Alpha 4.1 Update - Plans and Changes (Patreon)

Hey guys this is tiarawhy, I wanted to update you all on the changes we’re planning to make towards the lewd scenes of the game.  This sudden change is coming from me primarily and because of that Alpha 4.1 unfortunately won’t include the lewd scenes but the new library date will be released as planned.

Please direct your concerns/flames to me as this was out of Scion’s/Spooky’s hands and something I dropped them towards the end of the month because I felt that if we didn’t change course now then the game would keep being delayed, and the actual development side becoming bogged down as I began to feel frustrated with what I was making and I really did not want this game to sink.

These are my reasons that I feel require the change:

The game normally is a mix of visual novel and choose your own adventure kind of thing in town exploration (with minigames/character stars which we want to implement). Early on we had a few ideas of how lewd parts of the game would work, and without putting more discussion into it we decided that I’d just animate the scenes and have it be like like those old flash games Mittsies and myself used to make. However, months later into this process something began to feel off to me. Learning unity enough to animate in was in itself a process, and making things in Toonboom/cutting up sprites/exporting and then readjusting/rebuilding them in unity was also a huge deal.

Animating in unity is a lot more challenging to me than originally thought as well, and due to it all being tween/curve based there were many adjustments which I did not expect I’d have to fight with to make it work (and any changes/adjustment to the rigs requiring editing elsewhere/re-exporting/readjusting, it’s not like you can draw/make assets inside of unity).

The time required to produce such a scene, and so the length of time kept growing more and more to the point of where it’s been months. The creation of dates/interactions with ponies were relatively fast to make, but the lewd parts were not. Creating the art/dialogue for those dates/scenes were also fun for everyone involved, and to me personally I enjoyed making the assets for that.

Despite all of this, we managed to put the lewd animation into the game, and then we played the scenes and to me that’s where it really fell apart.

Leading up to the lewd part, you have a cute moment with twilight and dialogue/choices going on, but then there is a sudden jump to the idle animation without any real dialogue/description, and instead it’s a purely visual thing. The feeling of interaction with the pony flipped on its head and that is the problem that stands out most to me, I just don’t feel like I’m interacting with the same character for the lewd part due to lack of the dialogue/cute faces/descriptions/reaction/etc.

We also spent a lot of time trying to making interactive items, and I think that’s a good thing to have but just in smaller doses and for very specific areas (like the hair brushing could be a smaller thing in a specific scenario of a character minigame, or like butt slaps for a scene where for a certain character’s story that we have planned), but just trying to implement heavy interaction for a full sex scene is quite a lengthy process.

So what I’m proposing is this:

Instead, the lewd part of the game instead be more like the date side, where the art assets change depending on the dialogue/interaction, and there is heavier focus on the dialogue/description to go with the lewd visual imagery instead of it being an animation. We would move the current animation to be an easter egg instead having it be part of the main story.

The animation side is fun and nice and I love it (as an animator), but I really think we should try the storyboard/VN style of lewd scenes, and then if we have additional budget/team mates go back and add animated sequences in certain places to aid the visual static interaction.

This way we can get back on track of having much faster updates instead of a 3-4 month wait or more for an update/lewd part, and we can actually get through the all six ponies in a more timely manner so that we can explore the lewder/fetish additions and other characters (cause at the current rate it will be literally years before we get through all six ponies).

I know this will likely upset a lot of supporters and I’m fully prepared to take the brunt of that since this decision to change is coming from me, so please again feel free to message me over it (I’m available in Discord or by emailing Tiarawhy@StudioWhy.net anytime).