Vaasref's new year post (Patreon)

Hey, Vaasref here.

So, 2020 ended.

I know that for many of you the year has been particularly bad. I won’t speak for Jan, but this year was really not kind to his work schedule too.

For me I have not been too much affected apart from one thing.

The big change for me in 2020

At the beginning of this year I dropped out of gunsmithing school. Since it was the last year before diploma, I was supposed to build a gun but the parts kit cost money. I had no way to actually take the gun back to France with me as I don’t have a hunting license or a sport license.

When I say building a gun, I mean hand fitting a side-by-side Anson shotgun. Those things are pricey, from 800 to 2k euros (for the kit), so yeah adding to that a license, I didn’t want to spend that kind of cash.

Anyway because I wasn’t working a gun I spent the better part of the school year trying to find something to do in the shop or at least looking like I was doing something. During the exams I hated the limited time that forces me to drop quality so I barely scraped by. I can work 10h a day squaring a cube of steel with files (that’s something we do in 1st year) but trying to fake working, it is too much of a strain on me, very bad for the mind.

So yeah, when the pandemic started being a pandemic, I had no issue dropping out of school. I got back to France before the first lockdown.

Now I was de facto a full-time adult game developer.

Now I could work on things I thought about during the years working with Jan.

What is coming for DD in 2021 ?

For quite a few months now I have been working on porting Deviant Discoveries to an other game engine.

I set my eyes on Godot. It is a somewhat young open-source game engine. It is a bit immature still as it doesn’t quite have all the bells and whistles needed for a full-fledge 3D game yet. But for porting DD it is really a good candidate.

It resembles a bit Unity when it was still new, but it is much lighter.

Unfortunately Godot, unlike Ren’Py, is not a VN engine, it is a generalist game engine. So alone, it lacks most of the important features we need for DD.

That’s why I looked into Rakugo. It is an open-source add-on to Godot that adds VN functionalities.

But when I first looked at it, it lacked extremely important features that are present in Ren’Py, mainly the ability to rollback.

Yet that was the thing that looked the most like Ren’Py on Godot so I went for it and started to do a proper assessment.

I really didn’t like what I saw. The deeper I looked the less I liked it.

So, I started fixing things here and there and a thing leading to another, ended up rewriting and redesigning it from the ground up. A bit like I did with DD’s code actually. There were issues and I fixed them by flushing all the old code with new one.

It took me a few months of work, but as of now, I think I can safely say that Godot-Rakugo is ready for me to port Deviant Discoveries onto.

So why porting it ? It is quite the daunting task after all.

Well  the systems I introduced late 2019 with the updater and image packs made porting it Android a non trivial task. It would take some work to add that special case of Android.

And to be frank, I’m quite fed up working with Ren’Py. The only nice thing about it, is Python, which is a really nice language, but doesn’t prevent me from having a horrible time on Ren’Py.

Also, remember those ideas I mentioned earlier, well I cannot do anything about them on Ren’Py, but Godot is almost perfect for those.

What else for 2021 ?

With Jan’s limited work schedule, updates on DD have been sparse.

We have been trying to make smaller updates to reduce the delay between them but it seems that Jan is unable to do so. I’m not saying it is a fault or anything, I’m the first to say that ideas need time to mature, that is true for technical matters as well as for artistry.

But we tried and we must admit we failed. Now we must move on.

Since I started working on Godot I toyed with shaders as I want to add some effects to the game.

I have some decent looking prototypes that while needing more work, showcased what could be possible, and that got me thinking.

If I like to toy with effects, maybe you would too.

So here is the plan.

I would like, for 2021, to make, let’s call it a “toy app” (not on Android) for you to play with the different effects I’ll create.

The aim is to add at least 1 scene per month. The scene will either be scenes already in the game or new ones, but preferably starting with scenes already made.

The goal here is to be able to give you monthly content while only adding a minimal amount of work on Jan’s part so he can continue working on DD.

Since it is not constrained by the story setting of Deviant Discoveries, it will allow for some more “creative” scenes.

Thus I would like to announce 2 new Patreon tiers, I’ll put the detail at the end of this post.

I would like to clarify what a “scene” means in the context of that toy-app.

A scene would be a single pose with potentially multiple rendered view angles plus 3D shenanigans (I would like to try my hand at some hybrid rendering)

Think about : moving pictures with some degree of interaction.

The goal being to be spare on Jan’s work time, this is a necessary limitation.

So what effects could you expect to see ?

Well of the prototypes I can only show you one here, on Patreon.

https://puu.sh/GqS9e/8018dacc26.gif

This was the only scene I had the 3D model of and I had to match the camera by hand. So it doesn’t look that great but it certainly teases my imagination, for less “clothed” scenes.

I have also been working on a spank ripple effect that is already looking decent.

It is also easily possible to imagine some reddening effect, sweat glister, some breathing animation maybe.

The limiting factors here will be that we are talking about adding effects on a rendered image, that limits the amount of trickery possible. And maybe more importantly, ultimately it will depend on my skill at creating them.

Depending on the effects I add along the road, many should be usable on already released scenes.

About interactivity, I’m thinking about giving you the ability to have a couple of sliders for you to adjust the strength of most effects.

The tattoo/body writing will definitely be a thing, and if I manage I may even add a way to save tattoos on girls between scenes.

Plus there will probably be a clic-to-spank at some point too, I don’t think I could live with myself if I don’t at least try to do that.

Details on the new Patreon tiers

The new Patreon tiers are :

• $50 limited to 3 patrons

If they wish so, they can choose the next monthly scene to be included.

That scene can be either already in the main game or a new one to be approved by Jan (since he needs to be able to make it)

A consensus needs to be reached between the 3.

• $100 limited to 1 patron

If they wish so, they can choose an extra scene.

The scene chosen needs to respect the same criterias as mentioned for the $50 tier.

Those 2 tiers will have access to a private channel on Discord for us to discuss the scenes they want to see.

They may also have access to in-dev builds depending on feasibility.

Anyway that will be it for today, happy new year everyone.

I’m available on Discord to chat, if I'm awake.