Update 30 (Patreon)

tl;dr - Rendering; writing and text formatting; recasting Masami; solving the 'searching all the rooms every day' problem; computer issues update.

Today's image

This isn't a final shot - I'll do a slight revision of it when I get time. (There are a couple of clipping errors.) I'm using it here to demonstrate, however, that I've got a pretty good handle on rendering Kim in Iray now. Initially I had some trouble getting her to look right, but then I found that some settings just work differently in Iray than the way they do in 3Delight. Once I figured that out I was able to stop making Kim look like a weird, shiny, plastic doll.

Rendering

While I've had my computer available I've been re-rendering a bunch of stuff in Iray to improve the visual quality of the game. Not a lot new to say about that, really, except that I'm still happy with the results. I had to spend some of my game work time doing not much else other than rendering yesterday (for reasons not worth explaining) so that's why I was redoing older images.

Writing and text formatting

Because of the computer issues I've been having, much of the time I've been spending some of my work time doing stuff that I can proceed with on my Google Drive files. That's mostly formatting the text to save me time later, and writing some little chunks to fill in small gaps in the script.

Writing is self-explanatory; while I've written most of the game I haven't written absolutely everything. There are a few sex responses in every sex scene that are still unfinished, and some other chunks of text here and there that need finishing. None of them are a huge priority, but filling them in saves me time later.

Text formatting is a mundane task - basically when you play the game the text displays with elipses to break up the lines and the dialogue includes names in bold and coloured text. To create these effects I need to go through the text as written and paste in HTML tags to make it display right. I also need to insert HTML tags to signal when to display images and play audio, so these (and other little text effects) need to be inserted throughout the game. That's basically the job with text formatting - I don't put all these HTML tags in when writing because it really slows me down and impedes my creative flow.

The process also tends to involve some editing. I write extra lines, rewrite or cut stuff that's not working, and plug holes in the text. I am not the most extensive redrafter, but some editing is called for a lot of the time, particularly when I'm working with some sections submitted by other writers.

Normally I do this stuff while inserting text into the game, but right now I don't want to edit the game file too much. I have backups, but my main machine is the new one and that's been in the shop for repairs, so I'm avoiding editing the game file and just sticking mostly to editing stuff that I have available in cloud data.

Recasting Masami

As I've mentioned in past I haven't heard anything from the actress I cast for Masami for a while. Well, I can only leave that for so long before I need to bite the bullet and recast the role. I've posted a new casting call for her and I'm hoping for the best. I did actually like the performance of the actress I cast quite a lot, but with volunteer actors you'll always get this kind of problem, where some of them prove unreliable. It's not a big deal, and I'm recasting at a stage where it's still not going to hold back game development. It's always a shame, however, to have to recast after having cast a role with a performer that felt right for the part.

I actually have had an audition already, and I'm actually pretty happy with her, so I think this should all be fine.

My solution to the 'searching the rooms every day' problem

With the previous Pervert Action games I've had persistent complaints from players that they've felt they need to search all the rooms in every time period to find scenes that will trigger and advance the romantic sub-plots. In PAF I tried to reduce this problem by making the map more simply designed, and having few 'outlier' scenes that needed to be hunted down, but people still went ahead with this pattern of exploring every time period. For Super PAC I added a band-aid to the problem by enabling an optional alert mode, but this wasn't ever something I planned to include in later games.

The problem is that I still want to use these scenes - they tell the story in an interesting way, and they give me the opportunity to put characters in a mix of interesting locations across the map. You can't have Akemi give Kenji an apple at the end of class unless you have that interaction take place in the classroom, for example.

So for PAL I decided my compromise is this: the scenes will always trigger either at the place the woman is currently occupying (wherever that may be) or at the location the scene is set. So if a Masami scene takes place in the lobby, then you can either trigger it by going to the lobby or by going to the conservatory, where Masami hangs out. Also there's few restrictions on when these scenes will trigger, except that they don't overlap much with other scenes, so assuming nothing else has happened in a time period you will be able to trigger a scene just by visiting the girl you're pursuing. What this means in practice is that there shouldn't be any great mystery about whether you need to explore - you don't need to unless you're searching for environmental puzzles and stuff like that. In testing I never go 'hunting' for scenes, they just trigger while I'm playing normally.

I hope this time this approach will have solved the issue, and I won't get any more reports of people searching the map constantly!

Computer issues

After all the elaborate testing and attempts to fix the computer I was going through last week I met with no success, so I brought the new computer back to the vendor. Obviously I want (need, really) the machine to work as this is my Iray renderer. Anyway, they tried fixing it and I brought it back home, only to find it's still crashing. I'm going to take it back to them one more time and tell them it's time to do some serious parts replacements, because there's clearly defective hardware in there. I guess I'll be doing that tomorrow, wish me luck!

What a long update!