Early Update - Progress and Announcing Waifu Wonderland 3D!

Well, anyone reading this probably knows I kind of messed up and accidentally published a draft of the March update lol :clown: It's deleted now, but anyone with email notifications could have read it. So to pull back the veil a bit, I normally do create drafts of these posts early, then update them and add information as needed. That's one of the reasons they're usually fairly big. With my move coming up, I've been working on making and scheduling posts as far ahead as possible. And I've gotten up to the start of March. Normally I'm not quite that far ahead, but I really want to make sure people are still getting updates and information while I adjust to my new life and job. Of course, most of those posts are just drafts. I'll be updating them as needed as it gets closer to when they'd actually be getting posted. In the actual March update, I'll be talking a lot more about the release of Waifu Wonderland v0.5.

Since the cat's out of the bag, I figured I'd go ahead and just release what I was planning on releasing as the February update early. The progress section is for where I'm at currently though, not where I'll actually be at the start of February. Since I can't know exactly where I'll be then. I was going to update it as I did more and it got closer. If you saw the WIP post from a couple of days ago, it's the same. Anyway, here's the update. I'll do a shorter one for an actual February update just to let people know how progress is going. I'll be putting context notes in brackets like [this] where needed. Just felt a bit silly to hold on to this when I accidentally already leaked the next game lol.

The Original Update -

With Waifu Wonderland potentially coming to an end and the only thing I can do with it will be to add artwork for a while, I wanted a second project to start working on. Just in case Waifu Wonderland really is done, but also to sort of scratch a different creative itch. I like painting, but it's very different than things like game design, writing, pixel art, etc that go into making a game. It's also very different than things like 3D work and video editing.

So I've been looking through my projects folder to decide what idea I wanted to work on. I fairly quickly decided against another 2D game. I'll still be working on the artwork for WW, so I didn't want my time doing 2D work to be split, and like mentioned above I want something to scratch a different creative itch. So I started looking at 3D projects, and it was a very easy choice. I briefly mentioned this being a possibility in a previous post, but now I've decided to go ahead and officially start production. Well, after I'm done with all the programming I can do in Waifu Wonderland.

So yeah, it's official, my next project is going to be Waifu Wonderland 3D!

To prevent confusion, I'll always refer to Waifu Wonderland 3D as just 3D for short. While the 2D game will always be Waifu Wonderland or WW.

Progress -

But before I talk about all of that, here's the current progress on Waifu Wonderland.

Add final lab character (done)
Do lab ending (done)
Finish Angela's storyline (in progress)
Add pregnancy and new scene for working girls (done)
Add new scenes and outfits for Rinko, Freya, and Aoyagi (in progress)
Add 4 more rare women (done)
Add Random Beach Babes (in progress)
Open the Hospital with Random Nurses
Finish the office building and add the Office job and Random Office Ladies
Add Seika's final scene and pregnancy
Add Minori (Akari's daughter) and her storyline
Add the rest of the MMC characters and storyline
Add collectable sets into the hospital and office building

As you can see, quite a bit has been done! We're halfway through the list, and I even had to take a weekend off to help a family member move [this is happening the last weekend of January]. Not having to worry about artwork makes implementing things way faster. Still a couple more weeks to go, and it's looking like I'll be able to make it through everything!

[At this point, if I stay on schedule, I'll be working on the Office Job at the start of February, which is why the next section exists. I would have edited all of this as needed to reflect actual progress, but I'm still confident I can get through it. Especially since my day job has slowed down quite a bit this past week and seems to be even slower this week.]

So I thought I'd introduce what I plan on doing next, if I have the time.

Gloryhole
Touko (a neighborhood MILF)
Apartment Neighbor and Neighbor's daughter
Storyline for apartment neighbor and neighbor's daughter

I think that's a reasonable amount to potentially add in the time I have. It really just depends how long adding in the rest of the office takes.

You also may have noticed that I took away the, "add the rest of the rare women." This is because I ended up adding all 9 already! There's now a total of 10 in the game. When implementing Goth Seika I did the coding to include up to 10 rare women already. So all I had to do was make their individual scenes. This went even faster than I expected, so I went ahead and included all 10 at once. It was just easier that way. Artwork was included for 2 of them, since it was already done, but the other 7 just have the placeholders for now. I did do a WIP post introducing most of the other rare women if you're interested in getting a sneak peak. Since some of them are 3D and that takes less time than 2D, they'll probably be among the first scenes I implement once I start doing artwork only updates.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/119098594/

[I was going to talk about where I was currently at here, but there's not much else to say right now.]

Waifu Wonderland 3D - 

The current ending of Waifu Wonderland leads directly into 3D, so I wont talk things like plot specifics yet. But the very basic outline is that you'll be given areas with women to seduce, just like in WW, but this time the main story will have you tasked with impregnating certain women. The game will be a bit different than Waifu Wonderland though. Of course, the obvious difference is it will have 3D scenes animated in Blender, instead of 2D scenes. But progression will work differently and what abilities you learn will be different. There will also be more of a focus on an overall main story. It will still be open and you'll still have other women to seduce, that part isn't going to change. It's also still going to be open and you'll get to decide what order to do things in. But the main story will be a bit more involved and be the driving force behind the game. This is all because I don't want to just make Waifu Wonderland again, but in 3D. Like I mentioned above, I want to work on something that's going to scratch a different creative itch. I'll also clarify now that this wont get in the way of development of Waifu Wonderland. If I get a computer that can run MV, I do plan on continuing to develop both. Which is another reason I want 3D to be different. If both end up being developed at the same time, I want each game to have it's own identity and for there to be a reason to play them both.

Anyway, for 3D I don't plan on doing any kind of retail release. So it's going to have a mix of existing characters and original characters. With the more popular existing characters generally being the more important story characters. As mentioned above, pregnancy will also return, and since it's being planned from the start, I'll be working on including it for all characters. Although I probably wont be including the pregnant version of scenes, so it will be implemented a little differently. Mainly because not every model has a pregnant version built into it, and creating a pregnant version of every model and then creating a pregnant version of an animation would just take too long. Especially the rendering process. I'm still in pre-planning, so I haven't decided exactly how it's all going to be implemented mechanically, but it will be different than WW.

I've honestly been low key working on this project for a while already though. A big reason why I started to learn to animate in Blender was because I wanted to make a 3D animated game. At first I tried just using the more industry standard program I had taken classes in, but it was just way too much work. There's very few models that are available for it, so I would basically have to port and rig every model I wanted to use from scratch. Doing that would take a lot of time. I'd have primarily been porting models from Blender anyway. Then Daz was technically an option, but it's hard to animate in it and it's very limiting overall. So I just started learning Blender, but I wanted to wait until I had a solid grasp on how Blender works and have a decently consistent animation style before I went ahead with working on a game. So I spent the second half of last year doing just that. To give the game a bit of a head start, I'll be using all of my already released animations in the game. Most of them anyway. I may end up redoing a couple of the early ones because of how different they are stylistically.

And that's why I'm announcing the game so early. I want to be able to get started on polls, so that the initial build of the game includes characters people want to see. It's also going to be a while before I can actually start making the game, and wanted to get a few characters sort of ready to be added in the meantime. Since priority #1 right now is finishing up programming for Waifu Wonderland. But even once I'm done with that, there's a lot of somewhat tedious ground work I need to do to get everything setup. Since while I have some animations I can use, I don't have sprites, character artwork, a script, areas planned out or made, or of course, any actual programming done. All of which is going to take some time.

So in the meantime I wanted to do polls and to work on animations I know people will want while I finish up Waifu Wonderland and do the rest of the planning. I'll be posting the animations as they get done, so patrons will have a bit of a sneak peak at what's going to be in the game.

If you're wondering why I'm planning on making another RPG when I can't use MV, that's another reason I want to focus mostly on getting art assets done for a while. The more I make and have ready before starting to program, the more time I'll have to try and buy a new computer or to pick up MZ. However, worst case scenario, I have VX Ace, and it works on my laptop. I can always port up to MV later if needed. I've done it before, so I know it's possible and isn't too difficult. With any luck, I'll be able to get a new computer quickly and it will run MV, and it wont be an issue at all. I also technically have some other engines, like Pixel Game Maker MV, that I'm considering using. That would make the game a side scroller or top down action game rather than an RPG, which I think could be a fun difference between the two games and make 3D a lot more unique. The biggest problem is that I don't really know how to use Pixel Game Maker. I bought it a while ago because I wanted to make a Mega Man X style side-scroller, but haven't had the time to sit down with it. Which ultimately means that dev would be slower starting out as I learn how the engine works. Another big thing that will probably keep me from making a side-scroller is that it's so hard to make one that you can play with one hand. Which is extremely important for an adult game. Maybe as I get closer to starting the programming side I'll do a poll and list out the pros and cons to see what people think the game should be. For now, I'm not worrying about it too much. I'm still focused on finishing the programming for Waifu Wonderland.

And lastly, the important part, who is planned to be in the game?!

That's the fun part, I don't know yet! I want to do some polls so that YOU can help decide! There's so many models available and so many that I want to make animations with. Trimming it down by myself would just be impossible. It would also lead to the vast majority of the women being goth girls and mature types. Although I did consider making a game exclusively with goth girls, I decided against it. There's too many other types I also like lol. So I'll need some help to decide who gets in and to ensure there's a good amount of variety. I do have a system baked in to the game's core concept to ensure variety, but that will only go so far. I'll talk more about that once Waifu Wonderland's ending has been released and I can go more into spoilers.

Anyway, the first character poll will be up soon™! [The first poll will release sometime the first week of February, I'm still working on it, and don't want it to release this early.] I hope you look forward to it, and to seeing Waifu Wonderland 3D become a reality sometime this year!