Oh man, where to start?

I guess I will start with the TLDR:

My vision and plan for Chapter 2 was WAY too ambitious and those ambitions threatened the entire project. Future chapters will be smaller, more manageable and released more often.

Hindsight is 20/20 right? Hindsight says that Chapter 2 should actually be chapter 4 or 5 or even later in the story. I could have built up the club night a little slower and it would have enabled me to both reign in scope creep and increase my knowledge of AIS and Renpy. I would not have had giant gaps of frustration of where to start, what to do next, how to light a scene, how to animate better, etc, etc…

I would start a scene and spend forever lighting it and hate how it looked. Then my day would be shot as the kids came home from school and I could not work on the project with them around. After more than a few days of trying to fit in production time I would just give up for days or weeks and even a couple of times, months would go between any work getting done. Those long gaps would then take me hours just to get back up to speed on the tools, then just as I figured it out again, yup, time to stop for the day. This was probably the largest reason for the significant delay in Chapter 2.

I created all these variables in the prologue intending to really allow player choice to affect the entire game. I still fully intend to allow this but keeping track of so many variables is a nightmare for me. I am still learning better coding practices (high school coding in pascal was 30 years ago and things are a little different now) and determining how many and what variables I need has been an ongoing learning process. So I am simplifying how the story tracks events and choices and what is important to include. One of the things I have noticed in the last week where I have really focused on getting this released is how much can come together near the end when all the scenarios have been almost completed. For instance, there is a scene where you get to watch a couple play and have the chance to play with the male half later on. Once I wrote and 90% finished the scene I was able to put in small lines of dialog to the effect of “Oh yea, I saw you two and it was great!” in other parts of the story. Knowing that now I would have changed a few things during my initial writing in order to lessen my stress. I really think small “throwaway” lines are important and I am happy I am able to include some. 

Future chapters are not going to be nearly as ambitious as this chapter. A rough count of Chapter 2 is 5000 lines and 410 images, the Prologue and Chapter 1 were about 5500 lines and 380 images. Chapter 3 will be smaller, more intimate and focus on moving the story forward. There will also be no more “fail states”, I was trying to be clever but I really don’t think they are needed or help the story in any meaningful way. A VN has a story with input from the player but it is still mainly the author's story. I am going to do my best to allow a more focused experience while still having some agency in your choices.

Going forward here is my plan. Spend some more time adjusting the background music to fit the scenes, I will be going back to previous chapters as time permits to insert different background music to fit the scenes as well as allowing a scene select. Create shorter, more manageable chapters that may not even have any have sex scenes. Living in the lifestyle generally isn’t a sex party every weekend and dates during the week, I need to allow the story to reflect that. 

I wouldn’t say Chapter 2 is a mess but it does not reflect my initial vision. You may notice there are parts of Chapter 2 that don’t reflect earlier choices you made in negotiations about going to The Garden. Again, I apologize, I just wasn’t able to make it all work and in the interest of the rest of the game not becoming vapourware I just did what I could do. Lighting in the club is inconsistent, I hate lighting scenes but I am getting the hang of it I think. There are also some scenes that may seem rushed and not fully baked. That is also true, again for the same reasons not all choices were reflected. Maybe you would not have even noticed if I didn’t bring this up, but I notice it so I want to explain myself to you.

So, back to the fact that this chapter is actually released. There are going to be some bugs, spelling and grammar issues, if you could kindly point them out to me in my discord it would be appreciated. Feedback is also appreciated, it’s hard just releasing something into the void, I know there are a small number of people who have enjoyed what I have made and shared that with me. Don’t be shy, criticism is ok, how else will I know what could be done better? Now that it is fall and the weather is not as nice I will have more indoor time to keep working on the project.

If you like what you see and have the means, a couple bucks here and there means a lot to me, it allows a couple of things, a little motivation for me, people are willing to pay me for this? It also allows me to support other Patreon’s that make putting this all together easier. Funds from the patreon and Itch allowed me to commission the GUI that you see and that makes everything more polished that I could accomplish on my own.

If you are just discovering this project, welcome, if you are coming back, thank you for coming back and checking out what happens next. Chapter 3 will not take forever, I promise.