Slice of Venture Remake Diary #17

Hello everyone,

I can finally show you some smutt. To be totally honest, I don't know if it's a problem of content or whatever but it's quite hard to navigate in the sea of variations I've asked for some pics. Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons it's taking so long. The good news is: I realized that VERY quickly and the majority of the scenes that are planned for AFTER the main story (so post-game content) won't follow that path.

You have to understand something. I'm used to work with variations because it's "better" on the dev side. It's better because it's cheaper and faster. With a base image, if you have enough variations, you can make 5 or even 10 scenes (Look at the Reiko/Yuki/Ayame pics in SoV2: 13 scenes.) And no matter the cost it will always be cheaper than doing a whole set of different pics (If I remember correctly, the whole set of Reiko/Yuki/Ayame probably cost me around $1,000. There's NO way I can have 13 different colored pics + backgrounds for that price. So that's why I tend to always go with variations.

BUT. There are also downside to variations. Among them are the time taken just to navigate through the file (Still taking the same scene as an example, but the PSD exceeded the 2000 layers allowed by Photoshop, so I have this scene in 2 PSDs :x), the global lack of motivation for all the artists (making tons of small variations isn't satisfying at all) and the fact that sometimes, some variation combinations can lead to much more intricate and complicated mix that can easily turn into more work than doing everything on different pics. There's only one element that remains true no matter what: it will ALWAYS be cheaper.

So, since we're getting closer to the release date, I'm making a bet. It's the same bet than I did with SoV3 back in the days: hoping a patron increase because I'm planning things based on an increase of income. Except I never had the chance to witness if that could happen with SoV3. Let's hope I'll be able to see it with SoVR.

Basically, the scenes planned for after the game are scenes that will work only once or twice (maybe a bit more in very specific settings). And considering how I've set up things (I'll explain that in a later post), that means more base pics. So that means more money invested. But I do believe that the way I've planned the post-game content will greatly benefit this. So yeah, let's hope the first release of SoVR will be successful :p

Enough of the chitchat. Due to the different rules here and there, I can hardly show you anything from the game :x So it will be a single pic in two versions. The nice thing is that it's the very unlockable scene of the game (the only one you can get on Friday), so in terms of spoilers there's nothing much to fear (even if, to be honest, I wanted to stay as close as possible from the original scenes.)

This is a scene between Anaëlle and Kentaro (those of you who played the original SoV surely already knew :p). There are actually many things to say about our design choices. But before I tackle these, might as well give you the other pic so you can see it all.

So yes, some good ol' paizuri-fela.

I already mentioned it with the facesets but coloring-wise we tried to stay as close to Butakoma style as possible (in an effort to keep a certain degree of consistency between SoVO and SoVR.) It works well. At least for me, it works well. The hard shading makes it faster to color (to compensate for the amount of stuff to color), the shining isn't too present but it's still here to give this fleshy style, the hair shading isn't simple yet complex enough to not look too flat. Everything is hard shaded BUT the nipples. These are the only exception.

I tried to provide enough references on what I liked in terms of liquids as well to improve those. For most liquids we took Gemuo as a reference (who we already took as a reference for the scat.) I also wanted to change the way we did smegma because when I looked back at SoS, I wasn't satisfied by the end result. So we went with something different. I wanted something a bit more packed, but at the same time that could look a bit melty. Once again, we prepared lots of reference sheets to have proper preparation work. Hell, I even asked to have three smegma colors to be able to choose depending on the context (told you the game wouldn't be for the faint hearted.) I know it's not visible because of the censorship, sorry for that -_-

I can't show you the cum but we've also worked on it. It looks different, but better to me. There's more of it, it's messier... The key word for most of that stuff was "exagerration". Hentai is always about exageration (look at the size of that dick...) but we never really crossed the path. Here I clearly asked to be in a "fuck it" mode and make it overly exagerrated. And for now, I'm satisfied with the result. We've also reworked wetness to be able to make things sloppier... So yeah, lots of liquids have been taken care of.

I don't know yet if this post will be the last or not before the release. I think it will highly depends on when we'll release the game next week. I'm close to finishing all the story elements (I mainly need to write the final scene). After that, I'll have all the H scenes to write (because yes, none are written yet :x). Then it'll be testing time. This is the biggest unknown, as always. It could take 1 day or 1 week... And after that, you'll be able to enjoy the game.

It was a long trip, but we're finally seeing the end of the tunnel. After that first release I'll take several days off, not to rest but to improve the game (correct bugs etc...) and work on many things I've postponed to be able to release this version asap (so everything related to Blue Axolotl Edition and things like that.) Then I'll give you a sort of roadmap for the year so you can know what to expect. I've already warned you but compared to most of my games, the content of that first update will be pretty tame. Don't worry, this is only the beginning >=D

See ya o/