Ceolag

Dev Update - 2024/01/26

Hey everyone,

the new year 2024 seems to keep throwing wrenches into my work.
Be it my own health or my family, this week it was my PC.

Last Friday, I said I wanted to finish the test build early this week.
Last Friday (evening), life said "eheheh... middle finger" and sent a power outage to roast one of my hard disks.

Out of the 4 disks in my PC, it hit the SSD with all the TNT stuff on it (of course). All rendered images, all DAZ scenes, and all kit-bashed assets wer...

Preview renders - 2024/01/19

Dev Update - 2024/01/19

Hey everyone,

It's Friday and it's time for an update.
It's been a busy week. Lots of work and private stuff to do but I still got some work on the game done.
More than I really expected. I'm still posing and rendering the images for the stuff already written but I'm catching up.
To the point where I'll probably be able to build my first test build early next week.

I expected to be at this point roughly a week later, so I guess I can't really complain about not having eno...

Preview renders - 2024/01/12

Dev Update - 2024/01/12

Hey everyone,

this week has been a bit of a mixed bag for me.
It started with me catching a cold and being in bed the whole Sunday and Monday. Couldn't get anything done in those 2 days.
Luckily, it's been a lot better since Tuesday although I'm still a bit tired in the evening.

Considering I'm missing 2 full days and still lack a bit of energy, the progress this week is still... acceptable.
My focus this and last week was mostly on rendering and catching up with the alre...

Some testrenders for Chapter 5

Hey there,

Chapter 5 will feature a few new characters and scene settings and I started to create them.
I did a few test renders of the first new character (you will spend quite a lot of time with her in Chapter 5) in one of the new environments and wanted to share them with you.

Cheers,
Ceolag

Dev Update - 2024/01/05

Hey everyone,

first Dev Log of the year, so Happy New Year to everyone.

I'll go into a few things today so the first part will be the TLDR stuff for those who just care about progress.
I got back into my usual dev work on January 2nd when I started setting up the first renders for Chapter 5.
Before that, I did a bit of planning, setting up some environments for later parts of the chapter, new characters, you get the idea... basic stuff.

I also started writing and codin...

The Road Ahead

The season's upon us, it's that time of year
Brandy and eggnog, there's plenty of cheer
There's lights on the trees and there's wreaths to be hung
There's mischief and mayhem and songs to be sung

Christmas is just around the corner, and the latest release of The Neverwhere Tales lies behind us.
Time to do the usual end-of-the-year stuff like drinking ourselves uncons.. eh looking back, I mean.
And on what lies ahead of us.

The release of the latest chapter went real...

Chapter 4 Change Log

Hey everyone,

The download links for Chapter 4 are up (see separate post).
Chapter 4 in a nutshell:
1579 static renders (highest number of any chapter to date)
22 animations
4577 lines in the script file

13 new achievements
12 new gallery renders
an additional flashback scene early in Chapter 2
first pieces of The Neverwhere Tales score created by Alexander Nakarada

The menu for the Gallery got reworked. It now fits the look and feel of the main menu ...

Short update

Hey everyone,

Just a quick update:
The Beta test is still running. We found a few minor bugs (as expected) and no major ones yet (also kinda expected). It's mostly polishing the dialog and getting rid of my "weird phrasings" as my proofreader likes to call them. ;-)

We'll run a few more tests within the next few days just to make sure and to give every one of my testers enough time to finish their tests.

I expect to release Chapter 4 mid to end next week if nothing com...

Beta status

Alright... As I said last week, the next update will be the announcement of the Beta status and it might not be on Friday.
I was right. ;-)

Right now I'm uploading the Beta build for the testers and will send them the link within the next couple of minutes.
I added 110 renders to the game since the last Dev Update and did so on Monday. So you can guess how my weekend was. ;-)
But it enabled me to wrap up everything for the beta build. Things like the Chapter summary and the ac...

Dev Update - 2023/11/17

Hello everyone,

The important things first. This will (most likely) be the last Dev Update for Chapter 4. The next announcement is supposed to be about the beta stage. That doesn't mean it'll be next Friday. It might be a bit later!

Why?
Short version:
Because it won't contain anything more than "I'm still rendering away the last part."

Long version:
The script for Chapter 4 is done, excluding coding in the renders for the last part and maybe the addition of a f...

Dev Update - 2023/11/10

Friday... again? I was sure I had at least 2 more days this week until Friday...

Well, the big news got out on Wednesday anyway, so I'll keep this Dev Log short(-ish).
The numbers for this week are:
53 new static renders for a total of 1373
1 new animation for a total of 22
~100 lines in the script file for a total of 3972

I'm at the 2nd to last setting for this chapter and spent yesterday and today messing around with UltraScenery for DAZ.
It's an extremely power...

Some news regarding the future of TNT

Hey everyone,

No, it's not Friday already and this is not a Dev log.
This is about the future of TNT after the release of Chapter 4.

TLDR version first:
My store page on Steam got approved yesterday and I'm planning to release The Neverwhere Tales on Steam when Chapter 5 (yes 5, not 4) is done.
The link to the store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2639380...

Dev Update - 2023/11/03

Hey everyone,

This week has been really busy with real-life stuff. And it'll continue through the upcoming weekend (the reason why this update is 'early').
I try to squeeze in work on TNT as much as possible but being away several days from home and the PC surely takes its toll.
It won't affect my plan for the release of Chapter 4, though. It "just" means that the numbers this week and next week will be lower than previous weeks.
And since that's not enough, I updated DAZ to v...

Trailer Time!

As mentioned in the Dev Update I created my first trailer for the game.
Took quite a while but I'm pretty happy with the result for my first try ever doing something like this.

Dev Update - 2023/10/27

Hello everyone,

time for the usual update.
This one will come with some good (at least I hope so) and bad news.

I'll start with the bad one: No lewd scene in Chapter 4.
The reason lies in my decision to split the original Chapter 3 into 3 and 4.
I had no lewd content planned for the 2nd half of the chapter because of what happens story-wise.
I thought about a lewd scene throughout the development of Chapter 4 but I couldn't find a spot for it that doesn't involve "por...

Dev Update - 2023/10/20

Hey everyone,

I'll make this one quick because this week has been pretty much business as usual.
No awesome news, but also no bad news. :-)

I finished the work on Elea's scene and moved on to Fiona's scene this week.
Fiona's scene is the last one before I start with the work on the chapter finale.
Elea's scene got pretty big with a total of 197 renders, although they are scattered across different paths and decisions, so you might not see all of them in one playthrough....

Dev Update - 2023/10/13

Hello everyone,

It's Friday the 13th and on that day stupid things are supposed to happen.
In my case, I loaded up Órla (Fiona's dog) just to find out she renders with weird color bugs.
After blaming buggy DAZ, Nvidia drivers, life, the universe, and some other things I found out that the problem sat in front of the monitor (as so often with such problems).
The idiot in front of the monitor forgot to back up Órla's custom texture maps before moving his whole DAZ stuff to a ...

Dev Update - 2023/10/06

Hey everyone,

Another week has passed, and it was mostly business as usual.
Nothing spectacular happened and I didn't decide to change anything regarding the game.
I guess we can call that a win. ;-)

The work on the game has been mostly doing static renders with a bit of coding and postworking the finished renders.
After I finished the work on the scene from last week I built a new test version, ran a few tests for it, and moved on to the next scene.
That one will be E...

Dev Update - 2023/09/29

Hello everyone,

the next Dev Update is here.
I have 2 main topics for this week. The actual state of development (of course) and some organizational things later.

The short part first:
It has been a pretty good week, and I finished a few things. Most of the animations from last week are rendered and post-worked. 2 animations are still in the render queue. I hope to finish them this weekend.
I finished the work (outside the 2 remaining animations) on the scene I was work...

Animation preview

Hey guys,

A quick preview of the animations I was working on this week.
Keep in mind that it's still a work in progress.

Dev Update - 2023/09/22

Hello everyone,

The weekend is almost here, so it's time for another Dev Update.
As mentioned last week I was mostly busy with posing animations.
I finished the work on the animations although I cut them a bit. Initially, I wanted to do more of them, but around halfway through I decided that the effort was too high and it was taking too much time.
These animations aren't critical for the story and, as already mentioned, aren't lewd, so I cut them a bit.
If I had followed my...

What if...

Kari was a redhead.
Some of you who read my Discord occasionally might know I have a smaaaall weak spot for redheads.
Yesterday someone on my Discord posted an image of a real girl looking a bit like Kari but with red hair and asked "What if Kari was a redhead."

Well... That's what you get for asking such questions. ;-)

No deeper meaning to this post, just wanted to share it with you guys.
Dev Update later today.

Dev Update - 2023/09/15

System Sol, Earth, Northern Hemisphere, Friday, time for a Dev Update.

Another busy week lies behind me. Lots of family stuff that kept me occupied, but that will end tomorrow and we (thankfully) will have our house back after having family here for more than a month now. About time. ;-)

The progress on the game was still acceptable despite the... distractions.
I got 56 static renders done and 180 more lines in the script file.
Additionally, it's time for a few more animatio...

Dev Update - 2023/09/08

Hey everyone,

It's Friday and it's time to say goodbye.
Goodbye to preview renders of Kaija since that one is the last until the release of CH4. ;-)
Of course, there will be preview renders in future dev updates, just not with Kaija.

Why am I telling you that? Because that means, I'm roughly at 50% done with the Chapter.
The development speed is as expected before starting the work, so you can say I'm on track.

The week in general has been pretty productive given th...

Dev Update - 2023/09/01

Hey everyone,

Back to the Friday schedule.
This week has been a pretty good one. Even if I have achieved virtually nothing regarding the broken electric systems of our house I was able to make some nice progress with the development of the game, at least.
I got the next internal test build done and tested. It may need a tweak here or there but overall I'm pretty happy with the result.
Nightingale has her first appearance in this build and the (small) scene has pretty much writ...

Dev Update - 2023/08/26

Hey everyone,

I'm back from vacation and, as promised, here's the update for this week, as small as it might be.
Just before we left for vacation the new router arrived and our Internet is working again.
Some electric systems of the house are still damaged after the lightning but nothing that hinders the development of TNT other than the time I need to organize the repairs.

The little time I had this week for the game went into creating a new character.
I already have pl...

Dev Update - 2023/08/18

Hey everyone,

I'll keep this one short since I'm using my mobile phone as a Hotspot (with limited traffic) to write this - also no preview image because of that, Sorry.

Tuesday evening a lightning strike took out our internet connection and it hasn't been restored yet. A new router should arrive tomorrow and that hopefully solves the problem.

The work on Chapter 4 is only slightly affected by this since most of the stuff works offline.
Just the After Effects stuff I pla...

Additional renders from this week

As promised the 2 "bonus" renders.
Rendered pretty fast (10-15 minutes for the 4k version) so I got them done earlier than expected.

4k (without Watermark) version is attached below.