Update #110 Polluted pollitics

Pollite hello's!

...

Look, I didn't know how to start an update that talks about polls, and that's what I came up with. Don't blame me, blame the system that raised me.

Moving on. I didn't actually put an ending to the popularity contest, but as of now Saranhil is in the lead by a single vote, which I will consider a crushing victory. All hail the princess! Undisputed champion of The Senate!

Tanathil on the other hand seems to have fallen out of favor with the senate, possibly due to a critical increase in puns. She's fallen so far out of favor that she's actually overtaken (should that be undertaken?) Jhan'draga's bottom position. Hooray for pink muscles!

Zavnessos clinched fourth place after MC's astonishing third place finish. That also meant a win for her in the extra scene poll, so our bark elf will get her extra spice, which she assuredly thanks The Senate for. Now I'll just how to figure out where to place the scene.

I'll probably make a similar poll for an extra scene next episode as well, possibly with more choices since I'd like to make it before actually writing the episode.

Hm. Since I did name the update the way I did, it'd feel odd to completely ignore actual polluted politics. What's a non-controversial opinion? Hmm... Oh, I know. Release the Epstein files! There. Genuinely no one can be upset about that one.

Cozy vibes

I've finished scene two during the week. Though, while adding it into the game I realized that it could use another render or two to end it on a more interesting note, so I'll get that done tomorrow. This is the type of stuff I meant when I talked about making a second draft on the go.

Now that I'm going back to actually adding in scenes as soon as I've rendered them, I'm also doing a quick playtest while I'm at it. I should probably always be doing that, helps a lot in getting a better sense of the scene and making sure that music and what not fits a bit better. It's easy to miss stuff when you just do a big playthrough at the very end. At that point you're in a mindset where you want things to be done and over with, not the best mindset to fiddle with the details.

Smooching princess, hidden maid

On the one hand I like these scenes with a lot of characters in them, that is, I like the idea of them and I typically like the end result. But I don't overly enjoy posing this many characters. Often times I'll get them all in a decent pose and then mostly leave them there, keep the scene fairly static. That helps a lot.

Still, it's worth it. As long as there are scenes with fewer characters as well. Such as the first scene which I showed off last week.

Side note. Trying to pose characters to kiss is a huge pain. The render up top is one of the ways to cheat that, since you don't actually see the lips. Anytime you see a render like the one above, you can safely assume that the faces are clipping together horribly, and the dev said "Fuck it! I'll just change the angle and call it a day."

Boo! We wanted a spicy scene!

I'm always debating shadows. On the one hand, the shadows in the render up top look a bit odd when they are atop Jhan'draga like that. On the other hand, shadows in real life are a bit odd, and these shadows are the result of attempting to do somewhat realistic lighting.

Shadows add a lot of weight and believability to a render, but it's a whole art form to also make them look nice and fancy. As I'm doing more and more rendering, I find myself leaning more and more towards realisticish shadows. I do wonder whether that makes sense with the overall tone of the game. To be fair, tonal contrast can be really good. Ah well, such are the things you learn when making a first game, hard to get it perfect on the first go.

Anyway, that's about all the stuff and things I had to say today.

Thank you very much for you support, and I wish you sweet and smoochy dreams this week!