The Apprentice's Test - Official Release
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I have just made public the demo for my upcoming game, The Apprentice's Test.
Available here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/14081427 It’s just the intro and it no full sex scenes, but it serves as an introduction for the cast and a certain gimmick I won’t say much about. Be sure to read the Readme for two unique commands, one of which you might need to end the demo. Figured I'd better start mirroring my posts here, otherwise people who don't check my Patreon page might think I'm dead...
Currently working on finishing the longest and most complex event in Day 2. I was kind of terrified to even begin this part since there’s since there’s an exhausting number of variations, both tiny and really not tiny, but I’m finally happy with the scene flow and finished up the last of the alternative outcomes. Generally, I’ll write up a scene and then spend days going over it with a comb tweaking small details until I’m happy with how everything sounds. It’s only at that stage that I really work out how each character speaks and behaves, particular mannerisms and so on. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve come up with character’s rough outline and hen end up with something distinctly different by the time I’m done with the dialogue. It’s actually pretty entertaining, even I it feels strange to step back and realize I’m readjusting my plans to satisfy the preferences of a figment of my imagination. A side effect of this is that it’s been two weeks since I hit Compile on the TADS workbench, which is sort of like when you haven’t dusted a shelf in long enough that you start dreading the thought of so much a breathing too hard around it. There is no way all the spaghetti code I wrote will work without on first try, but working out where everything’s gone tits up is in itself an entertaining puzzle for when I’m feeling writer’s block. Anyhow, that’s it for now. See you next time. Slow week due to a bit of annoying news: I’ll have to get surgery for an annoying lump on my neck that, in hindsight, seems to have been giving me cramps for my entire life and finally got annoying enough to notice. It’s nothing serious and the thing is on the outer side of the spine, so no fiddling with the marrow thankfully, but it’s thrown a bit of a wrench in my schedule. Again, nothing to worry about, I’m actually looking forward to knowing what it’s like to not have neck cramps 24/7, but it’s probably going to knock me out of commission for a few days when I have the operation. That’ll take a long while to greenlight though, so I’ll try to get as much done as I can in the following months. The game is progressing nicely. I wrote a short scene, two characters’ base dialogue trees and working on a third now, along with the rest of the map. The intro shouldn’t take much longer to wrap up. I’ll have something of more substance to post later. As an aside, I’ve kept fiddling with the poser game I mentioned last time while sorting through writer’s block. I’m getting not-utterly-incompetent at making poses, though I still meet the inevitable constraints of the assets not being exactly how I imagine them. Still, here are some I made that I rather liked: Lysara and her daughter Lyna(ra), almost exactly as I pictured them. Lynara ought to be about half a head shorter, to be honest, but I got lazy halfway through. I’ll be posting more of these as I keep making them, though I still haven’t really decided if I will actually use them in the games. One of the biggest things I lack right now is probably backgrounds. Until next time.
I meant to post this on Sunday, but there was a blackout and it took most of yesterday for the electricity to return. Anyway… I’m doing very promising progress on my new project, the kind that means there’s no risk of slamming against another dead end. I ended up retreating into my comfort zone of Overexplained Fantasy with Fucking, but what can I say, it’s fun to write. I’m trying real hard to make this more of an actual game with player choice actually mattering this time around as opposed to merely blocking off certain features, and so far it looks like the plan should be successful. Without saying too much, because it’ll be a while before it’s done and I have to fill these intermittent posts with something, the intention is for the game to follow a tree-day structure with each day separated into morning, afternoon and evening, during which you will have to secure a certain number of objectives in one way or another leading up to a conclusion on the last night… that’s vague as hell, innit? Well, it involves a wizard school, so let’s start with that. The introductory section, which I should finish relatively soon-ish, looks like it could easily be chopped off and delivered standalone, so I’ll probably be releasing that at some point as a form of teaser. Aside from that, I’ve been mucking around with a number of modelling programs, ILLUSION’s Honey Select being the last of them (technically a game, but there’s not much actual game there). My stance on incorporating images into my games stands: I have nothing against the concept, but I find them annoyingly constricting in terms of assets. For instance, I had just finished writing down a new character, tried to recreate them in the game and couldn’t find the right hair assets to make it work. It’s fun enough though, and sometimes I can get something close enough. Here’s an attempt at making Aura for instance: Does that look like what you imagined she’d be like? The braid should be a bit longer, only slides over her shoulder in certain poses, and the side-bangs should be a little longer as well but that’s a pretty good approximation to how I pictured her.
I’m not really sure whether I’ll be incorporating this into the games or not; it depends on whether I hit a bottleneck or whether there’s enough asset packs to make more varied characters later on. I was halfway through making Kimiko when I realized there’s nothing to make the tails with, for instance. Male models are even more restrictive, and all of this is without even considering the matter of clothing, which is likely a lost cause. Still, this is just the about the only program simple enough for me to produce something that doesn’t look disturbingly Uncanny Valley-y. Anyway, that’s about it for now. I hope to have something more substantial ready soon. Until next time. The project I previously announced was an experiment I decided on after mulling over multiple approaches to a specific type of game: quick, highly variable events that could be replayed many times with multiple results. That experiment failed.
Simply put, I wrote myself into a corner. The scenario was too constrictive for what I wanted to do and I couldn’t deliver a meaningful development that way. Reshuffling the setting to accommodate for this is an option, but that would require excising the central mechanic, at which point it would not even be the same game anymore and I’d have to scrap pretty much everything I’d done so far. Also, to be honest, I was not really feeling it. I had an idea that I had some interest in doing, but when I finally got to the point of the characters being in place, I realized I didn’t much care for most of them. That’s a deal breaker for me: I know there’s no way I can write anything satisfying if I’m just plodding along with a scenario out of obligation. Seeing as this put me in a rather shitty position, I immediately got about scrounging up a Plan B, which on a lighter note doesn’t sound bad at all. On the short term, I jump-started production on Interlude Part II, which I ought to be able to push out rather soon-ish. At least the entire intro is all done already and, not being a threesome this time, it shouldn’t take me forever to complete like the first one did. It is about the natural conclusion Deus was repeatedly warned about during Aftermath. On a more long-term basis, I took an old project out of the fridge that I’m much more hopeful about. I had put it into hiatus as I believed the current one would be much quicker to finish, not because I had any specific issues with it, so I can get to work on it immediately after I release Interlude. The planning process for that one was essentially complete, and I’ve ironed-out the last few kinks over the past week, so I’m confident that there won’t be any unpleasant dead ends on that front. That plan also includes several player-choice driven sequences that ought to address my previous failings on that front, so at least the spirit pf the project survives. I suppose this happens. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything that early in development. The issue becomes more difficult when one has backers to answer to, but all I can say is that I wouldn’t be doing this unless I was absolutely sure that continuing down this road would be a waste of time. The comment about not “feeling” it might seem frivolous, but the difference feels like night and day now that I’m back to writing something I’m truly interested in. The stuff I was doing was quite honestly not very good and it would have turned out a disappointment if I had forced myself to continue. tl;dr: Current project is cancelled. Shifting gears into writing Interlude II and then to my original project from earlier. Once again, my apologies to everyone. My original plan was to do the second interlude scene before starting up the next game proper, but I realized that my plans for the game weren’t really progressing at all when I was just drafting it in the air. In short, I was stalling. I spent like a month idly pondering how to work out a specific mechanic and whether I could program it at all or not, and then sat down one evening and coded a working prototype in about one hour. I think the lesson there is that some planning is good, but sometimes I gotta just dive right into it.
So, screw it, I am officially starting full production of my next game. ETA: hell if I know. I’ve got a much clearer idea of where this is going this time around and have already designed and implemented the entire cast, so that’s a new one for me. I’m taking a break from the fantasy setting to try a hand at the thoroughly original highschool-student-tries-to-get-laid scenario because there clearly aren’t enough of those yet. Jokes aside, it’s a bit of a self-imposed challenge: I want to see if I can make an effective cast and scenario without relying on lengthy exposition or convoluted plotlines. Every idea I kept getting for games kept getting bogged down by my need to overfluff setting and backstory, so I want to see if I can produce a set of characters who manage to be appealing without each having the bloody Silmarillion as required reading for backstory. Aside from that, this time I’m trying to work on what I think has been the main flaw of my previous games: replayability. I’m going for a much shorter playtime, but with hopefully much more variation so that there’s a reason to go through it several times and experience all possible outcomes. Anyway, that’s about it for now. I’ll reveal more details as the plot continues to take form, especially since I know for a fact that my early concepts always end up shifting throughout development. For the time being, “The Blackout” seems like a possible working title, but as with everything else, it is subject to change. ‘til next time. More details plus download link here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/game-release-1-5767173
Funny story: -Time spent slowly deliberating on how complex a game mechanic would be to code and how to go about it: 3-5 weeks. -Time spent successfully coding the bulk of it after discarding the idea, recalling it, and going "fuck it, let's try": approximately 30 minutes. I'm sure there's a lesson there. This has nothing to do with this new release, mind you, but it might mean my new game is finally taking shape. Figured I should start weekly updates again since I’m close to releasing something.
Work’s been heavy as of late, but I finally feel like my drafts of the next game are turning into something both coherent and feasible. It’s a very strange feeling having an idea, panicking over having no idea how it’s going to go as you keep sketching down ideas, and then realizing at some point that the whole thing’s stating to make sense… But that’s still far off yet, I haven’t even begun writing that title. In the meantime, one of the two “add-on” scenes I had planned for Aftermath is almost fully written. As I said before, this was something I had intended to put as a post-game bonus in the same vein as GoP3’s bonus scene, but I had to put that off else the game wouldn’t even be out yet. I only need to finish the responses for one last “action”, review the text and then probably get at least one person to spellcheck it (hardly enough “game” there to expect bugs.) It’s one out of two I had planned, and definitely the longest one, so the second scene should come a lot quicker while I finish getting the pre-design part of the next game over. The subject… is meant to be a surprise I guess, though I doubt it will be given that it’s the one thing most people asked about after Aftermath. I’ll probably try to avoid threesomes like the plague for a while after this though, because God damnit they balloon writing times up like you wouldn’t believe… |
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