Monthly Update and Poll #3 - Results for "What do you want to see in v0.2?"

Since the poll happened to end on a Saturday, when art is also posted, and I'm also doing the monthly update today, I decided to combine the poll results and monthly update into one post. To try and cut down on the number of clutter in the feed today. Luckily, things shouldn't like this happen again for a while.

Poll Results

Let's start with the poll. Here's the results. The left bar is the raw votes, and the right is the weighted votes.

In terms of raw votes, it was surprisingly close between Main Plot Progression and More Scenes for Existing Characters. But Existing Characters won by a landslide with weighted votes. And so...

There will be More Scenes For Existing Characters! 

I ended up setting aside 4 artwork slots for the poll winner when I fully planned out what I wanted to do for v0.2. So there's going to be 4 more scenes for existing characters now. However, the main story will still be started in v0.2. It will just be 2 characters short (the 4 artwork slots being 2 character CG and 2 scenes). I'll probably end up finishing the last two characters for the first update after v0.2.

And for the person who voted on the MMC side story, I'll still be adding 1 more character and her scene into it.

Since there's a lot more than 4 existing characters, the next poll will decide who actually gets the new scenes. And like I said in the initial poll, the starters (Ayako, Kaori, Shiori) were already planned to get new scenes, so they aren't in the poll.

Also, I just wanted to clarify, so there's no confusion later, for those that subbed and canceled just to tip or those that cancel before the end of their month, first of all thank you for your support! It means a lot and is super motivating. I've been working non-stop since the release of v0.1 thanks to your support! To keep things fair, your vote will only be weighted the month you joined. Mainly because it wouldn't be fair for someone who's paid for two months to have the same voting power as someone who paid for one. Since polls are only planned to be a monthly thing, it's a big benefit.

Since the poll winner was existing characters, I can put them in as part of a monthly update rather than having to wait until v0.2. I want to get the new scenes in the game as quickly as possible, so I made sure to launch the next poll at the same time as the results, it's the new pinned post, be sure to check it out and cast your vote if you haven't already! It's to decide exactly who gets a new scene! To make sure the new scenes get added as quickly as possible, the poll is only 2 weeks!

Thanks to everyone who voted in this poll! Be sure to vote in the new poll to make sure who you want to see more of gets a new scene and I hope you look forward to the winners!

Monthly Update

And now for the monthly update.

v0.1.1 has been out for a week now, and it's done way better than I ever expected. With more than 13k views on itch, more than 2800 trackable downloads, and some supporters here on Patreon. It's done better than any other game I've ever made... combined. With the only exception being Fan Fantasy. The very first game I tried to make more than 15 years ago. That had over 100k downloads. But the internet was kind of starved for adult games back then. That was before you could even monetize them at all too, since patreon and itch didn't exist and you couldn't put them places like steam yet. Unlike today where they're everywhere and there's lots of avenues for people to support games. If there were, I'd probably be working on that series right now lol. Anyway, I've also seen fairly minimal negative comments, which was surprising but in a good way. It's pretty much stuff I expected, like "this is stolen artwork", "this is AI", "animated?" along with the "it's grindy" comment. Anyway, point being, I'm really happy with how well the v0.1.1 launch has gone. It's been super motivating see how many people have tried out the game and supported it, even with it being the absolute first version and still being so small and bare bones.

So I wanted to take a second to walk through the two biggest concerns I've seen so far and how I'm planning on dealing with them.

1) It's grindy -

I know it's super grindy right now, but it will get significantly less grindy as more updates get made. What's currently in the game is an incredibly small amount of content compared to what I'd like to implement, with each area being full of waifus. I'm designing the game to have sort of "groups" of women. Once you've seduced all the women in a group, you'll be strong enough for the next group. It's just going to take some time to get to the point where everyone is in the game. Each piece of character artwork generally takes between 4-8 hours, depending on the complexity and how much trouble it gives me. And then each scene usually takes 8-12 hours, but a couple have taken even longer. Then sprites usually take about an hour. So it's basically 2 full days to make a single character and scene. Then they have to actually be put in the game. First I have to write the scene, which can vary between 1-3 or so hours to write. Depending on the complexity of the scene, how I'm feeling, and if the character is part of a story or not. Then I have to implement the scene into the game with any kinds of variations and branching paths needed. Which wildly varies. For the basic characters you can seduce right away, it's maybe an hour, but when working on a character for v0.1.2 who requires the apartment (Rinko, she'll be announced next week), it took me about 5. Since she's a fairly complex character who is only available sometimes and needs the apartment to be unlocked, I had to implement the scene in a way that ensures that you get the correct dialogue depending on a number of factors. Which took a lot of testing and playing around with different variables. Then I have to make the battle. Since I'm making groups, what I usually do is make everyone in the group roughly the same. That way I can spend a lot of time balancing the first one, then just be able to copy it later. That first one can be rough and take a lot of time to properly balance though. Since I need to make the battle doable at a lower level, while also focusing on how much exp they give to ensure you get enough to level up to the next group after doing a few of them, all without it feeling too hard or give so much exp that it's broken. Rinko is the first in this new group, so It's taken a long time to implement. I'm still working on it, but currently at about 3 hours of balancing, but she's mostly done. I'm just letting it sit for a day so I can come back to it and recheck it to make sure it's all working correctly.

Alright, so for each new character, we're looking at an average of around 17 hours for the artwork alone, then roughly between 5-10 hours for writing and implementation. So let's say an average of 7 for that. Which is a clean 24 hours, which is about 3 full days of work. Just to create and implement a single character. Even working a full time schedule of 8 hours a day 5 days a week, that's still only 1 character max per week. And that doesn't include time to do things like write overarching stories or create new areas. Which varies so much it's impossible to really calculate. This also doesn't count the time doing things like making posts here or on forums and the time it takes to do things like upload and organize everything. Which can take a long time. Especially since I sometimes ramble a bit.

So I know it's grindy right now, but it's going to get better. I'm really working as fast as I can. The more support the game gets, the more motivated I am to work, and the quicker I get things done. If the game gets enough support, I could also hire someone to help with the writing and implementation of characters. For now, it's only me though.

To implement characters faster and to gradually lessen the grind, that's why I'm doing monthly updates with new side and one-off characters too. To help lessen the grind without having to wait months for another big version update.

2)No animation? -

The last section explains a lot of why there's no animation. With it already taking an average of 3 full days to implement a single character with just the basic character CG and scene, doing animated scenes would easily make that 12 full days, if not double or even triple that. I'd be looking at up to a full month or two of working for a single character. If I had done animations, v0.1.1 wouldn't even be out yet. I'd probably still be working on the starters. Since even an incredibly simple 3 frame animation, means that's 3x the number of art pieces I need to do for every character. And even then, 3 frames is not enough. It needs to be at least 5, but realistically I'd want real animation at at least 24 FPS. Even just a 1 second looping animation means 24 frames, which is 24 art pieces. And I'd probably want at least 2-3 seconds so it doesn't look super weird and fast all the time. And obviously, that would take an absurd amount of time when 1 frame takes a full day's work. With it taking so long, the game would be grindy for even longer too. Since it would take so long to make a single character.

Another big reason is simply because I'm not a 2D animator. 2D animation is a completely different skill than drawing or painting. I can kind of 2D animate because I was forced to take a class on it, but I am not very good at it. It takes me a long time and it's not very good when it's done. Which is another reason there's no animation. I wouldn't want to release a game with animation when it's just going to be bad. I could probably fairly quickly setup some tween and stretching animation, but imo that usually looks bad. More like two pieces of paper are awkwardly being moved rather than something actually moving. Some of it can look good, but only when the animator is really skilled. I'd much rather do static images that are going to look at least decent. It works better with the inspirations for the game too. Since the game was more inspired by Japanese eroge than western games. Which are almost entirely static images.

And really, one of the main goals for WW is for it to feel massive. I want there to be women everywhere, and for there to be a lot to do. One of my biggest inspirations for this project is a PS2 game called Radiata Stories. In that game, you can recruit every single person into your party through various means. And there's people everywhere. That's what I'm going for with WW. But unlike Radiata Stories, I want everyone to be "recruitable" in a single playthrough and don't want anyone to be missable. If you like PS2 era JRPGs, I'd highly recommend it though. It's a great game with a lot to do. Unfortunately, it's stuck on the PS2. I'm hoping one day we get some kind of remaster though.

So because of all of that, I made the decision not to animate it when I first started the project. I couldn't make the project what I wanted if I did animation.

However, if the game gets enough support that I can hire someone else to work on the game, the very first priority is trying to find an animator. I can't promise I'll be able to find one good enough to preserve the art style and also be able to do good animations, but trying to find an animator will be my #1 priority if the game gets enough support.

v0.1.2 Update Coming

Hopefully that puts some concerns at ease and answers some questions.

Next up I wanted to talk about the v0.1.2 update coming this month (just 2 weeks for Waifu Early Access supporters).

In addition to 2 new characters to seduce, I'm also working on better balancing the game and fixing some issues. I'm doing things like lowering the damage certain women's skills do, lowering the cost of the suit, and making it so your stats are overall higher. There's various bug fixes as well. There's a lot more changing in this update than I initially planned, but it's all changes I think the game needed and I didn't want to wait until v0.2 to implement them. Hopefully there aren't any other major issues that pop up and I'll be able to focus more on implementing new characters and new scenes up to v0.2 though.

I'm also working on revising the university area for v0.2 as well. I made each area selectable from a menu rather than one big area because the original game was 4:3 and fairly small, using the default RPGM resolution. Having a large area with a lot of connecting areas was more annoying than anything because the game was "zoomed in" so much. It was just super easy to get lost and not know where to go. But since it's now 16:9 and 720p, there's plenty of room on screen for it to be all one area. All of the areas were designed with that smaller resolution in mind, so future areas should be a big bigger and better take advantage of the resolution. I'll be reworking other segmented areas to better fit the 720p resolution too. Like I said, that wont be until v0.2 though. I'll put this warning with the update, but be sure you're outside of the university when you update the game! If you're inside, it could make your save unusable and you'll have to start over!

I've also been considering adding the full artwork of each woman as you talk to them, rather than just in the battle. Mainly to help show you what they fully look like before you go into battle. Right now you just have the sprite and face, and I'm not sure if that's enough. I haven't decided yet, but I will soon. I'm mainly on the fence about it because if I do the full artwork, there might be the expectation that there will be different expressions based on what they're saying. Which would be quite a bit more work. It works fine as it is now, but I'm trying to think of more ways to add some polish without having to add a lot more work. My main focus is getting as many characters as possible in the game right now, to cut back on the grinding, as well as get some stories started. So I won't want to have to spend a lot of time on little things right now. But if I were to include full character art when you talk to women, I would need to do that now. Otherwise it would make for a lot more work later.

Tier Name Edits

Last thing, I also edited the patron tier names. To hopefully make more sense and better match the game. I was going to put a joke tier for $1,000,000 saying you could buy the game rights and tell me what to do, but apparently the highest you can make a tier is $15,000. Still super high, but low enough that maybe someone out there would actually buy it.

Finally, the end

That was a long boi, even for me. I hope it gave some good insight to the dev process and what's coming. I'm hard at work on v0.1.2 and v0.2. I have a set date I want v0.2 to launch, and I'll announce that as we get closer. Just in case something goes wrong. And again, be sure to vote in the poll! I'm looking forward to seeing who ends up winning!