Developer's Journal 3:25 (Patreon)

Hey everybody.  I just started a render queue of 16 images from the wedding which will probably run through late tomorrow afternoon.  After that I've got a couple of hours of render fixes and then I will finally, thank god, be done with the wedding scene.

The wedding scene is substantially shorter than I wrote it.  Part of that is trimming fat and keeping the narrative moving, but there are some things I just decided were not worth the time they would have taken to pose and render, like a big wedding dance scene, bigger shots of the banquet hall, etc.  Stuff like that was just going to add development time that I just can't afford at this point.  Even just the conversational renders were running about two to three hours each.  But hopefully even in its shorter form the scene still accomplishes what it needs to.

Originally, I coded a choice for the player to decline Emmeline's invitation to the wedding.  But some things happen at the wedding that are important for later plot, and I just couldn't figure out how to incorporate those plot elements cleanly without the wedding scene.  Same thing for Malena's and MC's training scenes together which start in Episode Three.

The biggest struggle of writing an AVN that isn't focused on romance is balancing player choice against the needs of the story.  In order for players to stay engaged with LDNA, each scene has to advance either of the two main plots, i.e. the criminal investigation or MC's character development.  This is tricky to accomplish with an LI scene because if that scene doesn't advance the plot then it stagnates the story.  But if it does advance the plot and it can be skipped by player choice then players that skip that scene will miss out on the plot development.  And players tend to skip scenes that don't feature the LI's they are playing for.  This is a major problem for LDNA because MC is supposed to be overcoming his intimacy issues not just through romance but through learning to trust the people around him.  So sometimes I may want to have a scene where MC gets closer to an LI without it being romantic, but I know that players who aren't interested romantically in that LI will want to skip it, since developing platonic friendship with LI's isn't as common of a theme in AVN's.

Both the wedding scene and the training scenes with Malena are examples of scenes which I thought were too important to allow players to skip them.  Conversely, Jamie's museum date is an example of a scene I feel advances MC's character development, but not in a way that's critical to the story.

The bar scene in Episode Two is another example.  There is some future-plot-relevant dialogue between MC and Emmeline if he walks her to her car.  But I think the most interesting part of the bar scene only occurs if MC chooses to stay with Malena and Anna.  If Emmeline has the hots for MC, and if MC makes a move on Malena, she refuses him because she doesn't want to hurt her friend.  I personally think this is a great exchange which I was disappointed no one seemed to notice because it did take some guts for me to go through with it (there is a way around it and nail Malena, obviously, but it requires loading a much earlier save and/or making a non-obvious choice--something I expected to be unpopular with players).

To begin with, it's an instance of the always elusive LI agency in an AVN.  It's also yet another subversion of AVN player expectations (joining the scenes where MC rejects Gina at the gym and Jamie cockblocks Sylvia at the bar).  But its most important functions are to establish the strong feelings Malena has for Emmeline and to establish a line of morality for Malena.  Both of these are critical to later plot.  And yet many players won't ever have played through that scene.  So my job becomes to try to establish those aspects later on in scenes that are not skippable.  And anytime I have to reestablish something that was already established in an optional scene, the challenge is to ensure that neither scene feels superfluous for players who see both scenes.   That's not hard to do with something like Emmeline and Malena's relationship, but other times the extra work is simply not feasible.

Okay, sorry for rambling but this is my journal.  I had some other bullshit to bullshit but it's 12:30 and my brains shutting down so I'll end it here.

Thank you for your support!

--Monk