Huge, detailed progress update and some more infos to Dream Molder

Hey everyone, it's about time for me to give an update again!
I actually wanted to do this a while ago and started writing this post a few times, but never actually finished/puplished it because of lacking the time to...

But the last proper Update has been way to long and I guess I also did a lot, so here's my next attempt at giving some proper update on the games progress.

This is going to be a lot of info like random sketches, a lot of numbers and rambling from my side, and so on...
So for anyone that just wants to know if I'm still working on this: I do.
Just not updating as frequently because I have a lot going on.

When is it done?
Probably still going to take a while, won't really be able to tell how long for sure..
But since the writing is mostly done I can concentrate on doing the art now and once I have the full list of what still needs to be done I can probably estimate a time for the first release of a demo too.
For now my random updates from time to time have to be enough. :c

• Writing and Story Part

              - Word Count

• Next Step: Adding Notes
• Charakter Sketches

              - Braixen
              - Braixen Style Choices
              - Childhood Friend
              - Other Characters

• Material Checklist
• End Notes

Let's start with the..
Writing and Story Part

I took a while to write the whole thing and I'm happy that it's finally over. xD
I still have a lot of problems with writing.
First of all, writing in another language makes it hard to write things in a "beautiful" way from time to time since I don't know enough about the language in itself or what words I can/cannot use in some situations.

I had a lot of ideas in my language that translated simply wouldn't make sense.
Guess the only thing that could fix this would be reading more books and playing more VN's in english. :.D

Another thing I had problems with is motivation.
I had to force myself to keep writing a lot when I didn't have the ideas and inspirations, what visibly resulted in worse outcomes.

I'm still feeling bad about some parts that just aren't as good, especially the early ones where I just didn't know how to even start yet.
But I'm going to look over them again once I put everything together and hopefulle fix some of them while I'm at it.

The last bit that I failed at is experience and knowledge alltogether.
For example, if I don't know enough about a certain job or hobby a character has I can't write properly about it and make it seem "real".
I didn't think enough about that before I started writing and ended up a lot of failed research and trying to work around it.

This will need some fixing before I release any of the text, but for now I will do everything else since I have the rough story and dialogue needed to make a list with art I need for the game.

Word Count
At this moment of time the story has around 120k words, distributed ~44 scenes and 5 different game paths. (Counting in names, but not the H-Scenes)
This isn't a lot considering the time I took to write it, and most of it falls into the later parts of the story where I kind of got the hang of it.

I saw somewhere that ~10k words are roughly 1h of reading time.
If this is true it would take over 10 hours to play through every path of the game without skipping.
And this isn't even counting in the waiting times for art and sound, animations and the later added H-scenes that probably are a large part of the game as well.

I'm still removing, changing and adding stuff, but I hope that in the end the game will be not only long enough but also decent enough to keep people playing and let them not just skip through.
But yeah.. Just wanted to give through some numbers for anyone curious


Next Step, adding Notes

The next step for me would be to add some additional notes to the game for me to use once I create the exe.

For example what kind of transition I want to use in which scene, what pose is needed for the character and so on...
Additionally I will add every new pose, background and character needed in those notes to a material checklist, so I know what I still need to draw before I can put together the first simple, uncolorized demo with the sketches.

This will take a while since I need to read through the whole thing again and add my little infos after every sentence.
When I started writing I actually added the notes alongside, but I dropped doing this because I thought It would make the progress of writing even slower and distract me in the end.

It won't make a difference time wise since I have to do it afterwards anyway I guess, but I guess I feel better with it now that the story in itself is done.

Once I added notes to all the scenes I have the complete material list and can add proper timers and percentages to the progress bars on the main site again since I will know what I still have to do.


Character Sketches

Even though I wanted to do the notes first I took a break inbetween to start doing some of the character sketches.
For one I wanted a break from reading through the story and adding notes every few words, but I also wanted to have at least something that I can show with my next update here on the site.

While I did have a vague idea of how I want the characters to look like I never drew the proper 
references or wrote any kind of character description.

This was mostly because I only focused on Braixen and the H-Scene as I made the small demo that I already released.
Since this way I didn't have to care about story stuff and could concentrate on practicing drawing and animating, as I just
started learning them.

However, this resulted in different looking Braixen's and sketches over the time of making the game
since my opinion of how I want Braixen to look like and my drawing style changed along the way.

That's why I will start with the reference sketches to every character before doing anything else.
And for the purpose of showing at least some work I did, here's some of the first few sketches I did for some of the characters...

Braixen
Braixen went through some changes over the time.
When I started I had an idea of how I wanted her to look like but It didn't really work out when I tried to put it into different poses and emotions.


As you can see in the gallery I changed the design quite a bit while making the first demo.
Some of it was because of lacking the skill to transfer the look into different poses, the other was that I wanted Braixen to look smaller and more "Braixen-like" than I had planned in the start.

With the new design I tried to keep the original feeling while making her smaller what I think worked out in the end.
I'm not quite happy with the face yet because I want to keep an Anime kind of style and it already goes more into the western direction...
Guess I need to figure out where the line between the two is, but it's only the first few sketches after all and I'm still going to try around with different stuff.

Please let me know what you think about the new look and/or what you liked better on the old one!
Maybe people liked the old ones and I should focus more on keeping the old feel, so just tell me what you think. :>
I want to make it as good as possible after all..


Braixen's different Style Choices
While Braixen has her set design I want to give the player some choices to change some details on her like hairstyles, accessories and fur maintenance alltogether.
Those choices wouldn't affect the story in any way, but alter Braixens look to the players liking and add some diversity in different playthroughs.

Here's a few examples I already played around with, maybe there's one you like. :D

I've still got a few more and sketches for possible accessories, but this should show what kind of choices I want to give.
I even though about going a step further and give people that support me on patreon the ability to give me their own designs / OC Braixens that I would implement as extra style choice, unlocked through password or using a special name for Braixen at the start.

Although I would love to do all this is just an idea/concept for now though.
The If the styles look too different from the base sprite it's going to be a lot of work to make it work in every scene, so I'm still thinking about how I actually build the game in a way that it's possible wile keeping extra work to a minimum.
Right now I'm thinking about adding the extra Style choices as an overlay or make the sprites in live2d, only loading in the set choice, but we'll see about that later.

For now I'll focus on putting everything together, extra styles will be less important in that matter.
Let me know what you think of the idea though and if you like the style choices I already gave.
Maybe you have your own idea/OC you would like to see inGame?

Player's Childhood friend
Player's childhood friend was a character I had in mind since making the first demo and I already made some sketches for her back then.
She was supposed to be the care taker of Braixen before she got to live with the Player and he had a crush on her when they were younger.
She's supposed to be a free spirit and a tomboy that doesn't give a damn about what other people say.
She was also planned as a dateable choice for the Player, even though I'm still changing up some stuff..

The design pretty much stayed the same, I just tried to draw it in a newer, more fitting style while adding a little bit of spice to the hair to make it look more wild and uncared for?

The old sketch was also never ment to be in the game or to show, just kind of a trying around what she could look like.
(If you're wondering why she's naked in the new sketch, I'm drawing characters with multiple outfits without clothes to easily draw the different outfits over the body and try around.)
((Also I'm still pretty bad at drawing proper clothes and as long as I don't have to for the design I'll try not to do it in the first place xD))

Other Characters
There are some more characters that I can show without spoiling anything, but I can't give much more information besides showing you sketches...
The first one is the old maid that was already part of the demo, just without picture.
To be honest I'm not really sure how to make her look yet since this is the first time that I'm drawing an older person. But we'll see... x.x

The second one is a character that joins later on in the game and was planned to be part of the demo but left out after all. I don't want to spoil anything else though..

The last one isn't really a Character of the story and more some sort of bonus you get to see.
But you will have to figure that one out yourself once I have a proper demo of the full version. :>

But this is pretty much all I can show you guys in sketches so far.
Once I start drawing the actual game poses and CG's I might have some more to post.


Material Checklist
Even though it was nice to take a break from writing the notes and make some sketches I will have to go back to writing the checklist so I can properly start drawing.

The list of sketches that needs to be drawn will be huge.
I have a list for 130 CG's already just for the first ~12 scenes that I finished so far, and there's still a 30 more scenes to go...

While a big part of those 130 CG's is a scene that plays more like a picture book, without text and some of the CG's are simple pictures of objects, I'am definitely to generous with scenes that should be put into CG's...

For now I will keep it this way though and when I start drawing the sketches for those CG's I will sort out what actually becomes one and what get's scripted as a normal VN scene however.

Once I'am done with the list I will also be able to update the progress bars on the site properly again, so until then everything is a little bit vague even if I do draw some additional sketches.


End Notes
But that's pretty much it...
I probably forgot about a few things, but I think I wrote more than enough for now and hardly anyone will actually read through all of it.

I will try to give smaller but more frequent updates again once I have more sketches and stuff to show without spoiling anything. (And if I have the time for it)

I hope that this update was worth writing though and please let me know if you have any questions, ideas or general comments to the game/anything.
You guys keep me motivated and working on this so any kind of comment or critique helps even though I mostly answer questions only..

Well then that's it for now.
I hope you found some useful information or news in this mess of a post and I'll see you next time..
Have a nice weekend everyone!