UPDATE: Work, Rendering, Plotting & Writing – January 30, 2021

Hello everyone and I hope that this finds you all well and that you had a good week and are enjoying your weekend.

Things have been pretty busy over here and want to fill you in on everything that has gone on this week, so let’s just jump right into it, shall we?

THE SPRITE/SIDE-IMAGE POLL:

We want to THANK ALL OF YOU that participated in our recent poll that we had last weekend about utilizing Side-Images with the Dialogue Sprites in the game… this poll was very important to us, as using Dialogue Sprites is kind of a new thing for us and we wanted to be sure that we got YOUR feedback before we made any kind of decision.

A lot of you not only participated in the poll, but also took the time to share with us your thoughts and opinions on the use of Side-Image Sprites and offered a lot of insight that we hadn’t even considered while making the decision to use Dialogue Sprites… also, we were quite surprised by the results that our poll inspired from all of you!!

It was comforting to see the level of trust that you have in our decisions enough to leave it in our hands and we thank you for that trust and support!

So, after some back-and-forth between us, Epadder figured out a way to (we believe) that YOU THE PLAYER can decide whether you want to have Side-Images appear in your game play… thanks to his work and effort, you will be able to go into the OPTIONS in the MAIN MENU and select to either ENABLE or DISABLE the SIDE-IMAGE SPRITES during your gameplay (as shown in the example image below). 

This feature wouldn’t have been possible without your thoughts shared with us and helping us to figure out a way to make this possible during your gameplay, so THANK YOU for your suggestions and feedback!!!

PLOTTING/RENDERING/WRITING:

Despite having a little health setback after removing the snow we got up here in Michigan on Monday this week, I have been really busy working on adjusting the PLOTTING for “Chapter Two” of the Prologue to “Wicked Choices: Agents of Karma”.

Fortunately, there was a very definitive cut-off point where I had left off in the story, before succumbing to the numerous pain meds and muscle relaxers while I waited to safely have my back surgery last year and worked on the REMASTERS… as well it became quite clear, this week, while going through things that some of the writing and rendering that I had done was not at my best at that point.

As such, I have been trying to fix that stuff some now, or clean it up some as best I can, before finishing off this chapter for all of you…

…also, this chapter is INSANE!!!

I don’t know what I was really thinking when I thought that I could pull something this size off with just me, Epadder and Sierra3 (along with some help from the wife), this chapter is IMMENSE, full of numerous choices and outcomes that effect the relationships of the characters, contains almost 30,000 words (a small NOVEL is 40,000 words!), additionally the various kinds of clothing options, changes and sex scenes you can get (depending on your choices), as well as, more choices that take place during the sex scenes themselves…

To help put it into perspective… here is a look at the current TWINE for “Chapter Two”:

(this is all BEFORE the sex scenes!)

And here is the flow chart and in-game pathing of the choices, outcomes that lead up to the sex scenes…

Add to the fact, that somewhere in all of that tangled mess, I had somehow also thought that it would be BRILLIANT to include animated sex scenes and had even started sloppily doing them… I say sloppily, as there were so many things wrong with them that I never saw through the haze of the painkillers and muscle relaxers that I am ashamed that I thought they were good… hands, going through other character’s heads or not moving right, to the fact that they were done in such a way that I couldn’t convert them to the numerous other clothing options that the character has depending on the choices you make throughout the chapter…

… no matter how much I tried this week, I decided to cut the sex animations out… there is too much wrong with them and it would just take too much time to try and fix them… and we’ve all waited long enough for this release!

ADDITIONALLY… it became clear that I would have to, based on the outcome of your decisions with the Valkyrie, Raogrior, render Dialogue Sprites for her character… in the event that she has to report back to Karma at the end of “Chapter Two”.

So, in short… NEVER AGAIN!!!

Never again will I attempt something on this scope, with just 3 or 4 of us working on the game… NEVER AGAIN am I going to think that ANY madness that I come up with while doped up on painkillers and muscle relaxers is a ‘COOL IDEA’… and NEVER AGAIN, can I put a chapter down for so long and try to pick it up and finish it… keeping the same “writing” and “character” voice after so much time... not only is it difficult, but if this thing wasn’t such a monster, with so much of it already done, I would’ve just blown it away and started from scratch… I mean, honestly, I was so doped up while working on this that there were things in it that even I DIDN’T recognize or remember doing!!

Anyhow and regardless, I spent the week cleaning stuff up, replotting the rest of the direction to finish off this IMMENSE chapter and have begun the work necessary in getting it done. Hopefully, I can tie this off pretty quickly, get this chapter released and get back to a manageable work level and release schedule for YOU, for the rest of the CREW and for ME as well.

Thank you so much for your patience, for your support, your opinions, thoughts and ALSO for you putting up with me when I was OBVIOUSLY NOT RIGHT IN THE HEAD while on painkillers and will have another update for you soon on our progress 

Sincerely,

~Jack & the Crew