Hi all!
A little update as to where I'm at...
Good news! I've actually completely finished the Alice scene and I'm really really happy with it (I love working on her scenes!). These are all getting quite long now, so it ended up being 420 images and 33 animations (There's actually more but that includes some montages with more than 1).
This one did have it's challenges as there is water involved as well as Alice's trait, but I'm pleased to say it's all done, along with sounds, music, notebook, replay gallery etc.
Somehow I managed to crank that out from start to finish in 8 days (a lot of 2-3am bedtimes!).
As I had jumped the gun on Layla/Heather scene before the vote finished, I thought I may as well finish that one off as it came in second place. I'm currently about 200 images into that, and 33 anims down (but not all rendered. That's current happening as I'm typing). I'm going to anticipate another week on that, then I should have a package ready to go, but with testing etc and other routes it may take longer.
I'm probably also going to include a small scene after the afternoon events just to bring you to a nice 'stop' rather than it being sporadic across the choices.
The difficulty with some of these scenes is - if you've not already kissed the girl or made some kind of relationship with them, it still has to be a playable an interesting scene. It also may need to add the option to start a relationship with them. I don't want there to be absolutely no way in with the characters if you've not made a move on them just yet, else there's less incentive to try the other routes if you're only focussed on one girl. So I've got to cater for those who have played the route with that love interest as well as those who are just playing through and decided to make that choice. That means, a lot more dialogue and a lot more facial expressions to be rendered. I'm also trying to reward earlier choices in the game with something of value.
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As an example, those of you who have played Mia's and Beth's scenes might have noticed you get some additional content/animations if you complimented their bodies at the seance.
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So I'm really trying to create more of a feeling that your choices do matter, but as a result it does make things take quite a lot longer than if you're doing a more linear game.
Generally, I'll create the normal script, then afterwards take a look through all of that characters variables to see if I can include any cute comments here and there to give a nod to them.
I'm absolutely loving doing these scenes one by one from start to finish. It's so much less daunting than doing the entire episode, then leaving the sound and other bits till the end. Honestly, I can't tell you how time consuming that felt to go through each scene, find the right sound effect, edit it, and add it in for each scene and about 40 scenes in a row. It took days of literally just doing that. It should also help with testing too, so there ultimately should be less bugs by the end of the episode.
I'll try and work out some kind of roadmap to show how many scenes are left of the entire episode, as I think that might be interesting for some of you to see where we're actually at.
I hope you're all having a great week!
I'll check in soon!
Nickle3DArt