Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #102

Hiya there! I hope everyone is doing well--admittedly I've trailed behind a little with this dev log as it's been a busy few days, but I'd like to think everything is forging ahead smoothly.

I've been focusing on a multitude of things in the last few days, but they can be summed up as such:

- Planning and drafting a variety of new misc. scenes that will happen in the city at various points. One even has its own dedicated little CG graphic, and I'll be curious to see how people react to such a scenario. I sometimes feel like I'm pushing the boundaries of what people may or may not want or like from my titles, but I don't try to do it out of spite or contempt for my audience--I typically just try a variety of things to avoid feeling too stale, and as a desire to grow as a writer throughout these sorts of things. It's not to say they're a WILD departure from my usual things (like Matt isn't suddenly gonna grow 10 feet tall and dom the ladies or anything, haha) but I sometimes just like to see what works and what doesn't. I hope it'll keep people on the edge of their seat and anticipating what might come next, though!

It's been a lot of fun when I suddenly have an idea for a scene strike me at a random time and I have to scramble to make a note of it on my phone before it leaves my head. If you saw my phone notes they'd look like the ramblings of a mad person, with all sorts of ideas interspersed between dialogue/narration snippets I'd written, too. Don't even get me started on the amount of .txt files I have littered around my computer in awkward places! I like to make a lot of notes and ideas, but gosh if I can organise them.

- Forging ahead on the new h-scenes for the new alpha build. I can't go into too much detail with these because I wouldn't wanna spoil things--but these have been quite fun to conceptualise and steadily bring to life. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but h-scenes are a very slow thing for me to write, as I typically have them as very long, enduring experiences for Matt--and it can be a real head-scratcher for me when I approach a scene and wonder how to keep it sensual and erotic without falling on the same dull lines every time. For this matter I typically hop between both the physical actions, and the mental side of things--as love and attraction is more than just a couple of people going at it like rabid animals, right? There's often a lot of powerful emotions that well up inside that flow in tandem with the debilitating sensations that work to render poor little Matt's body helpess, unable to resist the girl before him. Aggression, desire, shame--all sorts of things can meld together between the two and turn into something super wonderful! At least, I hope so at least, haha. I'm still incredibly self-conscious about my erotic writing and am unsure if I'm going in the right direction with it, but I guess if I've gotten this far it can't be THAT bad, right~?

- Continuing to tinker with stuff behind the scenes relating to UI coding, part-time job coding and beyond. My coding/scripting knowledge could do with some brushing up in some regards, so more often than not I have to work around my limitations and get everything working as it should (even if it's held up with tape in the background. As long as nobody sees said tape, it's the results that matter!) I do, however, often consult and work with someone more experienced than me when it comes to programming, and they've helped with a lot of the fancier features that have been teased before, like the relationship meters, status screen and so on. It's been quite fun to get a better understanding of the coding aspect of this engine though, and it's given me a greater idea of what it might take to make more involved experiences in the future. For example, mini-games, combat systems, and so on! (I'd never overload Quest Failed with a combat system, but maybe for a little spin-off game down the line if people were ever interested in fighting alongside their monster pals!)

- Refining vocal scripts and writing directions. Perhaps a lesser known aspect of the work that goes into getting a scene voiced is the immense amount of effort I put into every script before delivering it to the VA! (If people are interested maybe one of these days I could do a dev log detailing how a h-scene is made from start to finish with all the little steps around it!) This includes:

Isolating the dialogue to be voiced and moving it to a separate file

Editing down and ensuring everything is perfect to be voiced

Adding vocal directions under each line. This can range from very minor things such as just the general tone I'd like for the line, to full-on micromanaging how certain words should be emphasized or said. This often leads to the direction for a single line ending up being twice the size of the line itself!

Adding extra bits such as if audio loops need to be added in addition to the main lines. (Those clips of audio you'll hear playing over more general narration to help keep up the illusion of the scene happening while not reading the main diaogue)

As you can imagine, it's quite a process, and can sometimes take a little longer than I'd like to get down before sending them off to VAs--but I feel it's more than worth it in the end and results in the best vocal performance, rather than leaving the VA to guess the context behind lines, etc. I hope you'll all agree, too!

- Writing up some more events that will take place in the inn each night (a preview of which is today's featured screenshot!), leading up to a big major story event where Matt will journey off with some important people to confront evil! My main idea is to have a unique event EVERY night at the inn, even if it's something small--just so you don't feel like you're going through the motions every time you go to sleep, and have something to look forward to at the end of each in-game day. Though the downside of this is the more free days I give you to explore in between major story events, the more night-time inn events I would have to add. This is why I hope to strike a balance so people feel like they have enough time to achieve their goals, while not feeling overwhelmed in the writing department.

Anna doesn't seem to be acting quite herself right now--I wonder what the occasion is? And what this 'house special' might entail! Goodness, me! You know something is wrong when she's offering to give things away for free!

(The drunken blush effect on Anna is a very rough effect I drafted up myself just for effect here and I intend to get an artist to properly make one that fits her face, so apologies for any roughness here!)
---

Regarding what I was talking about with the early Chapter Two release--I still haven't gathered enough input on whether this is a good or bad idea, so don't want to make any rash decisions moving forward. I'm hoping to gather more feedback on it in the future before either releasing it early or waiting until everything is in place a little while after. Since it's not something I can tackle lightly, and is a big business decision. So if you had any thoughts as to what was discussed before regarding this, please feel free to let me know!

Admittedly while talking about the things I've done over the last week or so, this dev log did turn into more of a general 'how I go about things' as well. I'm unsure if these are interesting for people, but I do have a lot more processes I could ramble about if people would like to see those for future dev logs! Just lemme know, and I'll ramble awayyyyy!

I hope you all have an awesome day. Look forward to some awesome bonus art coming up very soon!

Until next time~