Dev Blog #3 (Patreon)

It's the start of the second half of the year, and now is as good a time as any to check my Dev Map and see where we're headed, as well as make some announcements on the changes coming.

In the last Dev Blog, I laid out how the dev map had changed a little, based off the amount of extra stuff I had been able to squeeze into the updates. This next time around, I'm gonna start from scratch. 

Another thing to note. In both previous Dev Maps, I clearly stated that those were estimates based off what I was capable of rendering at the time. The initial Plan was written when I was on my older PC, and was still waiting for the damn IRAY drivers to be released for DAZ. I was also working 60+ hours a week.

Well I got my new computer, the drivers have been released, and I've cut my work week down to a reasonable 40 (sometimes 50) hours. One thing that I didn't count on was in my initial estimates, was growth of content. When i wrote the initial Dev Map, Corrupted scenes had just been added.

For some perspective, In the last two months I've rendered over 1200 images. That's to put it mildly, an epic shit ton of renders. :P But even with that, I can't keep up my initial plan for two major reasons. 

1. You may or may not have noticed that both Larson, and Sandra's unstable/ Obsessive scenes are a lot more detailed, than previous characters. These are more in line with the style I wanted for the scenes from the get go. I wanted them to be little stories of a slow descent into depravity, and the complications it can cause Billy.. The later characters portray that nicely I think. :)

2. Fetishes: Some character fetishes will be pretty simple, some may be pretty complicated. Every fetish is like a snowflake, but not the kind that needs safe spaces, and cries on twitter a lot. So some will require a lot of work. Some won't. It's hard to design a plan around that.

3. Combat: Sweet Jesus....It takes a while to render all of the combat scenes. 18 poses x (# of Outfits)  x 4 different states = Lots of renders. And that's just for basic combat. When I add in more advanced stuff ....gonna be a lot of work. Before anybody asks...yes there will be the potential for you to fight all the characters you've so lovingly brainwashed into being your personal energy battery.

Now these three things bloat the amount of time needed to work on a character. Which completely goes against my intended plan of putting out a full character release while still releasing a new update each month. 

There is also an issue that I should mention...Burn out. I love working on the function updates....New mechanics, new scenes, new stuff. Lots of fun for me. Working on characters however is a nightmarish slog. I just follow the checklist, and halfway through I want to burn my entire city down. It's mentally exhausting. And i still don't have enough time in a month, unless I go back to 60 hour weeks, which then increases the amount of Burn Out I feel. It's a downward spiral, and I'd really like to get off this train if possible. I don't want the quality of my work to suffer, because of unreasonable expectations I've placed on myself. It's not fair to all of you. The people that pay me to produce good work.

So the obvious solution is to break characters into two parts. But then that pushes the goal of finishing the school even further back. Now the whole reason I wanted to finish the school, was 3 part. 

1. I wanted a foundation of characters that can be involved in the story, and for different effects in those stories to affect them. 

2. A high level vote was made, and I like to stick to the polls when possible.

3. Finishing the school would be a huge amount of character content completed. Even in the RAGs game, the school was the most populated area in the game. Completing it, made developing outside the school so much faster, because there was always something for players to do. Globex isn't open yet? Go to the school, and try to get Mary to stop being such a bitch. Need some money? Go to the school and clean some bathrooms, maybe chit chat with the nerdy girl a bit between workshifts. It's a good time fill, that doesn't feel like a time sink.

So after a lot of thought I've decided to change the structure of updates. Here's what needs to added in.

Character updates will be broken down into 2 parts. It has to happen. I can't make a full character with all listed features in 4 weeks while also maintaining my sanity. It's 6-7 weeks worth of work at this point. 

Function updates: I initially made these to help me decompress after a month of 60 hour weeks rendering characters. I like these updates, but their time length is a lot more flexible.

Finally Story..... I really want to start adding in storylines. Due to the speed of developing a character, the game will continue to feel like a Dating Sim with super powers until there are story lines to involve the player in something else. These can also be flexible in regards to time needed. I can add small branches of storyline, or new stories all together relatively easily. Now until, School Pop is done, most of the Storylines are gonna be high school oriented, but hey, those were the best seasons of Smallville...amirite? And no these won't be dating dramas. They will be more related to the superhero side of things.

This is the future development cycle I've come up with.

Even updates: 3 weeks of work on a character. 1 week of work on storylines.

odd  updates: 2-3 weeks on functions & backlog renders. 1-2 weeks of work on storylines.

So a couple updates will look like this:

Version 0.26.00

•  Character part 1
•  New storyline with 3 branches

Version 0.27.00

• New Location
• New Combat power
• New Job
• Continue previous storyline with 3 new branches

 Version 0.28.00 

• Character part 2
• Conclusion of previous storyline with 3 new branches

Version 0.29.00

• New function
• Rerenders of shitty old content
• More location actions for new location
• New Storyline with 6 branches

Ect ect ect ......

So when does this start? Well....I'll just remake the Road Map for the rest of the year, so you guys can see. ;)

REST OF 2017 DEV ROAD MAP

0.16.20 Early update  (two weeks)

• Finish developing Denise

0.17.00 -July

• Sister Part 2 (1 week)
• Storyline as many branches as I can do (1 week)
• Basic Combat (been working on this in the background for the last month)

0.18.00 - August

• Sister Part 3 final(3 weeks)
• Storyline continued (1 week)

0.19.00 - September

• Advanced Combat (2 weeks)
• Backlog: Kelly combat/fetish (1 week)
• Storyline completed (1 week)

0.20.00 - October

• Nikki part 1 (3 weeks)
• New Storyline (1 week)

0.21.00 - November

• New Powers: Polymorphism, Armor of Terra (1 week)
• Backlog: Samantha combat/fetish (1 week)
• Storyline cont.. (2 weeks)

0.22.00 - December

• Nikki part 2 (3 weeks)
• Storyline concluded (1 week)

Potential Additions if time permits:

• New school jobs
• New locations
• New Power: Mercurial Speed

As you can see, I won't finish the school at the end of the year as I wanted to. But I'll be further along the game in other areas than I had planned, and you'll actually start to see what the rest of the game is gonna feel like once you get out of the school :P More importantly I won't be bat shit crazy by the end of the year with this new Road Map. Either which way, you'll still be getting the same amount of content, but my focus will be broader now than it was. I hope this doesn't disappoint too many people. I've been struggling to keep up with my desire to put out an update each month, and not go mad in the process for quite a while now. I think this is a good compromise.