SWAK Retrospective & v1.0 Release

- Brief History -

Unlike Cohabitation this one doesn't really have a particularly long or interesting background to it. When I was around 3/4ths of the way done with Cohabitation's development I started messing around with Daz3D. The first couple of models I made (and looking back at them now, some of those models were pretty ugly) were for a game called Common Life, a large dating sim I still haven't gotten around to yet because I don't want to be tied down to one gigantic game for years but that's a whole different story.

Anyway, I eventually created the model that would become Katie, which was the first character model that I really liked. Plus, I found the really nice 'virgin killer' sweater dress that she wears, which not only looked great by itself but also could be properly layered with underwear without massive amounts of poke-through.

Wanting to do something completely different than Cohabitation in terms of the main character and relationships I decided to go with a, uh, let's just say 'younger' protagonist. Then I took the trainer elements of Cohabitation, streamlined them, and tied them back in with the main character and Katie, thus leading to the creation of Staying with Aunt Katie.

My main goal with SWAK was to create a smaller and more focused game, letting me become more experienced with Daz 3D and helping me become better at handling stats and gameplay mechanics. I think I largely succeeded with that personal goal but as far as SWAK being a great game goes, I think there's a number of things I could improve on.

- Development Problems -

After the completely fucked stat progression, programming, and general development of Cohabitation I wanted to do a simpler, more concise game with a far more straightforward game progression that was easy for players to grasp and not get lost with. I fear I may have course-corrected too much in this regard.

While Cohabitation's progression was a chaotic mess, for SWAK I think it might've been too linear and simplified, with players quickly falling into a repetitive pattern of studying and spending time with Katie. While I always aimed for SWAK to be a small game and thus never intended it to have a ton of content, I think I still could have added more activities to do with Katie. I plan on doing at least one dating sim in the future, so at the very least SWAK will serve as a lesson and a reminder to add in more varied content and activities for each girl.

As far as renders / images go I'm actually proud of how most of them turned out, especially considering that this was my first time using Daz 3D for a project. I think the overall quality of the renders improved throughout the game, with lighting being my biggest weakness and is something I'm still working to improve. In-door lighting in particular is a pain in the ass to get looking good and natural, especially if you're going for nice, subtle and realistic lighting rather than just shining a spotlight onto the characters.

Next up there's Chris. I feel that I never really quite decided on whether I wanted him to serve as a sort of blank avatar that players could project themselves onto or as a more defined character, with me constantly waffling between the two. When I did write him as a more defined character I also never really stuck with one personality with him, instead I feel like I kinda flip-flopped between 'shy, sheltered kid' and 'horny, mildly perverted kid'. In the future I'll likely stick with more defined protagonists as they're far more interesting to write for.

Oddly, a lot of people wanted me to remake Chris into some sort of alpha chad. I got a ton of messages telling me he was too skinny and that he needed to be more muscular. Much like making Calvin into a fit, handsome guy I feel like this idea misses the point of the 'younger' protagonist.

Then there's Katie. My idea for her was that she was fairly laid-back and kinda lazy, not really weak willed but rather someone who just goes with the flow of things, leading to her letting Chris grope her and giving him a handjob, which leads to her realizing she's in a compromising situation but ultimately enjoying it and falling for Chris in the process. I'm not sure how well that all comes across to players and could have portrayed it all better. For future projects I'll be focusing on stronger characterization and more interesting personalities for the female characters.

As for her model, while I still do like it I'll admit that her curves are probably too over the top. The more scenes I made the more I realized I made her breasts too balloon-y and her ass too large, which not only do I think didn't look great all the time but also made posing her difficult, especially when I wanted her to interact with Chris or just sit naturally. Nowadays when I'm working on a female character model I try to keep their curves within the realms of reality.

Lastly, there's the relationship between Katie and Chris. The age-gap made it hard to realistically give them a natural, romantic relationship or have them share any common interests. Compounded by Chris not really having consistent, solid characterization and Katie's personality not being especially strong, writing relationship scenes for them wasn't very fun or interesting, which made them something of a chore, which in turn made me avoid writing a ton of them. In the future any 'younger' characters will likely be side-characters rather than the main focus; the youngest I'll probably go for a future protagonist is 'almost done with high school'-age.

Overall, I think a lot of gameplay problems can be traced back to being too slavishly dedicated to making SWAK concise and that most writing problems were due to me not fleshing out Chris and Katie enough and going a bit too far with the 'younger' protagonist, 'older' love interest route.

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Now with all this out of the way, here's the release of v1.0. It now has a title screen and during the morning period you can choose to skip the day via interacting with Chris' bed. The skip *should* stop you from skipping past day 89.

Windows: https://mega.nz/file/QkESBCTD#B8NExWiyf_kOr8bK5EnxbSR7amUTAaiLXdoFZdiiVxw 

Linux: https://mega.nz/file/AgdWwILC#7sL3-VREChaipxsc277ehZyQdaj2ZUSOOvKECKUEaZ0 

Web Browsers: https://mega.nz/file/s8VGBC5K#6eXp_iciIxKo1zU-2AAO1YTMO5RQjvFR0GZAQkAvh8A