitely don't want to force choices in just to hit a number, it would be more detrimental than not having any. Instead, I'm trying to figure out how I can improve the story with meaningful choices that will be fun and satisfying. Considering the character and relationship focus, I'm thinking choices that show character would actually work to improve the experience
Wrathfulies
2023-12-19 11:30:06 +0000 UTCI think most people could have told you that it is harder to write branching dialogue with meaningful choices the further you let it branch, I would advise against forcing choices (or really anything) into a release just to hit arbitrary quotas that you and expectations have set. Some people may complain but if you stay true to how you think the story should be told I think most people will enjoy it.
Jameson Huddle
2023-12-18 17:53:03 +0000 UTC
