March Update - The Big Move, Waifu Wonderland 3D details, and 3D Poll Results #1

First off, I hope everyone has been enjoying the newest version of Waifu Wonderland! I'll be getting to working on the artwork as soon as I can!

Strap in everyone, this is gonna be a long boi. First we'll talk about the move and everything. This bit was the part I accidentally publishes a couple months ago :clown:, so it may not be new. The last part is though, as I'll be detailing how artwork patches are going to work. After that I'll be revealing some of the specifics of Waifu Wonderland 3D's plot, and lastly we'll get into the poll results. Let's get started!

The Big Move - 

With Waifu Wonderland v0.4 out now (currently in early access, public release is coming March 4th), and 3D being in early development, there's not really anything about the game to talk about this month. But there's some things I still wanted to mention and make people aware of for the next couple of months. I'll jump into that, and then farther down I'll talk about the poll results.

I'm moving in a couple of weeks. I'm going to be very busy preparing for the move leading up to it. Then as soon as I arrive I'll be in training, after that I'll be moving to my apartment, then about a week after that I'll be starting my actual job. Between actual work and training, dealing with jet lag, unpacking, and getting everything I need setup, I'm not going to really have the time or energy to be able to set aside time to work or give updates on anything.

However!

I don't want the Patreon to be completely dead if I can't give updates during that time. So I've been working hard on some posts to go out over the next couple of months to give more information on Waifu Wonderland 3D. A lot of these posts are things like character introductions and more specific plot information. But I also have polls planned for both Waifu Wonderland and for 3D that will be going live. I have one for this month that will be starting in the next couple of days, and then one for April. Since I likely wont have time to continually check changes in patron tiers and continuously track votes like I normally do, and likely wont be able to sit down and calculate the results and make the results post until a while after the poll ends, I'll be taking a snapshot of who is a paid patron the weekend after the start of the poll and applying weights with those snapshots. That way if there's a character/option you really want to win, you still have some time to upgrade.

By the end of April I should be adjusted enough to be able to start working consistently on the projects again. So at the end of April I'll be announcing the results for both polls at the same time. From there, I should be able to have a consistent amount of time set aside to work on the projects, and can go back to doing regular monthly updates.

Now that Waifu Wonderland 3D has been announced, and I'm able to continue developing Waifu Wonderland, I'm also going to be going back to doing regular polls. The plan is to do at least one a month. For now I'll probably alternate between WW and 3D polls. Since last month was 3D, this month's poll is going to be for WW. The new poll will be posted soon™. If it hasn't already been posted.

And lastly before moving on to 3D stuff, I wanted to talk about how I've decided to do artwork patches for Waifu Wonderland. I was going to hold everything until the next update, but decided against that, at least for the next couple of months. I'm not sure how much I'll really be able to do, and making people wait for the next couple of months while I move and then another couple of months while I finish up some artwork just felt like too long. At least for supporters. So I've decided that as I finish artwork, I'll be posting them here as a hot patch. All you'll have to do is copy the folder into the same directory as your Waifu Wonderland folder and overwrite the placeholder artwork. Unfortunately the browser version wont be getting these hot patches, since that requires me to export out and upload a new version every time and that would take too much time. The point of the hot patches is to quickly get the artwork to supporters as early as possible. I'm also going to start heavily encouraging people to get the downloadable versions if they can. The browser version will exist, but as more gets added to the game, the performance is going to get worse and worse.

Anyway, so I'll be making a specific post for hot patches and just editing that post whenever there's something new. That way all of the artwork will be in a single place and be easy to keep track of. I'll detail in the post how to patch and what artwork is included. I'll send out a notification whenever the post gets edited so people know new artwork was added. With any luck I'll have a decent amount of down time and will be able to get at least a few pieces of artwork done.

Now on to more info on 3D!

Waifu Wonderland 3D Plot Details -

Now that the Waifu Wonderland update that completes the story is out, that means I can talk more about the specifics of 3D! Then we'll get into the poll results.

If you haven't seen the true end of Waifu Wonderland yet, and don't want spoilers, stop reading now! Come back once you've beaten the game!

With that out of the way, let's get into it!

Spoilers - 

At the end of Waifu Wonderland you wake up in an alley and get found by some mysterious figure. The start of 3D will be this scene, with probably a brief explanation of the events leading up to it, so people who didn't play WW will know what's going on. You'll pass out, and then when you wake up, you'll be in a completely foreign room. You leave the room and find the mysterious figure, where it will be revealed that it's someone who looks like a goth Rouge the Bat. They'll explain that they can help you get home, if you help her and her friends. It's revealed that her and her friends are goddesses and need your help to restore their powers. Once they've been restored, they'll be able to send you home.

Each goddess will be themed around a different type of girl. One will be goth, another a MILF, and I'm planning on including a furry and futa as well, but they'll be optional to beat the game. There's a few more, but I'm still deciding between 6 and 8 total goddesses. It depends on how many models of each type I can find and how well I can split them. I'll announce the other types later once they're more solid. Anyway, to restore each goddess' powers, you'll need to impregnate women of their type. So for example, to restore the goth goddess' power, you'll need to impregnate goth girls.

Not just any girl will work though. Each of the goddesses will have specific women that you'll need to seduce and impregnate to give them power. These will generally be the more popular existing characters.

That's the basic plot idea. From here, the basic gameplay idea would be pretty similar to the original Waifu Wonderland. You can seduce women by going into seduction mode. But since you need to seduce specific types, how you go about getting abilities, and what abilities you get, will be different. I'm playing with the idea of having different classes that you train individually, but I have to see if there's a way to keep some abilities across all classes first. I don't want people to have to completely start over when switching classes.

Here's where it gets interesting, and we get to the thing that makes 3D much different than the original Waifu Wonderland.

Instead of being in a single city, you're trapped in an intersection of various 3D worlds, which is what the city you woke up in is. This city is called the Nexus and you'll be able to access the worlds that are attached to it. Each world will be like it's own little game. They'll have their own areas to explore and women to seduce. Each world will have a specific theme and I'm planning on each world having it's own little gimmick as well.

Before I go on, I have to mention something important. Since the game is in 3D, I'm not going to be able to do both a white and black version for every scene. This is why.

Render times on animations are just way too long. It generally takes around 10-12 hours to render an animation that's around 10 seconds. Sometimes even longer. During that time I can't really do anything else on the computer that's rendering. Since I can't really render during the day when I'm using my computer for my day job, that means it's one day to render one animation already. Assuming I'm not doing anything else on it during my off time. Doing two versions would double that rendering time. If I do multiple camera angles, it's an extra day per camera angle. Doing two versions of each means doubling that. I did one animation recently with 4 camera angles, and two different outfits for the girl. Doing two versions of that means 16 days of rendering for one scene. None of this counts the time I have to spend actually animating the scene, making character CG, editing the model if needed, programming, creating the sprite, or anything else either. All of which can wildly vary depending on the model and environment. Unfortunately, it's just not feasible to make two versions of every scene with my current setup. Instead, I came up with a fun gimmick that will change the game a lot and play into the idea of all of the other worlds.

The gimmick is that you can't escape the nexus, so in order to explore other worlds you'll need to take over someone's body by projecting your spirit into them. You'll get the ability from the goddesses. So in each world you'd be playing as a different person. This way, there would be a mix of the type of person you play as. The full in-game explanation will be that you're possessing the version of you that exists in that world. In most worlds you would be an average white guy, but in some you'd be a black guy, and then there would be worlds where you could play as humanoids too. Like one where you're basically Venom. They would be dedicated worlds for each type, so you could just avoid whichever ones you don't like. I had also considered doing a werewolf world, but the werewolf model I have is a little too limiting on scene types, so that was cut, at least for now. I'm also planning on including a basic white guy scene for every character included in the other worlds too. So if you don't want to play as a Venom, but your favorite character is in that world, you wont have to miss out. They may be completely different scenes, but the character will be accessible as a normal guy.

These are the type ideas I have currently. Again, most worlds you would still be primarily a white guy, since that's generally what's the most popular. And technically other worlds would be optional to beat the game. Doing all of them will definitely make the game easier, but they wont be needed. Anyway, here's the types so far -
White guy
Black guy
Venom

I currently have ideas for 8 worlds. The white guy would have 5 worlds, 2 for the black guy, then one for Venom. Again, this way people can beat game without having to do the other worlds if they don't want to. The game will be setup so you don't have to play things like the furry or futa content either. I'll also quickly clarify, there will only be male on futa, and you wont play as a futa. I had considered it, but ultimately decided against it.

Progression is also a bit different than in WW. Instead of buying an apartment/houses and unlocking more women, you unlock portals to new worlds.

However, there is a caveat. I'm planning on doing a patch to turn "You" black if you played that version (I was going to let you select at the start of the game, but it would increase the file size too much). This way your portrait and character will display correctly while you're in the nexus. And since you're only yourself in the nexus, the only scenes that would directly be you would be the ones inside the nexus. Which means I can do both black and white versions for those scenes. I can reasonably take the extra time for a handful of scenes like that. I'll likely just have to do things like fewer camera angles and have simpler environments to help speed up render times.

That's the basic setup to Waifu Wonderland 3D! You're trapped in a nexus between worlds and need to possess various other versions of yourself and impregnate women throughout different 3D worlds so that you can restore the power of these goddesses, and they can send you home. I hope you look forward to seeing the game develop!

Other Character Confirmations -

Now that the basic setup is out of the way, I figured I'd announce a few of the confirmed characters.

First are the obvious ones, the ones I've already made and released animations for, which are-
Aunt Cass
Nyl's Widowmaker
Rouge the Bat (Goth and Default)
Storm
Goth Samus
Blackfire
Harley Quinn

I may end up redoing the Storm and goth Samus animations, since they're different than the rest, but they'll be included in the game. I'm also just going to do a completely new Harley Quinn animation. The one I did was the first animation I did since coming back to Blender, and it is way worse than I remember.

And for others, I'll separate them by type. I have already decided pretty much all of the furry characters. Mainly because I'm very picky about which ones I like, and there aren't really that many. I'm leaving a lot of the other characters open to polls, but here's some that I will for sure be including, sorted by type, with a little explanation of what I consider that type. Next to the model is who made it.

Goth - Mostly women with black lips. There are likely to be some exceptions for notable goth girls who don't have black lips, but that's the basic idea. Black lips=goth girl.
Black Cat - boop (custom goth edit)

MILF - Not thicc women. Needs to either have a child or be associated with one. A good example of the latter is Aunt Cass. Not technically a MILF because she doesn't have a child of her own, but is an Aunt who takes care of her nephew, so close enough.
Miyako - Me

Furry - Humanoids. This one will be the most flexible. But for the most part, it needs to at least have some kind of animal part attached, be a fantasy creature, or have some kind of feature that isn't naturally human. Like an unnatural skin tone. Here's some characters I'll be doing.
Loona - DogZeela
Lola Bunny - Tyviania
Catherine Applebottom - Rabbiz3D
Squirrel Girl - Hentaicore
Draenei - WhitePimp

Futa - Is a futa. In 3D, all futa will be able to get pregnant.
Nyl's Ashe - Nyl

Other - Characters from unannounced types.
Yoruichi - Hentaicore

These are all characters I want to include eventually, they may not appear in the first release. When it comes to the furry characters, they definitely wont all appear in the first release. I just wanted to announce more of those, since I don't plan on doing polls for furry characters. Since like I said, I'm kind of picky when it comes to furry. There just wouldn't be enough options for polls.
Also, none of these are the goddesses. I want to save them for their own post. I have already decided which models I'll be using for each though.

For the initial release, I do plan on including at least 1 "target" for each type and then what will be the starters for the game. Of course, I also plan on including all of these poll winners! At the very least, I want there to be at least 13 characters with scenes in the initial release. 6 are already done, so that just leaves another 7.

Poll Results -

And now for the first WW3D poll results!

The results were pretty surprising to me. At the start of every poll, for fun I like to call who I think will win. I thought it would end up being some mix between Samus, Tifa, and 2B. But things didn't quite go that way. Let's start with two of the losers.

Samus ended up with 2 votes, and no one had any weights, so the total was 2. Which I thought was pretty shocking. My most popular animation by far is a goth version of this specific model, and Samus has always been a popular character, so I thought she'd do better. But she actually ended up with the least votes.

Tifa ended up with 4 votes, which is actually more raw votes than one that came out ahead of her, but no one who voted for Tifa had any weights, so it ended up at a total of 4 votes. Which means no Tifa, at least not this default version of Tifa.

In second place was - Elizabeth and 2B
This was unexpected. We ended up with at tie. 2B ended up with 4 raw votes and a total of 8 votes with weights. And then Elizabeth ended up with 3 raw votes, but ended up with 8 total votes with weights. Which is pretty surprising, and leaves us with a bit of a problem. I only have 2 character slots for the poll. If I add in both 2B and Elizabeth, I'd have to cut someone else. So we'll have to do a tie-breaker.

When it comes to tie-breakers, usually I check who was the highest tier patron that voted. In this case, that's also the same, with the highest being Waifu Fan. From there I could figure out a different tie-breaker. But while I don't normally like doing this, I'm going to use my special powers as developer and reveal more about the game than I expected, and declare Elizabeth as the winner. On top of that, I'll also include this version of 2B in the next "superstars" poll. Since she didn't technically lose, and I only said I wouldn't be doing a losers poll. I think it's the fairest thing to do, and this is why.

The reason I'm declaring Elizabeth the winner instead of 2B, is because other versions of 2B are already planned for both the initial release of the game, and later releases. I have a custom version of Lia3D's 2B that I'll be including in the initial release of the game, along with a 2P version. I'm also planning on including the custom bikini goth version of 2B that I made for my Goth Girl Summer series, or at least a version of Goth 2B. But there's no other versions of Elizabeth currently planned. I may do BAS Liz, but I'm still on the fence about her, so she'll likely end up in a poll later on too. I think it'd be kind of messed up to include 3 versions of 2B but no Elizabeth, when they tied. Especially when I know that other versions of 2B were going to make it in later. Like I said, I'll also be including this regular version of 2B in the next "superstars" poll to give her another shot. In the future, I'll be more careful about who I include in polls so that this doesn't happen again. I may also start doing wild cards again, so if there's a tie like this, the tie can take the place of the wild card.

I was going to reveal this later on in a big post revealing more info and characters, but in light of the poll, here's the character CG for the version of 2B that will be appearing in the first version of 3D.

She'll be a bit of a secret character, but she'll be available in v0.1. More will be revealed about how this version of 2B fits in the game a later post.

Anyway, I'm honestly super impressed with how well Elizabeth did. While I do really like Elizabeth, I included her in the poll because was on the fence about including her. If it was like 5 years ago, including her would be a no brainer. She was easily one of the more popular R34 characters for a long time. But it's been a long time since Bioshock Infinite came out and I've seen significantly less content with her recently, so I wasn't sure if people still liked her or knew who she was. I'm glad some people do still like her though!

And then in first place was - Elastigirl
I wasn't expecting this at all. While I know people like Elastigirl, I've never been that much of a fan. I can see the appeal, she's always just been a little too on-the-nose for me. I really only included her because I feel like I see her pretty regularly and know that people like her, but I normally see the Helen Parr version, not the Elastigirl version. Which is why I chose to include this version in the poll. I wasn't really sure if people liked the hero version, and I honestly didn't ever expect her to win.

But she ended up with the most raw votes at 6, and the most overall with a whopping 19 votes with weights, and will now be included in the game!

And that's why I do the polls, and also why I try to include options I don't think will win. I'm definitely wrong sometimes, and that means that the poll is working and ensuring that there's a mix of content that I want and think would be good for the game and what all of you want.

As for the losers, like I mentioned in the poll, I don't plan on doing a losers poll or anything for 3D. There's just too many models I want to use. However, again, this doesn't mean another version of the character wont be in the game or wont appear in a later poll. Like, Tifa's default version is gone, but that doesn't rule out her blue dress version.

I'm doing my best to keep variations of characters down so that I can include more unique characters. But it can be difficult, especially with characters I really like. And that's another reason why I rely on everyone to help decide who gets included with these polls! It helps a lot to trim things down and keep the game at a more realistic scope.

Long boi -
That's it for now. I hope you look forward to seeing Elastigirl and Elizabeth in 3D, hope you look forward to seeing more information about 3D, and I hope everyone is enjoying the newest version of Waifu Wonderland!

EDIT -
To declutter the feed, I merged these two posts into one.

That's Disappointing

Someone decided to share paid content. So that's really disappointing. I figured it would happen eventually if the game got big enough, but it's really disappointing that it happened with the game being so small. It's not like the game is super successful and making tons of money. It's currently at $34 a month. Which I am very thankful for. It's just not very much compared to most other games. Sharing content before it goes public is extremely damaging to small projects like this. If the game was at the $1000+ mark and had lots of support, then it wouldn't be as problematic, but the game gets so little support as it is. Since I'm moving out of the country soon, I'll have to rely on the income here to be able to do things like buy models for 3D and pay subscriptions to the programs I use to make the illustrations and sprites and everything. If the game isn't getting enough support to pay for these kinds of things, then content will have to get cut and the game itself will start having delays or even just get canceled. I also already release the game for free and have fairly short early access compared to a lot of games. There's really no reason to share paid content.

So unfortunately, I'm going to have to start doing stuff to make sure this doesn't happen again. From now on, for early access I'll be generating individual keys and sending them out when early access hits. Once I have time again, I'll be looking into linking the patreon and Itch and how all of that works and how I can distribute that way. Even though I'd much rather have spent that time working on the game. Since there's only a couple more days of early access left, I just changed the password. If you need the new password, you can DM me.

I really didn't want to have to start doing stuff like this. It takes time away from development and is just kind of a pain for everyone. Like I had planned on working on Hikari's scene today, but had to deal with all of this instead. But I don't want people paying for early access to posts to get screwed over like this. I put a lot of work and time into doing things like early access as a way to thank those who are supporting the game. Since without their support, the game wouldn't be getting developed and would have been labeled as a failed project and dropped months ago. Having stuff shared and knowing that they're not getting as much for their support really sucks. It's extremely demotivating.