SoVR Post-Game Diary #5

Hello everyone,

A famous female philosopher once said "Oops, I did it again."

Those were wise words and describe properly where SoVR is going. I think I can say it officially (and you'll see why with this post and the future ones), SoVR can't no longer be considered a "small" game.

When I see the amount of work required, I realize I'm going a bit further than originally planned. That being said, funnilly enough, I kept focused on my original direction : 5 girls with 2 main quests.

But there are elements that imply A LOT of preparation work. The good news is that since everything is planned in advance I'm not progressing blindly like I did with SoV2 or SoS. Everything up to the very end of the post-game is already laid out. It's just that the way I created things, each H scene will require more work than usual. Let me show you something.

You can't read? It's normal x) This is a very zoomed out version of one of my excel files. Do you know what it's about? Yuki's scenes. There are spaces between categories and all but in case you're curious, I go down to 247 lines. This time, I don't want to repeat SoV2's case where I ended up with extra scenes I couldn't implement and waited almost 2 years to implement them in v1.2.

Here's how I work here. I have a HUGE list of POSSIBLE scenes. Of course in that list, some will be mandatory (for example the scenes linked to the main quests), but a good amount are optional scenes. Basically, depending on how the artists are progressing and based on my available options, I'll implement only the stuff I can. Ideally, though, I'll implement them by group.

Let say there's a guy in the game with whom a girl can have sex with, if I've planned 3 different scenes with him, then I'll implement either the 3 or none (meaning that will also weigh in the scale as to whether or not said group of scenes will be implemented.)

So don't get wild, this list will NEVER be fully implemented in the game. But it's nice to have a wider choice and be able to pick stuff I'd like (it'll be even more relevant when I'll work on other girls as it's easier to vary content with such a file: I can see what has already been done or not.)

You're curious about the content of each column? From left to right: Scene Name, Context, Style of the scene (loopable, incremental, unique or mandatory), necessary previous content unlocked, necessary values, earned values, file used for the scene.

So yes, possibly lots of scenes BUT also the fact that each scene will take more time than usual. Let me explain that.

In TH2 or SoV2, when a scene is meant to occur, the only thing you have to do outside writing the scene is preparing the conditions for it to unlock (which is often just a couple of switches and a small cutscene to introduce the H scene.)

Here, each scene will have to check if some precise conditions/values are checked, a good part of them will have several dual lines (meaning that the girl will say something different depending on certain triggers in the game), I'll have to adapt the visuals to fit the accessories, and once the scene is finished, there are all the post-scene elements to deal with (data increase, consequences of the scenes...). It's a bit difficult to talk about all this without revealing too much (I'd like to keep a bit more for future posts).

Said more simply, I have more work on my side but for the same play time on your side. BUT, I'm not giving myself more work just because I'm a masochist. No, no. We're preparing something reaaaaally nice that you guys will probably enjoy.

But I'll explain all that in the two next posts.

Meanwhile, see ya o/