$10 Fireside Chat (Patreon)

Ahhh so comfy, so comfy in these cold winter months!

Hello my $10 friends, welcome to the fireside chat. I'm thinking of doing something like this bimonthly, or perhaps even quarterly due to the kind of slow-burn content that we'll be discussing today, but I guess we'll see- things might move quicker than expected.

So, what are we talking about today? Well just a general idea of how things are going and what's going on behind the scenes, and the main thing going on right now is dealing with Unity.

Unity?

So as most of you know, after the Thrallworks Demo has been released, I'll be working on transferring what's been made so far over to Unity and seek to build the rest of the game in that engine. There's a few reasons for doing that, and I think I'm finally in a decent enough position to show you some reasons why and what kind of content is driving this.

Simply put, Unity offers much greater utility than ren'py. There's no sensible way to be able to dynamically add good-looking content to a thrall's project file as the project goes on in ren'py. It's just impossible. Can't happen. Hell, you can't even play mp4 videos in ren'py, you have to stick to lower-quality webM's! Check out cerise_example in the attachments. Is it dope? Yes. Can I put it in the game? NO!

Sure you could get deep into the python and tear it apart to make it do what you want, but surely the reverse is easier- as you can see above, Unity has some pretty nice asset packages for doing visual novels in, and it's just plain better for designing more game-like structures.

Yep, all of the above video is done in Unity. And care to guess how long that whole scene took me to make?

I made it today. From scratch.

...Well, the writing and arrangement, anyway. And this I think can tell you something about where the time is sunk, and has been sunk, in making Thrallworks so far.

You see, the things missing in the video above are where all the time goes (barring an extra day or two to tighten up the script). The expressions don't change. There's no real effects happening. There're no secondary screens, the movement (though quite delightful) is simple and out-of-the-box. There's no variation in text colour for things like triggers, no sound (well I recorded with bgm but it doesn't seem to have transferred over) and there's no choices or branching paths.

If I didn't have to care about these things, if I was simply just writing content, then things would be frighteningly fast. But, it's the extras that make things worthwhile and hits the top-quality mark that I'm aiming for. I don't want to give y'all anything less than something great, because I wouldn't want anything less.

But still. this took me a day. And if I were then to give, say, Ty Lee, all the expressions she deserves...that would be another 2/3 days just for that. For Keller, you could make that 2/3 weeks as he doesn't even have the luxury of the ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED faces that I've already made for Ty Lee. Now over, say....a month. Would you rather have 10 more scenes like this with only slight changes of expression? Or 1 scene of highly varied expressions?

...Mmm. I agree. But even though I agree, I can't help but love the variety. The craft of it. So I'm thinking that perhaps there's a middle road I can hit between quality and quantity that can keep people happy.

And perhaps the answer lies in what I'm doing for the Movement game.

The What?

Again, as most of you know, I'm making another game very very casually with another programmer; a game about taking over villages, towns and cities with a magic sex cult. Really at this point we're still just knowing around ideas and testing some things out. One of those things we're testing is Live2d, a mesh-rigging program that can do stuff like you can see in exhibit A in the attachments.

Pretty cute, right? In my experience it would take a fair amount of skill to make really-really dynamic images, but for expression work and shifting between expressions, it could work pretty nicely.

And hey, the VN Engine I used to make the title video? That supports Live2d models! After a model's made I can drag and drop it in and link up changes to expressions/bodyshifts to lines of dialogue.

So this is certainly an avenue I'm thinking of looking at pursuing for Thrallworks as well. Infact the special-guest character within the above video is going to be my test-subject for the process.

...And yes, win-or-lose for that I'm probably going to completely redraw Cerise, Ty Lee and Keller during all of this anyway. It sucks, but I can't be precious about it. In all honesty the process was too cumbersome.

Another thing that we're testing with the Movement game is dynamic 2d lighting. Check that out in exhibit B.

Basically it allows some nice in-situ lighting that isn't just stuck to the character model and can change based on the lighting of the scene. I'm pretty keen for this and am going to see how it can be used in conjunction with live2d to see what max-benefits look like.

Anyway, so far as the Movement project goes in general...it goes nicely apace. Here have a cute fitness centre girl.

Yes very cute. I think this is the kind of visual style we're going for with the game. I don't want to put a timeline on an MVP for this just yet, but certainly something will be done this year, perhaps even in the first half. It really helps when I don't have to do everything myself!

As for Thrallworks content...here, have out special guest.

Kawaii, eh?

So Azula's in it as a side character. Infact a lot of the character design post-demo is going to be for the larger side-characters, most of which are going to be OC's, but certainly with some exceptions.

And the above scene is indicative of what a lot of the content is going to turn into after the orientation.

Post-Orientation content.

There is only very rarely going to be expansive, big-big multi-choice scenes in Thrallworks past the orientations and other key narrative moments. This is because, well, you'll be teaching L-D19 for months in-game, and you are going to get bored of just seeing the same lessons and junk for like ten times on repeat. Did anyone like having to send Jasmine to the same bar over and over to grind for gold in princess trainer? No! So why do that?

Instead the 'instructing' will be based around picking the lessons for your material and trying to keep them in a mental and physical 'sweet spot' for maximum learning potential, knowing when to push her and when to ease off, booking in breaks, giving her test and making various calls as to when you feel she's 'ready', and giving yourself some downtime here and there too.

A lot of the content is going to be done in the sidelines. It's going to be in strange 1-off occurences that can happen at random (like the above, which has a chance of happening early in training if you take a break through the park), in introductions to lessons, in booking sessions with your assigned pleasure thralls, going to shows, interactions with Cerise, etc. these little asides of life are where I'm going to focus my attention for content - 100 line dialogue scenes with maybe 1CG apiece at best.

And, more importantly, with each strategy, Trust, Guilt, Fear, having their own unique lessons and own unique interactions. Not 100%, I mean a pleasurethrall sesh is a pleasurethrall sesh, but largely so. The above video happens in the Trust route. You can expect different when it comes to Guilt and Fear.

So it comes to this. What do I want to give you $10inos?

$10 Scenes

I appreciate your support a lot, and I'd like to set up something going ahead like some method to prioritize these scenes, like letting you pick or even suggesting some alt-choices for scenes or the like. I think it could be pretty fun. Or maybe even interactions following some of the other side-characters with each other, when those assets are done. That'd be pretty dope bonus content wouldn't it, to follow Harvester Jet on a mission or on a day off? Yeah I like that a lot when it comes to extra $10 scenes.

And it won't be exactly 'by vote' either. I've not liked how votes have gone in the past in how it means some of ya have had to miss out. So instead votes for these things will work more like weighting a die roll. So say there're 4 votes: 3 go to A and 1 goes to B. B could still win, but they only have a 1 in 4 chance of it when I roll a d4 to decide.

So that's how I'll be running these scene votes. The exact construction of what scenes and people suggesting scenes etc. we'll work out after the demo's out, we've still go work to do on that front. Check it.

Some of this I'll probably even have to cut, considering my other responsibilities. But I can at least say that when the updates are done y'all are going to be able to play a fully integrated demo. That'll be pretty neat, eh?

Other stuff

Tssss what else, what else...

Volition went pretty well. Not mindbogglingly well, but pretty well. Still gotta figure out how to market things I guess.

Ponygirl game is progressing artwise. The programming is lagging behind but I think I know what I'm doing with it now.

Gladiator tournament on discord is proving fun to run. Almost makes me think of making *that* into a game too.

Commissions? Post-pony, it'll be a Labourer set. And I think we're going to try and keep to 4 drones a month too. Buildin' up that exchange! :D

I think that's all the key content right now. Doubtless I'll go into these in more detail in a State of the Union - the Fireside chats I intend to just show y'all what's in the pipline and not fit for wider consumption just yet.

And you, TDL?

I'm honestly surprised by how well I'm doing these days. This level of activity rather suits me, I just need to round out the experience a little. More writing, perhaps. More air, certainly. Only thing to complain about is how dang lonely it can get...but then often I just look at regular people joshing about online and it feels like some nonsense practice. Strange how the mind works.

So yeah! This being a chat, please do leave comments below or ask questions in the boardroom on the discord if you're interested about any of this; I intended for this to be a dialogue afterall. Y'all are great for allowing me to spend most of my waking hours working on this stuff and I am always thinking about what I can do to pay you back for your patronage.

So cheers...and Enjoy!