Notice

 Hey everyone,
 I've held back posting this for a bit now but I guess I had to do it at some point.

I've last updated a month ago when I was about halfway done with the second animation for the upcoming demo and wanted to have both (demo and 3 animations) done by now.

As you can guess by me staying quiet for too long I've never actually got around to finishing them in time.
As of now I've finished 2 of the 3 models/animations and started the third, but a lot of ongoing stuff in my life made it hard to concentrate/spend enough time on them and I'm less than satisfied with how they turned out.

Given the time I've already spend on everything I won't remake them completely, but I at least had to take a step back and rethink of how I go on for now since I will neither be able to finish the demo nor the animations before end of the year with how things went.

I'm posting this to apologize to everyone that I've ignored/wasn't able to reply to over the month and those of you that were actually looking forward to releases.


I'm going to stay away from uploads/updates a bit longer to work on everything without pressure and try to figure things out, so I hope to make up with an improved quality on whatever I do upload when I'm ready.

I'll still be around in Discord from time to time, so simply leaving me a message when you've got questions will be enough if you want to reach me!


I'm sorry again everyone.
It's not going to be a whole year or anything like that, but I'll definitely let you know when I'm back with some proper stuff that I think is worth uploading.

-Dark

Just a quick update~

Hey everyone, I didn't actually want to make a big post for this or anyhting but ended up writing too much to post on discord or in the sidebar, so here it is anyway:

I kinda took my time with everything the last few days as I had a lot going on but I've pretty much finished coloring and preparing all of the graphics needed for the different animations needed for the fair scene.

I've also redrawn a few of the backgrounds over the days to increase overall quality, or at least try since I'm not quite satisfied yet.


I've also been trying to figure out the lighting stuff I was talking about still so that I won't have to spend ages on every single animation from here on out.
To not waste any more time however I'm just gonna start animation now and think about that later.

Animation is going to be done in 4 steps:
-Building the model
-Building the parameters(pretty much animation of each individual part, most time consuming step)
-editing some more details and adding minor effects (lighting, liquids, background effects, etc)
and lastly- build and export the animation itself

Take that times 3 and the scene is pretty much doen and ready to be put into the game.

I will take some extra time before that to work on other stuff (Tama, random animations, etc) because I really need a break from DM. (Gonna be a week at max and I might end up working on the animations either way)

After that however I will go straight to finishing the animation and scene to release HQ versions of the animation + a remade fair scene ready to be put into EP1 and on patreon.

All that's left after that will be one more path to work on and some finetuning on the different scripts to display the model and properly implement the tama into the game, then I'm ready to give out the first few test versions of EP1 for bug fixing purposes and proof reading/etc.

I'm not sure yet if that version is gonna be patreon only, given out to everyone or just a couple of people that want to help, but we'll talk about that once the animations are out.


One last thing~
It's been mentioned that people are asking for a proper place to find the discord server so I'm putting it here for now:  InDarkWaters Discord Server Link

I'm going to look for a proper place to put (FA/DA and Patreon) once I post the remade fair animations, until then however this has to suffice.


I hope to get some more work done on the tama over the week to show off soon too, for now this is all I can give for an update though.
I hope you all have a nice upcoming weekend and hope to see you then!

-Dark

Progress Summary August - early September

Hello everyone, I'm back with another progress update that's way overdue~
I've actually been really sick last month and been online even less than usual because of that.
There also hasn't been a lot of progress because of it either, but as alsways I'll try talking about everything that happened and what still needs to be done/comes next.


Short Summary

Script Work
-lots of rewriting and adding of story distributed between different scenes
-finalized a few more scenes

Art / Coloring Work
-started work on next H-Animation (completely colored first scene, prepared textures for animation, etc)
-working on another 2 random animation (coloring, preparing textures, etc)
-some art for side projects

Braixen Creator / Tamagotchi Work
-Implemented first few character traits and natures 
-Made simple intro scene to roll nature / traits and a status screen


Some more detailed info and the usual rambling
Altogether most of the work that happened last month went into rewriting and finalizing the different scenes and story parts.
I'm taking waaaay too long for these and really should have looked for help to get them done faster.

Considering how far I'm into finishing all of them and how chaotic the script/writing files are it's pretty unlikely to still find someone that I can give everything to though.
At least not for EP1.

I do get people asking about release dates and if it's soonish every now and then since everyone's getting impatient (understandably so with how slow I am).
And while I'm really not sure how long it'll still take it's not going to be too much longer.

So let's just wait and hope for a 2020 release.

If not I'm definitely going to release a couple of other things until then, (Braixen Tamagotchi, Remade Fair Animations,...) so we've at least got something to look forward to.

Upcoming animation remake and other art related stuff
As already mentioned I've started remaking the old fair animations and art this month.
There's been a lot of people that felt like the old stuff was usuable and didn't have to be replaced but I think that it should at least get somewhat of an upgrade to fit with the new art style.

The "new" animation will consist of 3 different scenes, 2 reworked and 1 newly added that used to be a CG.
I will start by coloring and preparing textures for all 3 of them, then build the live2D models for each before I start animating.

For those of you that played the old fair demo and are wondering about the changes I'm going to post some info and peviews over >HERE (NSFW!)<, if you played the h-sketch demo you've probably seen most of it already though.

Once the animations are done I will upload a remade demo similar to the office one before adding the whole scene to EP1 where all that's left to finish before release will be scripting path 3 and the additional art related work. (CG's, animate poses, etc)

Other/random animations
As most people following me probably know I've used to make random animations inbetween to upload on patreon for support.
After putting main focus on DM I stopped doing this altogether, or at least making full animations.

I did draw lots of sketches and smaller ideas for future stuff, but never really posted any of them.
Only exception of this was Lopunny which was supposed to be out ages ago.
(This one:)

Bright as I am however I've overwritten the wrong file while working on it and pretty much lost the whole base image/coloration, meaning I would have needed to redraw, color, cut and prepare textures from the beginning which I (until last month) never had the motivation to do.

Now that I'm back to where I was before overwriting the file I at least have everything I need if I decide to go back working on the animation.

If you're wondering how that overwriting stuff can happen, I usually try to use the least amount of files possible to save space/keep clarity.
While working on the layers for the animation however I've accidently wrote over the full image that had the coloration and outlines of all the layers inside, pretty much leaving me behind with only the flat image.

I normally have backups and all, but not this time.
That was a sad day. :c

I did work on few other animations but since I've focused DM I never really got further than sktches and little color tests.
One that I was also able to work on over the month though is a Sneasel animation that I've sketched a while back already and had the time to color just last month.
(This one, I think I shared the sketch back then too..?)

Same again, I'm not sure where to go animation/action wise yet but the base is colored and prepared for animation.
Just need some idea besides cute posing to make it worth uploading :,p

Braixen Creator / Tamagotchi related stuff
I actually put a lot of work into the Braixen Tama last month since I had nothing else to do being sick.

Upon first starting the Braixen Tamagotchi you will now answer a few question to roll a randomized Braixen which nature and traits depend on what answers you give.

After that you will be able to visit a Pokémon rescue center and "adopt" additional generated Braixens that change every now and then.

Here's an example for some random rolls with the debug tool:



There's about 40ish traits right now that all affect your Braixens behaviour in some way or form.
For now both traits and character are permanent, but I'm planning on giving a way to slowly change both over time.

This way you can get rid of negative traits or learn/improve on some that you like.

A LOT of thought went into putting the whole system together and I'm actually thinking of releasing this as is in case EP1 takes too long.
It's not 100% complete though and a lot of graphical aspects are still missing, so for now I'm just working on it on the side as before.

There's a lot more that I wanted to talk about but I don't want to make this a Tamagotchi related post either. °x°
For now I'm gonna make the Fair Animation, but for everyone interested in the Braixen Creator part there's a lot to look forward to.


That's pretty much all I've got to report today..
A lot of stuff happened on the side.
I had way too many ideas for the Tamagotchi, I'm working on a harvest moon style game which I always kinda wanted to do..

Being sick I kinda needed that change of pace I guess.
There's lot's of things that I want to share and work on with you guys but for now I'll go back to EP1 of DM.

Once that releases I'll look for a proper team to help me out/that shares similar ideas and hopefully releases and progress will go a lot faster by then.

As always thanks for reading through everything.
There really wasn't a lot to show this time around but I hope you still found the post interesting.

I'll give some proper previews/additional info over on the animation link above to make up for it!

Sorry for the long wait everyone, have a nice weekend and let's hope for some better news for the next post!
-Dark

Progress Summary July

Hey everyone, I'm once more (although a bit later than the last couple ones) back to update you on Dream Molders progress a bit.

I can already say that there isn't a lot to show or tell this time around, but I'll explain in detail further below~

Short Summary + Info

Script Work

-rewrote and improved some story parts

-finalized the first few scenes, added scripts calls needed, etc

Art / Coloring Work

-drawn and edited some more Backgrounds needed

-Made a couple more adjustments to different UI's used InGame

Tama Work

-added Stylist to change your Braixens style in a immersive matter

Some more detailed info on each section & the usual rambling

As already mentioned there really isn't much to show or tell this time around as most work done is text/script based.
I've pretty much started finalizing the different scenes to make them feel more like a proper game and less like a demo.

A big part of that is re-reading everything, adding and changing whatever I feel could sound better, then add the new scripts calls to control the model and scene and finish with some smaller details like additional sounds, music, backgrounds, etc, etc.. 

This pretty much means that, aside from showing the finished scenes, there isn't really a lot that I can talk about at the moment..

I can however, use the chance to show you what parts of the game are actually going to be in Episode 1!

Dream Molder Episode 1 - Planned Scenes

Having finalized the first couple of scenes and gone through most of the story needed I feel confident enough to show what scenes are planned to be included in EP1.

And I felt the best way to do so would be by using some kind of map / flowchart that shows every path of the game like this:

Not only does this map show what scenes are planned for the episode, but also how many are already worked on (yellowish parts), finished (green parts) or will come in the future. (dark parts)

If you've played any of the demos I've released over time you'll actually have a bit of a comparison on the games size and where the episode is likely going to cut off in story.
(White M to H is the very first demo released (the fair), yellow H and box left to it is the last released h-demo (the office one).)

There has been quite a bit of changes in the writing and story since the first demo release so it won't be exactly the same, but it should give you somewhat of an perspective on how big EP1 is going to be.

I hope this clears up some questions you had about how much EP1's release is going to cover and gives some insight on how far we are into finishing it.


If you're interested in how scene-/path structure looked before I started working on it at the start of this month, here's an older scene map from the sketch demo I've released a while back that some of you might remember:

There's still a lot that will change as I work on/rewrite the remaining scenes but as always I will keep you up to date over here every few days or so.
I can also update the map and post it together with those updates if that is something you would like to see~

Art / Coloring Work

Again, not much to be said.
There was need for some additional background work and a few UI pieces here and there, but I will keep most of the art work to till the end of the scene work.

I'm always updating the list on what needs to be done at the end of the scene work when I'm posting smaller updates on the side tracker/discord, so you already know about that one as well!

Tama Work

Although mainly made for the main game, this scene/script will also be used in the tamagotchi later on:

-The Stylist

Now the stylist isn't anything new or exciting as it's pretty much just a modified Braixen Creator, but this is going to be the main tool to change your Braixens style/looks.

Unlike the creator you can only make style changes as clothing has to be bought/unlocked separately.
There won't be all of the styles available since some wouldn't make sense (lucario spike on chest, etc).

You're still going to be able to use those styles in the tamagotchi, but they will be character bound traits that can't be obtained/changed after creation of the Braixen.
(This goes for default tamagotchi gameplay only, you could still use cheats/debug to change your Braixens style at any point.)

Some other stuff, rambling and Patreon related info...

As everyone supporting me on Patreon already knows, I havent been posting in a bit. Again.

I've pretty much fell back into the habit of not posting because I haven't been satisfied with the work I did, which even if nobody get's charged, shouldn't be a thing.

There is a lot of stuff that I set the Patreon up for: Fighting some health problems, trying to imrpove my living situation, support for my "art career" and DM, etc, etc..

Some of the support I've got so far actually really helped me out already!
I've been able to get a graphic tablet and properly get started on learning to draw, improving my writing, buying material and licenses for DM and so on.


DM is taking a lot of my time though and although Iam doing what I can I simply won't be able to post/update as often if I want to concentrate on it.

I pretty much had to make the decision if I wanted to keep working on DM forever and upload other animations and art on the side, or concentrate on DM and going without uploads for a while..

First option would mean I'm stuck with DM for much longer, letting people wait for a finished product not knowing if there will ever be such a  thing, but I would still have other stuff on the side to upload to patreon.
Second option would mean I can focus on DM, but won't have anything to upload to patreon for the time being.

Obviously I wasn't fine with either choice.

I don't want to be stuck with DM forever or make an release seem impossible, but I also don't want to gain support without giving people something to back it up.

I did try both, and both made me rush things or try to meet quotas that I couldn't to then stress out for no reason.


Which is why I thought things over and pausing/freezing Patreon was the best solution.

It's not the end of the world. I'm in an okay place right now (which is partially also thanks to you guys) and I think it's more important to finish DM than worry about improving/making a name of "InDarkWaters".

DM is what I started out with and a lot of people were looking forward to. (myself included).
So I rather take my time to work on/finish it without having Patreon/Upload quotas in the back of my mind than burn myself out.

That's how I started out and worked best with after all.


I can always go back to random animations, Pateon and those other smaller projects that I wanted to work on after that's done.


I'm going to add something like an support button somewhere on the blog or similar for the people that are still bothering me over it (:p), but for now I'm just going to focus on myself and finishing DM.

I'm sorry to everyone that I left waiting over on patreon, I will still come back with some animation, game related and physical rewards once I've got the first release though!

So if you don't mind hanging around, I'm always happy to see you guys once I turn support back on~


That's pretty much all I've got to say right now...
As always I probably forgot about something, but I can always answer some questions over on discord.
So just let me know!

I'll keep updating progress over here so for everyone following, I'll see you around~

-Dark

Progress Summary (Late June)

Hey again everyone, I'm back to post some minor updates & progress on what I've been doing over the weeks.

Similiar to earlier this month there isn't a lot to post, but I'll try to show whatever I can regardless.

Short Summary + Info

Coloring / Model & Animation Work

-Finished shading and modeling a couple of the characters needed for EP1

-Started preparing and coloring the next ones

Script Work

-rewrote a couple more scripts needed for EP1,

Braixen Tamagotchi Work

-started writing the scripts & lines needed for the Tama

-replaced some of the sketches used with a proper model & animations

----------

There's honestly not a lot that happened as coloring & modeling still took me quite a bit.
As before I don't think it's worth updating these kind of things but I don't want to

let you guys sit in the dark/wait for new information either.

Just know that I'm quietly working in the background and actually finishing stuff off one at the time.

I've realized that I've been rushing things too much a couple of times now and slowed down a bit when it came to work on the Braixen Tamagotchi & Sara (the Players childhood friend in the main game).

Keeping to myself and simply focusing on the work definitely improves the quality a lot and I hope that this will actually be visible in the end though.


Starting next month (July) I will actually have a lot of time to work on the game again and can use a proper time plan to not only work on the game but also do some random animations again. (Lopunny is waiting for a while now)

So let's look forward for those and hopefully have something proper to post at the end of next month!

Some more details, spoilers and the usual rambling

I've been hoping to have finished most of the models needed for DM Episode 1 by now but I'm still not quite done.
I've finished enough to add everything into the main game though so starting this month I will work through each DM Scene and make it 100% playable, working on it one at the time until Episode 1 is finished.

This way I can put out somewhat of an daily progress again too since I can post whenever one scene is done.

Model Work
There isn't much to say or show here since most models finished are side characters that are neither important nor have special features/poses to show.

There's the ruffians that have their skeletons finished but no actual animations yet
(so all they can do is kinda idle around in different random poses) and...

 ..the one filler Pokemon I've decided to add for some reason.

I'm working on finishing the other few side characters too
and actually started working on a lot more than I wanted to initially.

I'm not sure which ones are actually going to end up in the game though, so I might end up not finishing them at all.

I'll most likely make this decision when finishing the scenes those characters are in since that will reveal if it feels strange to not having them shown in the first place.

Sara's Model

This was probably one of the bigger parts of the model work needed for EP1.

Physics Preview            /            Test Expressions/Animations

Sara's model is build and works similiar to Fia's/Braixens model but I actually knew what I was doing this time around.

This not only made it a lot easier but a lot cleaner looking as well, which is kind of shame if you think about who the main character is supposed to be.

It did show me that I at least learned some stuff while doing all of this though so if I ever have the chance I definitely know how to improve Fia's model.

As you can see in the preview I've already completely finished the skeleton and added physics, a couple of animations and simple functions needed for the game.

Similar to Braixen's model you can also change the outfit she's wearing directly on the model so adding newer ones for the later episodes will be no problem either.

                                                Clothing Test (Somewhat NSFW)

I'm going to try keeping up this quality for the coming more important side characters, but it's definitely going to be less important.

Script & Tamagotchi related stuff
While I did a lot of work on the models I've also did quite a bit of programming in the background.

There's a lot of thought that went into the different Tamagotchi systems and most of the message box related scripts in the main game have been replaced by now.

Something I'm a little bit stuck right now is adding chat lines and other responses for each different natured Braixen and how I'm actually going to use them in the end.
I'll take my time with those and update you properly when the whole system is done though.


I've made some additional UI stuff, finished the naming screen for both game start and first Tama use.

(Don't mind the unaligned background, that's just a placeholder xD)

I'm gonna ask you guys for suggestions for the random names later on btw,

so Patrons will be able to have their own or OC Names added to the list. :>

A lot of other scripts are mostly functional and there isn't much to show yet, If you're interested in the save menu and that kinda stuff though I'll definitely update you on that too.

Lastly I've replaced some of the early Tama sketches with the proper model and made/added some proper animations to it.

I thought that it would be cute to be able to pat/scratch your Braixen in different locations and have each Braixen have it's own favorite spots, which is probably gonna look somewhat like this.

I'm planning to give pat scenes and similar Tama stuff it's own more detailed model in the future,

for now it's using the usual DM Braixen Model though.

But this is pretty much all I'm able to show right now...
As mentioned before I'm actually skipping support for this month over on Patreon again, nobody needs to worry about though.
Patreon is not my main income/job and although it does help me pay for the servers/software and tools needed to work on all this I would simply feel bad having anyone pay for something I'm not satisfied with myself.

When I feel like I've done enough for myself and/or need the extra funds I'll definitely put it back on.

For anyone that is bothered by this (I have been asked for my paypal/etc a couple of times) I'm thinking of adding a simple donation button somewhere if that's something you want.

Just know that at the moment simply reading through these kinda posts and following what I'm doing is enough support to keep me going already!

I hope this was informative and/or entertaining for some of you guys and I'll see you around with my next update in hopefully ~2 weeks!

Stay healthy and have a good time everyone,
Dark~

Progress Summary (Early June)

Hey everyone, first of all I'm really sorry for being so quiet over the past few weeks.

To keep things honest I haven't been feeling too well lately and combined with having had a lot of stuff to do after moving I didn't get to work on DM as much as I wanted to.

I still tried to get as much progress as I could. It's a bit all over the place though and there isn't much to show because of it..

I'm still gonna try to give you somewhat of an summary of what I've done over the last 2 weeks/since release of the h-Scene though and show whatever little thing I can.

I'll start witha smaller summary, then go into some details below with my usual rambling.
I'm gonna try to make it readable since I tend to be all over the place, just let me know if I forget/need to fix something though!

 Progress Early June Overview - Work on DM Episode 1 & Braixen Tamagotchi

Coloring / Model Work

-Flat colored side characters and prepared textures for model import

-Started building models with flat textures

-Started shading side character textures

Script Work

-Started rewriting some of the scripts needed for Episode 1 (saving, menus, message Box related stuff, etc)

Braixen Tamagotchi Work
-Build groundwork for Tamagotchi and for adding it into DM-EP1

(Drew/Build simple UI, added time progression and added first few interactions, added needs, affection system, mood system, custom Braixens possible natures and first few traits, etc...)

Summary

Most work finished over these two weeks was probably Tamagotchi related.

That doesn't mean that there was no work on DM at all since the coloring/modeling part might look like it isn't a lot, but probably took about the same amount of time I used for everything Tamagotchi related.

Preparing the textures for use in Live2D/the model software simply takes me way longer than what it should, which I'm really not too happy about.
Which is pretty much why I alternated between Tama and Model work each day.

I'll go into more detail to this further below though as this was just somewhat of an short overview.

I really hope I can get more stuff done over the other half of the month since work didn't start too great at the first half, but we'll see over the days...

Sorry again for the silence everyone, but now some details for everyone that's interested in those:


Coloring / Model Work Summary

This was the main objective for these last two weeks but really didn't turn out as well as I was hoping for.

I decided that it would be best to do outlines and flat colors for all of the side characters needed for EP1, then prepare those flat color sketches as textures for the model and simply replace the textures with shaded versions later on.

Reason for this was that I would be able to immediatly start work on the models as well and use them inGame for testing and Bugfixing before even having to finish the shading.

This way I can swap between shading, scripting and modeling over the days while not having to do everything in one go.

This went all nice and well until I realized how slow this would be for progress updates on the blog/discord though.
Work has pretty much been all over the place, having a bunch of flat color textures, half-baked models and "useless" inGame scripts that I would be unable to show off.

I've already started shading on a couple of them but again not enough to show off anything as most parts/textures will just look random and out of place without the finished model putting them in place.


One of the bigger characters of the game (the players childhood friend Sara) however is already halfway done, which was a big part of the model/coloring work that is needed.

With around 80ish Poses and at least 3 different outfits she uses inGame (only 1 in EP1) she has quite a bit of textures which had to be colored, shaded and prepared.
The picture on the right being a couple of the hands and smaller parts used, for example.

Altogether I won't be able to show of the proper side character models for a bit longer, but the ground work is done as all of them are already split and prepared similar to Sara above, only needing a bit more shading and skeleton work in Live2D until they're done.

So let's hope I'll get all of them finished until end of the month, I'll definitely focus them over the Tama for the second half...

Script Work Summary

There's not much to say nor show over here.
I've started rewriting some of the default scripts and functions that were used by the older demo in attempt to make the game less buggy and modernize everything a bit.

This will hopefully fix loading times for some people while also making game freezes less likely.
It's definitely gonna look and feel better, that much is sure.
Until I've drawn proper UI's for the new stuff to use though there won't be much to show off.

Something I ran into when working on the scripts though was the "problem" of where to put Braixen customization in the main game.

While there will be some occasions where you can change Fia's look through decisions you make, I've never quite thought about how to "immersively" add the customization without interrupting the game flow.

Which is how/why I got to the next point...


Braixen Tamagotchi Work Summary
While the main idea for customization was a simple "Style" button in some menu and the possability of Fia changing stuff by herself at random, I felt like adding some parts of the Braixen Tama to the maingame would actually be a cool idea.

Not only would this add some more minigames and fun stuff to do with Fia inbetween story but also give you the oportunity to immersively go to the hair dresser with her, buy her clothing or maybe even unlock some secret/special events in the future.


For now there isn't much to see or show since most of the work done was UI/script/thought based.

For now I made all the groundwork needed to build the rest around it, starting with a simple time and action system, moods that change your Braixens behavior, needs like hunger and sleep, a couple of traits and lastly a nature system that defines your Braixens general character.

I've already talked about most of this stuff over here were I talked about the Tama Ideas/Plans:
https://in-dark-waters.blogspot.com/p/living-with-braixen-tamagotchi-thoughts.html

Just as mentioned over there, the actions available change with the time of day and affection you've build with your Braixen so far.
Actions in this example being the morning ones, with low affection as it's shortly after Fia started living with you. (Preparing breakfast, petting and chat)

Depending on your Braixens nature, current needs, traits, affection and general mood she will then react differently on each of them.

This is all pretty much scripted/prepared already so all that's left is adding some art, different text responses for the different natures and random events to give some variation and make the whole thing more exciting.

Right now everything's still using placeholder graphics, so there isn't much I can show yet.
Debug messages and hit boxes are all over the place, and a lot of simple reactions like this one while petting for example will be in sketch only for now.

It's still fun to see Braixen react and change moods to everything you do though, so I'm pretty excited to be able to share the Tama at some point.

If anyones interested in the technical details to any of the things I've added so far just let me know because I'm having a lot of fun putting this together. (Although I probably should have focused coloring/modeling a bit more than I did the Tama ^^")

Tama's Implementation into the main Game

While there's a lot of people that would love to have this kind of addition to the game there's probably just as many that would be bothered by it showing up.

I want to be clear that this will not be a main feature of the game that needs to be used, but rather an optional way for you to take a break from the story and simply spend some days playing with Fia instead of progressing.

You won't be forced into Tama/Sim mode, nor do you have to do it to progress or get all of the different paths.

Just to be sure I will also add an option to completely turn it off so anyone that doesn't care can simply enjoy the story without even being asked to enter tama mode once.

Besides adding the Tama as an additional option inbetween the main game I will also add it to the end of EP1, where you can swap into an endless Tama mode where you can keep playing and train/befriend Fia until the EP2 Update is out, where you can then end Tama mode and progress story as normal but keep all of the progress made in it. (affection, clothing bought, etc) 

I took quite a bit to put all of this together and probably made a big deal out of the smaller stuff like always, but I hope that some of you enjoyed that bit of my rambling like always.

I will keep to myself a bit longer over the rest of the month and try to finish the things needed for EP1 so I can give a proper update in 2 weeks again.
For now I'm sorry for the long silence (and probably the upcoming one), but I'll do my best to post on discord whenever something big gets done.

For my supporters over on patreon, I'll probably end up skipping this months support/payment again since it didn't go too well so far, but we'll see how far I'll get over the next couple weeks first.

Thanks for staying around everyone, I hope you all have a nice week. <3

Progress Update (Early May) upcoming hScene work

Hey everyone, as promised a small progress update roughly two weeks after last patreon release.
I will try to keep these up and post whatever I've been working on regulary, although this one probably isn't the best one to start with since last two weeks haven't been too successful...

I still hope you find it interesting and let me know in case you have better ideas/critique for whatever I'm working on!


Let's start with a quick list of everything I've finished for those of you that don't want to read through the smaller unimportant stuff.

Progress Early May List - Release of demo hScene 2

Model Work
-Added new Outfits to main Braixen Model (Office Outfit Variations & Stockings)
-Added new Style options to main Braixen Model (Old Dream Sketch Style Tuft+Shoulders)
-Added the ability to change body proportions of main Braixen Model (mainly head and body Size, ear, cheek and leg still being in work for Braixen Creator later)
-Improved main Braixen Model parameteres and fixed a couple of bugs with different styles and poses

Animation Work
-Animated 7 new Poses to use with main model in the demo hScene
-Improved older animations to work with more styles and outfits, including new one

CG and Background Work
-redrew the background for a couple of CG's, including one of the animations to better fit the scene
-changed lighting and general positioning to better fit scene

hAnimation & Model Work
-Changed general structure of the model and overhauled animations to fix inGame look
-Added a couple of smaller animations and expressions to use in first part of scene/animation
-Changed background and lighting in second part of the scene/animation

Script & Scene Work
-Cleaned and rewrote the scenes to use the new models & animations
-Rewrote and improved some of the writing
-Fixed a couple of bugs and visual problems

Braixen Tamagotchi / Braixen Creator Work
-Finished planning and writing down plans and everything needed
-Started some simple UI Designs


Summary
Altogether I didn't finish too much of the stuff that I wanted to have finished by now and ended up doing lot's of smaller stuff that needed fixing or that I simply forgot about.
That was definitely just me messing up planning, but had to be done nonetheless, even if I wouldn't have forgotten about it.

Because of this there isn't too much to look at right now, but I'll still try showing as much as I can!

The Tamagotchi stuff wasn't actually needed for the demo release btw, but I ended up working on that one whenever progress got stuck/slowed down over the weeks and I needed a break.


Model Work Summary
The model work wasn't something I expected to still have to for this update.
First I've noticed that the only outfit needed for the scene was missing and had to be colored and modeled from scratch.
Then I relalized that the model still has way too many visual bugs and problems that I didn't realize when working for it on the Braixen Creator.

Now this is all kind of because of time problems and trying to get stuff done fast enough, but I still didn't expect the sheer amount of problems/work that needed to be done on it.

I've ended up fixing a big chunk of the bugs, mostly those that needed fixing to be usable in the demo and will need to look at the rest of them along the line.
The outfit in itself was extra work that did cost a lot of time, but wasn't a big deal in the end.





The outfit was actually mend for the "Dream Form" which was supposed to have it's own model.
A lot of the parts and work needed for the Dream Form ended up being finished and added to the Braixen Creator though, which is why I decided to instead add the outfit to the main model. (Which I never did.)

Having the outfit on the main model has multiple advantages, mainly, that it can be used like a normal style/outfit in other parts of the game and the Braixen Creator.
I've improved a lot of the older outfits and sorted out clipping issues while working on this one as well, so that's definitely another plus.

This means the outfit will be usable with all chest sizes and can be fitted together from the different parts if you wanted to use it for your Braixen's casual look.
So yeah, make whatever you like from it~

(Different Chest Sizes)

(No Skirt / Just Vest / Vest + Legwear without Chest)
Another thing needed to go along with the Dream Form & Outfit was a fitting chestfluff and shoulder style.
Both the chestfluff and shoulders were covering a big part of the chest and clothing, so I've ended up adding the styles that were used in the old Dream Form sketches.



The shoulder style wasn't actually needed in this case, but I felt like it wasn't a big deal and would fit in nicely with the new tuft style.
Important was that it fits the form of the chest more to emphasize the body change in dream form.



Lastly to make the "body transformation" in dream form complete I've added a few options to slightly scale body parts like the head, ears and legs, giving you the option to drasticly change the look of your Braixen and make it look even more unique.
In Dream Molder this will be used to make Fia look more "mature" when needed, in Braixen Creator and Tamagotchi though it can be used to make your Braixens look more different from one another, especially needed when owning more than one.

(Default scaling) / (long legs, short body, big ears, small head, long cheeks) / (short legs, short body, wide hips, small ears, big head, short cheeks)

The changes are mostly subtle since too big of a change will need extra work on the clothing/animations/etc, but I think this example should somewhat show what you're going to be capable with it.
(All of the outfit and style previews above are actually using a slightly bigger body and smaller head since it's supposed to represent the "dream form".)


CG and Background Work Summary
Here's not too much to say and I'll go right ahead and post the changes~
>

>

Main problem here was that the old background was part of an older background that I used for the office that I drew myself, but ended up discarding because I didn't like it. (And because my backgrounds are horrendous :D)

Realizing that I'm still using the old background in the CG's I had to redraw them to fit the new office used (from the first gameplay sample above).
These have been a quite a few of CG's I had to change, but since most of them were using the same background in different angles/positions it wasn't as much of a deal.

The new one isn't perfect but does look a lot better than the old one at least.
The BG from the last picture is also used in the second part of the animation which is why I had to update that one along with the CG's, here's a small (although censored) preview: :D




I've also drawn a sketch for another CG that I felt was missing, but depending on how fast I get everything done I will color/refine it or simply use the model for the scene.

Animation and Script Work Summary
Besides telling you everything that could have possibly gone wrong actually happened,
there isn't much to be said.

Because of some limitations with the engine I'm using I had to rework a big part of the models.
I ended up having to change the textures, rebuild the skeleton for the animation and
add a couple of work arounds to even get them to run.

Once I had the animations inGame and running, the software simply kept crashing
and slowing down, and by now I'm fairly annoyed as you can imagine. xD


Luckely I did get to fix most of the problems, no more crashing, no more slowing down/etc...

(actual model used inGame here, not a CG)

Still needs fixing...
Problem now is that the engine forces animations to fade out on end, even when this isn't needed.
(In loops for example).
This causes little skips and lags in places where they shouldn't be and this is especially inconvient with the h-animations as little lags and skips definitely disrupt the flow and ruin the mood of the scene.


Sound will also be hard to implement this way, knowing that the scene can skip/lag at any time and force sound/animation to be out of sync.

My guess is that it's the engines poor compability with Live2D here, I'm unsure of how to fix it though.
For now I'm using longer loops to simply reduce the amount of times it needs to skip, but sound is still a problem.

The developer of the engine already promised/works on an update to add the missing live2D functions and improve newer version compability, however last time anything about this update was mentioned was about a year ago if I remember correctly?
I've been waiting for this update for a while now and I'm unsure if it's actually still coming...

For now all I can do is try to find a workaround, maybe someone else has a bit of live2D knowhow and/or an idea of how I could go at this...


Aside from these problems the animations are running though, so give me a couple more days to figure things out and I'm able to upload first demo samples for testing. :D



Braixen Tamagotchi Info
Alright, knowing that my post/writing is all over the place again I'm gonna keep things short and post all the info for the tamagotchi seperately, then link it over here when it's done.

I actually didn't want to work on the tamagotchi until after Dream Molder, but I felt like the time between the episode releases would need some additional stuff to play with. <3

It's not going to be anything big or fancy for the for the start, but you can at least expect a simple demo of it to be released with Episode 1.

More info here:
https://in-dark-waters.blogspot.com/p/living-with-braixen-tamagotchi-thoughts.html

Please know that this is just me rambling again and only interesting if you, for some reason, find my usual rambling entertaining.

I feel like I did go a bit overboard, talked about more than I had to, but for everyone that's still interested:
Have fun~

Upcoming Dream Molder Releases, Ongoing Problems, Patreon Changes, Etc...

Alright, I don't actually know how to really start this off so I'll simply begin with rambling a bit as always.
I will post somewhat of an abbreviated version over on Discord.

I will try marking everything important over here too, but if you're not into these kind of rants I'd recommend checking out the Dream Molder News Channel over there!


Upcoming Dream Molder Animation Release
Let's start this by going ahead and saying that I definitely won't be able to upload the animations/h-scene before end of the month as I planned to.

This was probably pretty obvious by now since progress kept getting slower over the last few days but I wanted to make it clear for everyone that isn't following the blog 24/7.


Not only does this mean that I have to push back animation releases but that also means that the first DM Episode will take a bit longer to release again aswell.

Now I know that there simply isn't much I can do, if it's too much work to get done in that amount of time that's pretty much how it is. I need the time that I need after all.

However since I've pretty much got no content for this month to upload AGAIN, I kind of got into thinking if I should change how I handle the whole Patreon situation...


Patreon Situation (rant)

I set up the patreon so that people that might want to help & support me with what I do have the option/ability to do so.
Not only is this a way of giving something back to or showing me that you've liked my work and I should keep going but it also helps me taking my mind of some things that I usually have to deal with, making it easier for me to focus on work/art for you guys.


However as the support increased I also increasingly worried about being unable to actually give back the amount of effort you guys deserve for it.

It's a bit stupid in a sense since everyone of you obviously knows for themselves if what I put out is worth supporting as you wouldn't support me if that wasn't the case.

But still.
I can't help but think someone might feel cheated on which I simply can't deal with it seems.


The split in support about some people being here for the animations and some for DM doesn't help either since I feel bad posting either without the other.
It's an easy thing to post an animation that I'm working on over a month or two as I have a finished "product" to post in the end, but with DM it isn't as easy.

It's gotten to the point that I avoid activity or posting on Patreon altogether, and that simply wasn't what I set it up for.

It's not the first time I'm ranting about this and a lot of the people following me for a while probably anway.
Me trying to avoid posting definitely has to stop and it's about time thatI change things up to make it work again though.

So for everyone having to deal with this, sorry for the chaotic mess and I hope it's not too much of a bother.


Patreon / Update Changes
But let's get to the important part of this rant, how I'm actually planning to change stuff up for now:

1. Random Patreon Animations will have to wait, Dream Molder releases come first
First off I need to make clear that I'm focusing work on DM right now and until I've finished Episode 1 there won't be any random animations.

This was probably clear from the get-go as I mentioned it a couple of times by now. I'm still planning on releasing the Lopunny Animation at some point, but not in April as planned in the roadmap since the Dream Molder Episode isn't out either.

2. Returning to Patreon
2nd, I will start posting on Patreon again to enable support for the few that want to do so or were actually waiting for it.
I won't change anything up about the way I did it before.
It's still going to be per post, and 1 post per month at most, but instead of forcing myself to get a certain patch out and posting every few months while having rushed through it the whole time I will post summaries/collections of what I actually got done without rushing/crunching.

This way quality stays up and I'm not burning myself out either.
These collections will pretty much contain everything I've got done in that time and will be shown off as progress gifs of colorations, different texture layers for animations, clips of finished scenes or features, etc, etc..

I even thought about some speed draw to show what I did in detail and have something like a tutorial for coloring at the same time.
(This would need a bit upgrading from my side though and that's only gonna be a thing if enough people want it since I'm way too messy.)

Since I'm unable to finish the animation till the end of the month anyway I would take the next couple days to collect everything I did over the last few months from Fia's model, the Braixen Creator, WIP-CG Art and Animation textures
and upload all of it to patreon instead.
I thought taking the model and making a small demo-clip of sorts to show how the model would be used in DM/dialogues.

Next month will include the animations that I weren't able to finish, a demo of the h-scene itself and hopefully some bigger DM stuff also...

But that will depend on the 3rd change in this list which is regular Dream Molder polls on Patreon.

3. Dream Molder Polls
There's is lot's of decisions and changes to make on Dream Molders progress and I feel like putting up polls on them would not only give more insight on what and how I'm working at the moment, but also make me feel more at ease, showing me that what I'm working on is actually what you guys are looking forward to.

Something I thought about already was that instead of releasing DM as an Episode, I could release the whole game without h-scenes and CG's, then add them one after the other.
This would get the full game out a lot faster, especially the censored version and give me the option to pull in other artists to help out creating the CG's making full release faster than ever.
However, this would also mean that spoilerfree gameplay with 100% of the content won't be possible as early since episodes might take longer but will be released as is.

This is just one of the thoughts and definitely independent of the work on the h-scene I'm doing right now, that's still going to be prority for now.
If people would like to see the full story/gameplay rather than the h-scenes+CG-art I would rather focus on that one next than finishing a short part of the game instead.

But that's the kind of opinion I will try getting from you guys with every release to be sure that where I'm heading is actually the right way to go.



A few more words...
There's probably more that I wanted to talk about but it's getting quite late over here and I still have to post the shorter version on discord as well.

This post probably isn't exactly what people were looking forward too for the end of the month but I will try collecting everything to show and share with you guys on patreon in a couple of days.
If this actually get's positiv feedback that is.

If this is a bad idea after all just let me know. I can always change stuff up and I do want you guys to be part of this after all.


Just something I thought was worth mentioning at the end-
I'm not good with this kind of stuff but I hope that all of you are doing fine in consideration of the ongoing virus situation.
Most people are probably not personally affected healthwise, but I guess we all have to deal with it in some way or form be it quarantine, lockdowns or forced vacations.

Let's hope this all grows over quickly and that everyone here stay's safe and healthy!

Braixen Creator & Info to "Upcoming" Dream Molder Episode/Release

Yay, new blogpost! (For real this time)

I've already said this when I was posting this last night, but it's been a while since I've posted an update over here.
I've been quite busy getting everything done that I wanted and although it took a lot longer than I expected too it was still in the timeframe that I planned it to be finished.


The whole thing turned out to be a lot harder to make then expected, mostly because of software/engine limitations that I didn't expect and will have to think about when working on stuff in the future.
The result wasn't quite what I wanted to relase, but it's the best I could do in the time frame at least.


For everyone wondering what I'm even talking about/worked on over the weeks I mean the

Braixen Creator

A small tool I made to test out the capabilities of the model/animation technique I wanted to use in Dream Molder.
While I always planned on using it from the beginning I never actually tried it before, which is why I had to play around with a lot of different details until I knew what I'm actually going for.

The side product of this was the Braixen Creator.
Pretty much a tool to test and improve my ability to implement Fia's model + customization in the game.
Used to not only test the needed scripts and methods to implement the model and animations into the game but also show that I'm actually working on stuff, even if it takes a while. :,D


It's definitely not perfect, there's a lot of customizations and animations that need a fair bit of work.
But I now know what is possible for me to do and I can move on knowing that what I have will actually be usable since everything that doesn't got filtered out until now.


The tool was actually meant to be somewhat fancier.
I wanted to make it patreon only and have it paid for since I've worked quite some time on all of this and I was a bit split here. I didn't feel like it was worth all the wait.
I know that everyone supporting can/would decide for themselfs if they want to keep going after whatever I updoad/want payment for, I also don't want to make anyone feel scammed though.

Even more so since a lot of people are supporting me for my animations, not for the DM work/stuff I do.That's why I ended up releasing it for everyone instead.
So even though it's not much, have some fun playing and creating whatever you want with it. :D

Downloads

Download Censored Version:
Braixen Creator a0.2 Censored - Windows    (>32Bit Version here<)
Braixen Creator a0.2 Censored - Linux
Braixen Creator a0.2 Censored - Mac

Download Uncensored Version:
Braixen Creator a0.2 - Windows                      (>32Bit Version here<)
Braixen Creator Light a0.2 - Windows

Braixen Creator a0.2 - Linux
Braixen Creator a0.2 - Mac

Browser Version Light: 
(Does not work for everyone, but doesn't need download and works on portable devices)
Braixen Creator a0.2 - Browser


Known Bugs:
-Quite a bit of loading time at start up in Default Versions (only loads when in focus, need to wait through the black screen :c)
-Lucario Style Shoulders might have layer Problems?
-There's still a few styles that weren't animated/properly modeled yet. (Only in there for fun/screenshots [1 Hairstyle, 2 Makeup, 1 Outfit/Hair accessory?])
-Animations/Model need work and improvements in general, please keep in mind that this is really just for fun and not a serious release

Custom Textures / Color Palettes

For everyone that was hoping for a certain color palette or texture that didn't make it into the creator I've actually got some good news, the textures are open to edit and use by anyone and it's fairly easy to do so too!
I'm gonna write/upload somewhat of an tutorial with pictures after posting this, so if you need help just take a look over here:
https://in-dark-waters.blogspot.com/p/braixen-creator-custom-palette-tutorial.html




But now on to the more important stuff...

First Dream Molder Episode / Release

I've just spend 30 minutes writing some emotional, kinda cringy rant about what I've done and learned up to this day, only to scrap it all because it didn't really say anything about whats actually coming up (and was probably more embarassing than anything).
So let's keep things short instead. :D

While I released lot's of demos and other random information/stuff for Dream Molder I've never once released an actual presentation of what I imagined Dream Molder to be.

This month, I will start building the first half of exactly that though.
The first actual release, so to say.

I know it took me a while to get to this point and honestly I'm not sure if it was worth putting all this work into it myself. We're only going to know once it's out though.
So let's start and finally release something proper that everyone can enjoy!

Episode?
Since there's still quite some work needed to actually finish the game I'm planning on releasing it in multiple parts or "Episodes" that I will put together to a full game in the end.

I've actually planned on making a smaller episode (1/3 -1/4 of the game) and releasing them in 1-2 months each, starting this month.
After going through everything planned one more time however I changed my mind and will instead do a bigger Episode that covers around half of the game.

This means I will have to do a bit more work and probably push back release by another month (april instead of march), but the work of this episode will cover most of what's needed for the whole game and all things left will be H-Scenes (which the first episode won't have a lot of) and CG's (Which are actually the most time consuming part of all of this).

What will Episode 1 cover?
While I'm saying that it's the first half it's definitely not half the content yet, but rather half the story,
the calm part before actual stuff happens I guess.

It's going to include 20~ish scenes (of 40~), 2 H-Scenes (of 9~) and the first half of 3 game paths (of 5).

I know that most people are probably waiting for the H-Scenes, so releasing the tame stuff first isn't the best option for everyone.
Having only the H-Scene stuff left after that though will make things a lot easier for me and also give a lot of new animations and content for the months that follow after that.

There's probably more to say to this but I will put out an list of what's needed exactly and what steps need to be taken in order to finish everything on the progress page as always.

So if you're interested in any of the details take a look over there!


I feel like I kinda forgot about what I actually wanted to say, but I'm just going to end this here so I can move on with working on everything needed for the first release as fast as possible! :D

But before I go...

I know I told this a couple of times but I'm thankful to everyone out there who's supporting me and looking forward to the stuff I do.

You guys keep me going and I hope that I can soon release the game you were waiting for. :>

Have a nice weekend everyone and I'll update you whenever something important happens!

I hope to see you around when Episode 1 releases, stay healthy until then! :D