Dev Update (Patreon)

Hi Folks,

We still need at least a couple more weeks for episode 22 but we are still planning on a March release.  We hope to start beta testing some scenes in a week, so if anybody is interested in joining the beta test team ($10 patrons and above, then please let me know).   Beta testing is done using manual install/patches (similar to our update only releases), rather than full-install releases so you'll need to be familiar with that to be a beta tester.

Our biggest bottle-neck is still in the art department but as mentioned previously we now have a second artist on the team and he will be taking on some of the animation workload.  We also need to re-do some the episode 22 art to improve the quality (see details below).

I have also (finally) completed the episode 19 walkthrough, so I'll post that to the appropriate tiers a little later and I'm aiming to complete the episode 20 walkthrough in a week or so.

For episode 22, I'm also going to add a few extra functions / options to the "Start any episode" menus to give you a little more control on your starting attributes / choices depending on what episode / relationship status / choices you want to jump  in and start playing with.

I would also really, really like to add some music/ FX to the game but not sure how feasible that is at the moment.  If I can do it without risking a March release, then I will but if not, then we'll try to implement in the next episode instead.

Also - I've had a few questions via DMs about episode plans / story arcs, etc. so I wanted to provide a little insight.  Episode 22 will result in some BIG decisions being made (final decisions) so please bear that in mind when you are making choices.  As for the inheritance  story arc -the current plan is for everything to become clear (gold-digger, conditions, etc.) by episode 23/24 - So 2022 will reveal ALL.  Episode 25 will cover the fall-out / after-effects and then we will just have epilogues remaining.  So we are definitely moving towards the end-game in this looong journey.  Thanks for bearing with us and for the continued support.

I've also had a few questions about the art process so I just wanted to touch on some of that too.  All of our art is created using DAZ3D which is a 3D art software package.  Every character / location /accessory (props, hair, clothes, etc.) comes as an asset that we then customize and place in a scene.  We then have to light the scene (similar to how lighting in a  a photo-shoot / movie needs to be done).  The lighting is the trickiest part and usually what takes us the longest.  Then we choose camera angles and tweak the lighting for each individual image and then pose the characters.  Then when we are happy with a specific image set-up, we "Render"" the image.   This is where all light sources and camera angles/focus are simulated and the image is created.  This can take 15 minutes to 3 hours per image depending on the complexity  (we have over 1000 images per episode).  Sometimes, the first render comes out good and we move on...sometimes we need to make tweaks and re-render...and sometimes...halfway through a scene, we realize the quality just isn't what we need and we end up making wholesale changes and re-doing dozens of individual images.   Here's an example of the process....

Here are two different Katie images - Neither of which made the cut as we weren't happy with the lighting /shadows but you can see the difference lighting makes (everything from the floor to her skin looks different)

We also end up having to do a lot of tweaks on images  (sometimes it's due to our errors - sometimes just because of quality issues with the DAZ assets and sometimes a combination of both)... such as this image....

She has holes in her top and her shorts/pants are merging into one another, so we need to correct all of these small imperfections that could ruin the image.

Jenna's top was was also a nightmare in this scene.

Skin can also be a problem - Look at her inner thighs.  Between the two images and you'll see what I mean (will probably need to open the images full screen to see the difference).

And then we do ALL of this for each image (over a thousand) and animations.  Animations are 30x times more complex than a single image so I won't even get into details on those.  :)

So as you can imagine all of this takes time and we could literally sink hours into a single image.

If we didn't put this amount of effort in?   For some people having these errors / poor quality images wouldn't even bother them.  But for others, it would totally ruin the experience of the game.   We want to continuously raise the quality bar as we produce each new episode.  If we didn't strive to improve each and every episode then images such as this:

And this...

From episode 1....Would still be our quality level.  And we would never get to here....

(From our episode 1 redux)

Or this....

(Episode 17 with some postwork)

To this....

(Episode 22 - just rendered this morning)

We want to continue this improvement in future episodes of WTHI and throughout new projects and we hope you'll still be with us to enjoy!

As usual, please feel free to add any inputs or questions in the comments section below or via DM.

Thanks,

CG