Dev Diary #2: Why HoneySelect? (Patreon)

I played a lot of adult games before I started making "Bloodlines." Most were abandoned during production. The more I thought about making my own game, the more I realized that these things live and die by the amount of art they contain. So, how do you guarantee your game has a strong art pipeline?

If you're going to make the art yourself, you need the right tools.

For "Bloodlines," we're relying on a heavily-modified version of HoneySelect. I'll say up front that most 3D modelers typically work with professional software like Daz 3D, Poser, or even the open source Blender. All of these are more powerful than HoneySelect, but they also take a lot more time and effort to use.

I've posted links on our Discord server to some games, comics, and light novels that use HoneySelect, and you'll see that this program allows non-artists to make some very pretty pictures. In the hands of an accomplished artist, it can even put Daz 3D and Poser art to shame.

But the trap of HoneySelect is that it's so easy to use, many "artists" get very lazy. The vast majority of HoneySelect-based games don't look like "Bloodlines" because they use the same stock models, clothes, lighting, and backgrounds over and over. Those results can be pleasing, if you've never seen HoneySelect (or PlayHome or SexyBeach) art before. But, after a while, it's like watching the same pornstars in the same outfits, filming the same sexual position on the same bed: you'll want to move onto something else. That's the kiss of death for an ongoing game.

So, why do we risk this for "Bloodlines"? We don't. HoneySelect is a Unity Engine game, which has made it quite easy to mod the program for better lighting, rendering, posing, and textures. Artists have also ported assets from other projects, meaning there is an embarrassment of riches floating around the community. You want a Bavarian castle? Someone's sharing assets. You want vampire fangs? Someone is sharing them. You want forty different types of nipple piercing? Hold my beer.

Even though this may not be the ideal program for making an adult game about vampires, it's the right tool for a solo creator to update an art-heavy game with 200-300 new images every month. True, I've had to mod it to the point where my computer is buckling under its resource demands, but it's worth it.

Next time: Dev Diary #3: Why Vampires?