Devlog #60: Graphs and Conventions (Patreon)

Time for another free devlog!After the (very good) launch of Chapter 2 I took a bit of time off before starting to work on Chapter 3 and immediately I need to put things on halt for a bit again.Long story short, I'll be going to a comics/games convention this week and won't be back until next monday. It wasn't planned (if fact the plan was to NOT go due to unexpected expenses earlier in the month), but some IRL friends got me free accomodations and tickets.This all to say "don't expect a devlog next week".Now, let's talk about Chapter 3 a bit.

I did the "pre-production" stuff already and started with the writing and rendering......and I'm spooked.I'll go into more details later in the spoilers section, but it's looking like it's going to be a pretty big one, probably the biggest update I've ever done.There's 3 things that I want to happen in Chapter 3: Rhea's date(and first time), Annie's date(and first time) and the decision of where to live.Having two girls' dates in the same chapter is not something I'm particularly keen on and is a vestige of a very early draft of the story where Annie and Rhea's relationships were mutually exclusive, but I kinda wrote myself into a corner and if I hold off on either of them (especially Annie) people will call for my head.

Then there's the "where to live" choice with its three paths, each having unique scenes, that happens at approximately 1/3 of the way into the chapter. This adds at least 3 scenes per in-game day, plus 3 separate chapter endings.All this is to say that shit's gonna require A LOT of work (I'm estimating around 1500 renders), so much so that I'm seriously considering splitting the chapter in two parts and basically do what I did with Chapter 1, aka releasing the first part to supporters only and dothe public release when the chapter is completed.

So, in conclusion, I don't know when Chapter 3 is going to come out. I had a short one-off story planned to release for Christmas, but the moment I realized how big this chapter was going to be I shelved it and post-poned it for the 2 year anniversary.SOMETHING (either the full chapter or only the first half) will be released in December, but I can't say what or when 'cause I literally don't know.With the current state of the economy, it would be irresponsible for me not to say that, if you're a paying supporter, it's ok to just pause the subscription! The Steam sales went ok and, combined with how well chapter 2 went, I have some breathing room for the next month. So don't worry if you find yourself in a pinch, the lesbians will still be here ready to welcome you back!

If you decide to stay and keep supporting me, first of all THANK YOU! and second I'll try to have some content for the month of November.Now, I'm gonna dive into spoilers, so if you don't wanna know anything, this is the time to close the tab. I wish you a Happy Halloween and I'll see you soon!

--------------------HEAVY SPOILERS START HERE--------------------To illustrate what I mean when I say that this chapter is going to be big, I'm gonna show you a bit of the behind the scenes.When I begin working on a new chapter I do something I call "the outline": in short, I write down all the scenes I need for the chapter, highlighting path variants, important choices, etc...It used to be just a notepad file with all the scenes in order, but with the complexity of AR increasing I had to change the way I do things. So, in the immortal words of Nickelback, "Look at this (...)graph":

Every rectangle is a scene, dotted lines represent "optional" scenes (things like "if you are dating X, here's a sex scene) and the colored ones are scenes exclusive to a specific path. Every scene ranges anywhere between 20 to 100 renders.As you can see, A LOT OF SHIT HAPPENS. If I were to cut the chapter in 2 it would be at the end of Friday: it's a good stopping point pacing-wise, has the option of ending on a sex scene for almost every path and it's roughly halfway through the chapter.The downside would be the latter half of the chapter having both the dates, which I'm not a fan of, but as I said I wrote myself into a corner there.

So, yeah... I'm kinda panicking and I need to pack my bags.I'll keep you all posted. If I end up deciding to split the chapter in 2 I'll do another public post to let everyone know. If you are not in it already, join our discord to get up-to-date news and previews.But, for now, I need to run! See y'all soon! Wish me luck, I need to take 3 different trains...