ViM Studios: Dev Log 29-Apr-2022 (Patreon)

It's been an exciting week here at ViM Studios. Now that our demo of A Shot in the Dark is officially released, we wanted to give all of our Patrons and fans a detailed update on the progress of both A Shot in the Dark and Prince of Suburbia.

We hope to make this type of update a regular thing (every week or two), so let us know if there's anything in particular you want us to touch on in future updates!

A Shot in the Dark

Chapter 1 (V0.1.1) was released this week and we have been blown away by its reception! We want to thank everyone who has left a rating/review or reached out with even more detailed feedback.

We've known for a few months now that we had something very special on our hands. It's no longer our little secret anymore, and it feels great now to share its ongoing development with the world.

From when Josselyn first started learning how to use DAZ last summer, it has been about 10 months of almost full-time development to complete Chapter 1. We do not expect future chapters to take nearly as long, as a lot of that time was learning what we didn't already know and setting up a strong foundation to continue building upon.

The Photogram phone app currently included in Chapter 1 was meant to be part of the Chapter 2 release. But as we got closer to releasing Chapter 1 we couldn't resist squeezing it in, even though it delayed the release of Chapter 1 by a month. We feel that it adds so much depth and immersion, we just couldn't imagine leaving it out when it was already so close to completion.

Chapter 2 Development Progress

TheOmega is already hard at work on the last big feature, which is text messaging. It will be a crucial part of the gameplay in Chapter 2 and beyond. This also means that the development of Chapter 2, while shorter than Chapter 1, will be longer than future chapters.

Our current estimate is a mid-to-late summer release of Chapter 2, and we will keep you updated as we progress. We are confident it will be worth the wait!

In the meantime, we have a lot of ideas on how to keep Patrons and fans involved in the development process, through polling especially. We welcome your ideas, as well. Quality content takes time to produce, but we are committed to keeping our Patrons and fans involved and updated even in the months between major updates.

One thing Josselyn has been experimenting with is recording her process of making the 3D renders. We will post a sample of what that might look like in a Patrons-only post. Let us know if you'd be interested in seeing more content like that, or any other ideas that you have!

Prince of Suburbia

As we announced earlier this month, with the blessing of both ScarlettAnn and the majority of our Patrons, we have hired auxiliaryout as the sole illustrator and animator of Prince of Suburbia. We know this was a big change, and we appreciate everyone's trust and support with the transition.

V0.7 Development Progress

Auxiliaryout has been working overtime this month on illustrations and animations for V0.7. We are totally blown away by what he has produced so far, and very excited about the future of Prince of Suburbia under his art direction. We will be sharing some sneak peeks of his work for V0.7 in a Patrons-only post. It's too good not to share!

Based on the speed of art production, we are still on track for a late June/early July release for V0.7. Script writing has been on pause while Josselyn helped wrap up Chapter 1 of A Shot in the Dark and got a head start on Chapter 2. Outlines have been made for all of the V0.7 scenes, but we expect most of the actual script writing to happen in late May and early June.

Although there was a revolving door of coders in 2021, TheOmega is now fully in control of coding both our games. The solid foundation he's set up for Prince of Suburbia over the past few months means that coding will be the least time-intensive aspect moving forward. We expect coding to progress very quickly once the art and scripts are completed.

Thanks as always for your support! None of this would be possible without you.

-ViM Studios