Monday, July 15, 2019

Release of the first few DM H-Scenes and some technalities to why full release is taking longer

Hey everyone!
I was hoping to release DM v0.2 today but sadly didn't get to finish it in time.

At this point, I'm actually still only halfway done with what I wanted to have.
There are multiple reasons for that, all listed down below with some additional details and
explanations since I want to be open with this.

Since I didn't want to not have anything for you at all, I took 3 of the h-scenes that I think are playable enough to already share them with you guys and put them in small, standalone demos.

This way you can take a look at what you can expect for the other h-scenes and have something new to read/play in the meantime. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

There is a another 2 Scenes that are quite far into release, both rather large/important for the story. I will upload those aswell once I think their quality is high enough to be released.

>> Download links will be over here <<
(Keep in mind these are Hentai Scenes, so NSFW material! Only download them if you know what you're doing. xD)



Now to some more details on why it's taking so long..

Short Version:
The quality of the scenes (art/writing) wasn't what I imagined/wanted because I'm still lacking the skill and I had to rework/refine them bit by bit.

Long Version:
I've been working on those scenes in different steps.
1. - Writing a loose script about what happens in the scene, what kind of poses will be used
2. - Actually writing the scene, adding dialogues and making notes for what art appears at which moment
3. - Sketching the art needed for the scene and it's different variations needed
4. - Putting everything together in the game

5. - Add in some more details into the writing to spice things up and bring some harmony into writing and sketches

What went wrong?

Now everything seemed to go fine until step 4, where I realized that it doesn't quite add up.
I did notice that sketches weren't as good as I wanted them to be, and normally that wouldn't have been a problem since I would try around until it works.
I didn't have the time to keep trying for 40 different CG and animation sketches though.

I had to draw poses and perspectives that look as different from another as possible to not make it repetitive and at the same time make sure that it will work with the game and later on animating as well.
Trying out so many new while also trying to keep it fresh was definitely too much for me still and I ended up with 2nd choice sketches to still make it in time.

When I started putting everything together though I realized that quality was lacking.
The scenes felt short and unimpressive, were missing the little something that made them feel alive.
Sketches I thought would look good in the game didn't quite fit in or would have looked stupid animated because I've been missing simple rules you need to make the scene feel good.

All in all it simply didn't look good.
So now I had to decide:
Lowering quality to get it done in time or taking more time to make it feel good.
To be honest, it wouldn't even need to feel good because most of this would have been fixed once I properly animate things.
This would have made the h-scene demo boring though, only filling in the story holes that were missing without giving the fun of playing it.

That's why I decided to work in more details.
I started diong the over scenes from start, adding details and expression to the sketches as I went along.
I started doing simple sketch animations and variations, trying to stay as simple as possible while still giving life to the scene.

After finishing the first one I knew that I had to do it for all of the scenes and definitely wouldn't get done in time to release the demo.

I've worked on 3 of the scenes to the point that I think they have the quality needed, 3 more I already started working on and another 3 that still need to be looked at completely.
Even those 3 are by no means perfect, but in the end it is still just a demo, and the real animation will fix a lot of the problems that I had with the scenes before.

But that's pretty much all there is to it...

I'm still trying to release the full demo at the end of this month so I have enough time to work on the Braixen animation for Patreon.
But for now I'm hoping that you understand that it takes a bit longer than planned and that you enjoy the few scenes that are up plus the ones that are still to come.

Thank you again for your 
patience and I'll hope to get you those missing scenes asap!
-Dark