Quest Failed: Chapter Two - Dev Log #80

Hiya there, guys!

How are we all doing today?

I feel as if I've been slipping with keeping these weekly--and I do apologise, as my goal with these has always been to keep a direct, steady line of contact with you guys to let you know how everything is going and ensure your confidence over the development. And I always fear that the longer I go without a dev log, the more you all might start to worry that things aren't going well. So I'll have to try and remedy this! Maybe with a new post or dev log a little earlier than usual next time if I can help it.  

But jeez, we've reached 80 dev log posts! It barely even feels like yesterday since I started these at all. Time is a scary thing, huh? I sure hope I can manage Chapter Two's release before we hit a 100 of these things. That'd be a nice goal to work towards, at any point!

Rather than document what I've achieved over the past week like usual--which is to say, lots and lots of writing and planning with people involved on the game such as VAs, etc.--I want to take today's dev log to talk about the game as a whole; where it's at; what's been done; what is waiting to be done, and so on.

This is always a nervous topic for me--because I don't want to lie to your faces and say "oh yeah the game will be done by tomorrow don't worry guys!" but then I don't want to lose your confidence either by suggesting that not enough is done so far. But given the immense support you've all given me over the years (yes, years! Gosh time goes by) I feel it's only fair to open up a little more. Don't worry though, it's not doom and gloom or anything--I'm not going to suddenly say money has dried up and I have to close up shop. On the contrary, I've never been in a more stable position! What with sales of Chapter One and the recently released Audio Adventures still trickling in day by day, coupled with the amazing support you guys give me on Patreon, I've never felt more confident about the outcome of a project before! I never feel as if I've had to cut or compromise anything to achieve the vision I have set out for Chapter Two and I'm completely astounded by everything that's come together so far. (I hope alpha players can vouch for that!)

So--that said, what I will be doing is going over each aspect of the project and give you a feel for how everything is developing.

--Art--

Despite some initial struggles to secure artists in the beginning of 2017--the art portion of Chapter Two has come leaps and bounds since then! In fact, I think I mentioned it before--but essentially all of the art assets are finished. Every sprite, every h-scene, every background--it's all done! And gosh they've never looked prettier. The only exception to this is that I'm still getting some more specific (non h) art done for events as I move along with the script when I see fit, to better help illustrate some goofier or more action packed moments. I find it's really helped to bring the story to life and gives that much more depth to some scenes beyond the ones exclusively focused on the sexy times. And to avoid feature creep that might stagger development time--the game is 'content locked', and has been for some time. This means I won't add any more new h-scenes and am content the game has everything it needs in place ready to be implemented.

--Voice Acting--

Perhaps the second most important aspect to Quest Failed, given the highly regarded voiced scenes in the first chapter--this spurred me on to do my best in securing as many talented voice actresses as I could for the second chapter, to join the existing cast that all reprised their original roles. Next to art--this is one of the most expensive aspects of the project to fund and where a lot of the current money is going right now while I bring all manner of scenes to life! And alongside h-scenes, I'm also ensuring that some of the more important scenes are voiced, too. Essentially moments that might have accompanying CG that isn't lewd.

It's hard to say just how much of the voice acting is done versus how much needs to be done, as I have many voiced elements both implemented into the game and many that are in their raw form and need to be clipped down to various lines. The voice acting essentially is done in tandem with the script writing. Though sometimes I write scenes out of order when I'm inspired for one especially, so I end up with a bunch of complete h-scenes that I can't quite put into the alpha yet as they'd be out of sequence. But as I push forward, more and more of the characters are having their content fully voiced--along with all manner of misc. lines, too. (Think the cute 'FrostWorks' splash lines and so on!)


--Sound/Music--

This is a steady one! I'd say quite a few of the music tracks required for Chapter Two are complete--with just a few gaps that I aim to plug moving along. And if you liked what you heard of the new tracks in the demo, you're going to be in for a treat with the rest of what Noyemi's cooked up for the game~

Sound effects are coming along a little more slowly--since admittedly sound design is a new frontier for me, given Chapter One was almost entire SFX-less minus the VA. But I am working with a very talented sound engineer, and together we've been building up a library of effects that help bring scenes to life! (Right down to the bubbles of air poor Matt lets out with a certain mischievous fish, huhu) so it's been a fun area for me to learn about and see what works best in any given scene. My approach to getting sounds is to get a wide range of them I can reuse through a whole bunch of scenes, rather than focus too much on lots of little more specific sounds that might only get one use--so I make the most of the budget being put towards that area!

I will say that in terms of sounds in h-scenes, I think I'm going to shy away from adding any SFX in h-scenes, outside of VA. And I know this may be a hotly debated point for some--but these are my reasons:

• - I feel SFX may detract from, and over power the voice work. I find it's far more sensual to focus on breathy panting, oral noises and so on!
  
• - In a lot of cases, and as my own personal opinion--SFX can feel quite over the top when introduced to sex scenes. Meat slapping, comical spurts when cumming, I just can't get behind it, haha.

As an exception to the rule--things such as vines, tentacles squeezing in, etc. I may experiment with SFX for these to hit home with just how hard they're squeezing in. But I feel it's important to reason my stance over why sex scenes in general aren't going to be laden with SFX!

--Writing--

Hooboy, the big one! And the element I'm charge of directly, so take full responsibility for it all. As you may have guessed, the writing is admittedly one of the elements that is the slowest to come together--or at least seems it when you stack up Chapter One's development time to Chapter Two's own. But with the game being four times the size of Chapter One, if not moreso--I feel this extra development time is justifiable. Not to say it's going to take four times as long to finish as Chapter One--it certainly won't, don't worry!

But I won't lie--with a script this big, and featuring as many diverging, non-linear points as it does--it can often feel daunting at times to navigate the script files and bring things to life. And then I can spend days typing away furiously and finalising so many scenes, only to realise I still have so many more to go! It's a big undertaking. A HUGE one for one person alone--that I've steadily come to realise.

But through braving the script and slowly plinking away at it, even when I'm feeling completely overwhelmed--I've ended up with a word count that's well over twice the amount of Chapter One's grand total (counting both the journal system and all of the skits present in v 1.1) and it climbs steadily each day. And it's hard to say when everything might be done--as some days I can write thousands upon thousands of words, and other times just a few hundred when preoccupied with managing other aspects of the project such as VA directing and responding to emails with artists and so on. Some days are just better than others. And I'm sure any writers among us in the crowd right now will vouch for how frustrating something like writer's block can be--and the importance of just soldiering on, even if things need to get reworked at a later time! And when I'm not solidly adding to the script, my focus is often on expanding and refining the outline and notes I have for future scenes--which has led to coming up with a lot of cool moments that I might never have been able to plan out if I had just tried to brute force my way through writing!

You can probably also tell from the length of these dev logs that I love writing. I really do. Writing has been the one thing I've felt at least semi-confident in over the years--and I can't thank you guys enough for giving me the chance to bring to life so many wonderful characters and ideas I've had in my head! It really is a joy, despite all of the head-banging involved during the process, to see everything end up on the game screen. It's the best feeling in the world to go through it and play it and see just how well it's come together! And I'm not gonna lie--when I finished the credits sequence on Chapter One and let it play through for the first time, I basically almost cried. That feeling you get when something is finished after hours, days, MONTHS of working on it...it's impossible to put into words. It's an overwhelming sense of relief that you did it. You really did it! And I really can't wait for that moment with Chapter Two--when I can see the credits roll by and feel proud that I stuck with it to the end and delivered something that you'll all (hopefully) enjoy just as much!

I realise this dev log also turned into something of a mushy ramble, so I apologise. Sometimes I just writing without thinking and have to delete paragraphs of nonsense so things actually resemble a professional development log rather than the ramblings of a mad person, haha. But in this particular case, I want to really pour my feelings out there and let you know where development stood and how I felt about the state of things.

And I'm sure the biggest question you all have right now is "so when is Chapter Two actually going to be finished?" Understandably so! And unfortunately whenever I give a solid estimate it backfires on me. Horribly. Catastrophically. Embarrassingly so! The best answer I can give right now is within the coming months. I want to buckle down--shut out the world and really nail down the writing. I have everything laid out. I have all the assets. I KNOW what I want to achieve in the writing. It's just putting the remaining words down to the page. I owe it to everyone to deliver the best experience I can--and will except no shortcuts or compromises, even if technically I could slash half the content and deliver a massive experience still--I would feel like I was cheating you all out of what I envisioned. I felt bad enough for having to cut the Jilly/Tari duo scene from Chapter One until a later patch, and want to avoid falling into that trap again!

But, saying this--I want to show how serious I am with the writing and start to be more transparent with it. I'm still working out the specifics--but from possibly the next dev log onwards, I want to find some way to show and track progress of what I'm working on and how much I've done over the course of any given week. Weekly wordcounts, maybe? I did toy with the idea of potential streams too with patrons--but was unsure if streaming me writing is any fun for anybody, haha. It might be a terribly dull process for all to see! Regardless, I'm open to ideas and suggestions on this front on how best you'd want me to show progress on the game, so you feel confident I'm delivering what you want to see!

This has been another ramble log from FrostWorks! Thank you all so much your extreme patience and support, I really do love you all~ Please look forward to the next post (not a dev log!) that will feature some lovely art--the bonus art of the month! I've been seeing some previews of it coming together and gosh is it pretty!