AlboeInteractive

Ménage à Moi Chapter 1 Part 1 4K Update Available to All Supporters

This is only the 4K update to the 1080p edition of Chapter 1 Part 1. No new scenes are included as explained in the January 2023 Progress Update. 

Besides the enhanced details from rendering in 4k, this update features the overhauled apartments of the male and female protagonists which I'll be using going...

Picking Up the Pieces (Jan. Progress Update)

On Monday or Tuesday, I'm releasing a 4k update to Ménage à Moi Chapter 1 Part 1. I updated the renders for everything after the first erotic scene, but this release has no new scenes. There have been some substantial issues during Part 2's production, and I am holding off releasing it until they are resolved. This is also why there has been no Behind the Scenes Post this month eithe...

Key Giveaway Deadline Extended

I've extended the deadline for the key giveaway I mentioned in a previous post. The new deadline is after the complete Chapter One of Ménage à Moi is released. I felt this was fairer since I did not finish the chapter in time for the end of 2022 like I planned.

I should clear ...

Chapter Split (December Progress Update)

I am splitting up Ménage à Moi Chapter 1 into 3 parts. Part 2 contains the next erotic scene which you can see a preview of at the top of this post. Part 3 was originally written with my old video card in mind and the scene had only 3 of the main teen characters. With my new card, I am in the process of expanding the scene so all 4 teen characters are present.

Much like the test release...

Ménage à Moi Chapter 1 Part 1 available for Tier 1

Part 1 contains approximately a quarter to a third of the planned content in chapter 1.

Due to adding new variables and altering previous ones, start a new game and do not load saves from the demo.

Changelog:

• Introduces two new characters and two new scenes.
• All renders after the first erotic scene (end of the demo) were rendered in 2k ...
  2022-12-18 17:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

Ménage à Moi Chapter 1 Part 1 available for Tier 1

Part 1 contains approximately a quarter to a third of the planned content in chapter 1.

Due to adding new variables and altering previous ones, start a new game and do not load saves from the demo.

Changelog:

• Introduces two new characters and two new scenes.
• All renders after the first erotic scene (end of the demo) were rendered in 2k ...
  2022-12-18 17:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post

Memory Limits? What are those? (BTS #27)

Knock, knock. Anyone home?

Sure doesn't look like it.

The apartments I designed for Ménage à Moi were fairly spartan for technical reasons. My RTX 2070s 8 GB VRAM limitation meant I had to be careful when considering what to add. I kept to the essentials, but the side effect was that thes...

Putting the RTX 3060 to work (Supporter Preview)

4k render courtesy of the new graphics card.

Enjoy =)

Upending the end of the year (November Progress Update)

First of all, I want to thank all my supporters, including the former ones. Your support has enabled me to acquire an RTX 3060, which I will be using to render my visual novels in 4k. This new capability is all due to your contributions. I have updated the tiers to include a 4k version for Tier 18 and the rest of the tiers will have access to 1080p as before. In addition, as a tier benefit, Tie...

Angling the Shot (BTS #26)

The camera placement for 3D art has far fewer limitations than in real life. You can place a camera practically anywhere without worrying about tripods, reflections, or how to fit the camera in the space as well.

A real camera would be butting into the wall in the above shot. A real-world narrow ...

Post Demo Plans Round 2 (October Progress Update)

I laid out my plans in the previous progress update post. Some more changes have occurred since then. I'll start with the good news first.

My custom-built apartment set allowed me to do something I hadn't been able to reasonably do before. That is render everything in 2k resolution. Looking at w...

Easter Egg Images (BTS #25)

You've already seen some easter egg images from other developers in Ménage à Moi, like this one I did for Mythos from Nine of Swords Studios:

I intend to include even more and I've already started. I had more of a personal rel...

Post Demo Plans and Tier Changes (Sept. Progress Update)

Production of chapter one of Ménage à Moi is well underway and I plan to release it on the last Sunday in November. This will be my first major release with early access depending on tier, and I wanted to time it so all supporters are able to play it before Christmas.

So the access breakdown looks like this:

• Tier 18 and paid itch.io players can play on November 27th
2022-09-30 16:23:38 +0000 UTC View Post

A complex apartment complex (BTS #24)

Chapter 1 of Ménage à Moi introduces two versions of an apartment I made from scratch. Allow me to take you on a tour of Rico's home (I'm still reworking Kiersten's).

The doors from left to right: Bathroom, Rico's Bedroom, Marta's Bedroom. I placed the doors along with the wall segments, furnit...

Ménage à Moi Public Demo Released

Synopsis:

Ménage à Moi is a drama about two people who are coming to terms with the end of their childhood. Everything is changing: their lives, their families, and how they view their childhood friends. Desire and inexperience will go hand-in-hand to allow romance to blossom in interesting ways.

Demo features:

• Introduction t...
  2022-09-12 20:25:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Ménage à Moi DemoV2 Supporter Release (Updated)

As a thank you to my supporters, the updated demo for Ménage à Moi is available now for you all to play before the public release. The only difference from the upcoming public release will be some additional promotional material (Edit: Mini-patch attached to this post).

DemoV2 Changelog:

• Added 28 renders and over 950 lines of code (including dialogue).
...
2022-08-28 20:58:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Ménage à Moi Demo V2 Drops Next Week

After some unfortunate delays, the updated demo is almost ready. Alongside adding Rico as the second protagonist, the narration has been changed to 3rd person. There are at least 25 new renders and additional dialogue to go with them.

As shown in the top image, I did fix up one render and thought about redoing more to fix a mistake, but I decided all previous renders will stay as is becau...

Artistic Vision (BTS #23)

You may be familiar with the (attributed to Michelangelo) quote “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” It’s rare for me to do this as 3D rendering is more like a painting where you add to the canvas instead of taking away like in sculpturing. Honestly, the render at the ...

Demo V2 (Supporter Preview)

This is going to be more of a blog post than what I usually do with these previews.

One of the recurring comments I received for Ménage à Moi's first demo was something to the effect of "I like it but we don't get to see the making out part?" I figured since I'm already adding Rico's perspective, I could add that as well. I thought it would be relatively straightforward, but I've been s...

Know your memory limits (BTS #22)

Pre-rendered images involve some unusual skills during the process of making them. Video game engines are relatively efficient in that they are able to automatically hide objects on the fly and scale the quality as needed. That is because they are designed to operate on a real-time basis where visual fidelity is not the highest priority. Those requirements do not apply to Daz, and VRAM manageme...

July Progress Update

I know it's a little early in the month for a progress update, but I wanted to do a public follow-up to my June Progress Update post so we are all on the same page.

I'm still working on Ménage à Moi and trying to get out a full demo that features the perspective of both protagonists (Kiersten a...

Ménage à Moi Demo (limited public release)

Synopsis:

Ménage à Moi is a drama about two people who are coming to terms with the end of their childhood. Everything is changing: their lives, their families, and how they view their childhood friends. Desire and inexperience will go hand-in-hand to cause romance to crop up in some interesting ways.

Demo features:

• 112 Renders and ove...
  2022-06-27 00:48:18 +0000 UTC View Post

June Progress Update

I have some good news and bad news to share this month.

Ménage à Moi has had 3 alpha tests and it both is and is not ready for a demo release. I'll explain. As a demo featuring scenes from my original outline, it is ready to go. However, I realized, as I've been working on it, that I wrote a dual protagonist story but I was only focusing on the female protagonist. I wa...

Status of the Upcoming Demo

I planned for today to be a public progress update post, but so much of what I'll be talking about is only going to make sense to those that played the alpha tests. So I'm making this post supporter-only.

...

I waffled back and forth about whether Ménage à Moi's Alpha Test 3 would be the public demo that everyone could play to introduce them to this project. But there was still so...

May the dForce be with you (BTS #21)

dForce is the name of the physics engine used by Daz Studio, but interacting with it is nothing like in a video game. AAA game studios have pretty much nailed clothing physics on character models, whereas in Daz there is a whole lot of manual tweaking required. Recently, I had to use it twice for Ménage à Moi and one went relatively quick while the other did not.

2022-06-12 18:01:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Ménage à Moi Alpha 3 Released

Surprise! I finished up the female version of the first erotic scene earlier than I expected. I was able to reuse a significant portion of the futa version without having to rework it as much as I thought I would. I also took some time to go over the intro and transition text to improve their aesthetics.

There will be a post later this month explaining what's coming next.

Al...