Month: January 2017

Hi everyone. Lot’s to get through today, so this is how I’m going to do it – I’ll start with a summary of Leanna, then I’ll address the polls and debates from last week.

Leanna – The summary

A lot has changed when it comes to Leanna, and I know that not everyone checks the blog every single week, so I feel it’s appropriate to have a summarizing description so everyone knows exactly what’s happening.

Leanna is an upcoming, free game for the site.

Leanna Marseilles is a local news anchor for the city the player lives in. I’ll be reusing the premise that the player is a photographer again (though not necessarily the same photographer as seen in other games). You are initially hired by the studio to do some formal publicity shots of Leanna, however, as you are doing so, you witness an argument between the journalist and her assistant, Kristen, who then quits.

It transpires that the two were preparing to take part in a TV quiz show in two weeks time. The premise of the quiz (as inspired by an episode of American Dad), has teams of two ‘best friends’ answering question on each other. Whoever gets the most questions right, wins the show.

Leanna has a bit of a personality problem (she’s a bitch), and so doesn’t have any friends. When asked to appear on the quiz, she therefore asked her assistant instead. Since Kristen has now quit, the player offers to be her partner instead. Leanna hesitantly agrees.

What follows is the main body of the game. The two of you spend 2 weeks together, over which time you ‘fake’ your friendship by joining in as many activities and visiting as many places as possible (essentially dates), while taking as many photos as possible to be shown at the quiz. You also crash course each other’s history, learning as many favorite movies, songs, hobbies etc as possible.

Along the way of course, romance can flourish, and Leanna’s bitchy personality can be improved to the point where she’s a much nicer person by the end of the game.

Leanna is intended to the the first of a new generation of games. Instead of using the normal base models and software, I am using the Genesis 3 bases (a new, more detailed cgi model), and I will be rendering everything in daz studio with IRAY, which provides a much more realistic look to everything.

As usually with my games, you will be able to play as either male or female, though as a test I’m not going to add an ethnicity option (I checked the stats and hardly anyone uses them). As a new mechanic, I’m also adding the option of switching camera angles during certain scenes (such as sex scenes). It will be entirely optional, and if you’re male, you will never see the face of the MPC in order to maintain the illusion that it’s you. For the FPC though, I’ll just be showing everything.

Here’s the image of the new character selection screen so that you can see what I mean.

I will also be upgrading the image size for this game from 1280×720, to 1700×1000. I have a 4k monitor now, and old sizes were far too small. The new size should just the the right fit for the normal 1920×1080 screens too.

The polls and karma

The plan recently with this game was to have a ‘karma’ variable which applied to Leanna and that the player can slowly alter through the game. Initially, Leanna has very bad karma (as she is not a particularly nice person), and through choices and actions, the player can improve her karma. Should she end up with ‘good karma’ at  the end of the game, you would get a ‘nice’ ending, but if she had ‘bad karma’, you would get a ‘nasty’ ending. I’ve been through a few scenarios of what this nasty ending could be, from S&M style setups to some sort of orgy where Leanna makes you watch her have sex with a bunch of guys.

None of these scenes really resonated with me though as I’m not into their fetishes. It was also worth mentioning that it’s unlikely that any of you were really into them either. Generally speaking, people are attracted to a site’s erotic content when it shares the same interests they do. I’ve never had any serious S&M or boy+boy+girl scenes, so they’re probably not your thing either. The polls I posted on the blog seemed to confirm this.

So, what am I into then? Public exhibitionism! Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve ever officially stated this, but this is totally my fetish, and if you look back though my games, it’s probably pretty obvious to you. Nearly every game I’ve made has sex somewhere you’re not supposed to be, streaky, public photoshoots etc. Betsy alone has photoshoots in 3 different public locations, sex at a school, sex in a nightclub, Betsy flashing a little at said nightclub, Violet dancing naked at a public pool, and of course some brief on stage nudity.

So, I decided that’s what I’m going for. An ending where the player and Leanna have a ‘rampage’ of sex and nudity in as many public places as possible.

The problem with this so, is that it doesn’t really fit with the idea of ‘low karma’. A person is perfectly capable of having both good karma and sex in a public place.

All of the potential ‘low karma’ endings, were generally quite nasty, which doesn’t really fit with the tone of the site. I was also concerned that, if it becomes about deliberately making her have poor karma, it becomes a corruption game (a common sub-genre of erotic games), and I don’t want to become about debasing Leanna.

So, I can’t remember what series of thoughts brought me to it, but I decided that this should be all about Leanna’s ‘facade’. At the beginning of the game, she has a mean and very conservative outlook on life, but as you get to know her, you find that she has a much kinder and naughtier side which has been suppressed for many years now. The facade is the fake version of herself which she created for the sake of her news channel persona, and has consumed her. Your mission is to break it down.

I like this. It means you’re making her naughtier, but it’s not in a negative, debasing sort of way. It actually has quite a positive message about being true to yourself. It also has similar game logistics to the ‘confidence’ level in Betsy, but is very different at the same time. It’ll also be working backwards, the ‘facade’ will start off at 100, with your aim being to reduce it to 0 for the best ending.

So, that’s where everything is right now, and I very happy with it.

So, how does all of that sound to you?

Finally, I’ll leave you with this image from when you meet Leanna in a bar at the start of the game. It may be the most beautiful, detailed image I’ve ever done, and it really shows the advantages of using Daz studio and IRAY.

I just want to do a small post today to address the poll from Thursday’s update.

The poll regarded whether or not players would be interested in a sex scene involving the player, but also involving another man or men sharing Leanna. Initially, no one really liked this, but once I explained the reasoning behind it, there were several people who warmed to the idea and wanted to change their vote. So, I’m going to explain the ‘why’ more fully and give the voting options again.

In Leanna, karma is going to be a an important factor. At the start of the game, Leanna’s karma will be fairly poor, but through your interactions you can improve it. You can encourage her to be nicer to people or more charitable when given a choice. This can result in a ‘nice’ end where Leanna becomes a much nicer person with very good karma.

However, if you wish, you can make Leanna’s karma even worse by encouraging her to be selfish and nasty whenever possible.

In the good karma ending, you will get to play through a friendly and sensual threesome involving yourself, Leanna and Kristen. For the bad karma ending however, I’m having trouble deciding what should happen.

What exactly does ‘evil sex’ look like? I’m not willing to do anything too nasty or extreme – no rape, no torture. So, what are my options?

My first instinct was to have Leanna go all dominatrix – she reenters the room dressed in a PVC catsuit and cracking a whip. I don’t really have an interest in S&M however, so I’m not really sure where it would go from there (I’m willing to hear suggestions!).

Another scenario I’m considering is breaking into a church and having sex on the altar. Not too sure this works well though. It kinda suggests I’m making her the Antichrist rather than just someone with low karma. Also, if you’re an atheist, it may not be the big of a deal, and if you’re religious, it may be too much for you.

Another option is to maybe have the same sex scene you would see in the ‘neutral karma’ ending with just you and Leanna, but include smaller ‘nastier’ things – Anal, fairly brutal deepthroating, hard spanking etc. It seems s little boring though.

One more resent idea I’ve had is a sort or rampage across the city. Leanna brings a video camera from the studio and pays/bribes various minor characters from the story to have sex with you while she films it. Would include characters like an attractive, but very scruffy homeless woman she interviews earlier in the game. I think that has an appropriate level of ‘messed up’ to it. My reservation is that it might require a lot or work – it would be several scenes in different locations, which means creating more sets, characters etc.

So, this is why I’ve been talking about a b/b/g scene (that’s boy+boy+girl), or possibly a b/b/b/b/g (that’s 4 guys all having sex with her). It would make sense to me for the low karma ending. Rather than just being satisfied with you or her friend Kristen, Leanna invites a group of guys to her apartment and makes you watch them all having sex with her (or possibly just one extra guy).

It wouldn’t be something you see unless you aim to make her have low karma, so you can avoid it if desired by just encouraging her to be nice.

So, keeping that all in mind, would you be interested in a sex scene with an extra guy, or a group of them?

Or, did you particularity like any of the other ideas I mentioned?

Normally I don’t like to crowdsource ideas for these things, but I really am a little stuck on this one, and I don’t want to proceed too far into making the game until I decide where it’s going.

If you particularly liked any of the other ideas I mentioned above, please say so. Also, if you have any ideas of your own about what a low karma ending could entail, please leave a comment describing it below. If there’s enough interest in the other setups, or I really like your idea, I may add an extra poll.

The blog has been fixed! Hooray!

Ever since we had to move servers, I’ve had issues hosting the images. I’ve had to upload the images externally, then use code to link them here, which is a massive pain in the ass. Some of you might have noticed that the preview images have been the wrong size recently too. Anyway, I hired someone to fix it and everything’s sorted now, so let’s celebrate with one final post about April & Violet.

April & Violet

Back when I completed Betsy, I wrote a small evaluation of the game, mostly going over it’s strengths and weaknesses. It was a fun experience, so for my last post on the game I’m going to do it again. WARNING : This next section will contains serious spoilers for the game!

The strengths

I really like the mystery itself. I have a particular fondness for mysteries where it looks like something supernatural is happening, only to later to reveal that it is very human, just a little bizarre. Most of the best Sherlock Holmes mysteries work this way for instance. The reveal of what Arias has been doing with the roads is a good example of this.

I also really liked the fact that I maintained the personalities of Violet & April, while also evolving them a little. April was a bit of a problem in that her main personality trait was her bitchy personality, but it wouldn’t have made any sense for her to be that way with either the Violet or the player. I decided the obvious thing was to make her bitchy towards Dylan whenever possible, and I think it really works. To evolve her character, I also tried to make her seem particularly intelligent this time. Her failing grades in Betsy were suggested to be at least partly from a lack of confidence, so if she got a good grade at the end of that game, it make sense that she would continue to confidently learn. Violet’s evolution was probably a little smaller, but I didn’t want her to change too much as I loved writing her parts in Betsy.

There’s lots for me to like when it come to the smaller things in this game too. Arias’s poster in the abandoned town was my ‘Chekhov’s gun’ moment, along with the locked door you can find in part one. Depending on your dialog choices, you can actually get Dylan to say that none of the doors are ever locked, just to emphasize the importance.

One of my favorite subtle parts though has to be April’s bracelet, which the very observant of you may have noticed she never removes, even when naked and/or showering. Why? Look closely and you’ll see that it really doesn’t suit the rest of her outfit, it’s style instead being the semi goth look that Violet normally dresses in. The backstory is that it’s a gift from Violet to act as some sort of engagement ring, suggesting that they plan to get married some day. The fact that she never takes it off, shows that she really does love the crazy woman.

My favorite part of the entire game was the story telling scene. I had reservations about it at first as the whole scene basically puts the plot on hold for a while, but I loved the way it turned out. I could do an entire game of April telling stories and then Violet interrupting them.

The Weaknesses

As I said last week, I really struggled to get into the momentum of making this game again after a small break following part 1. I started doing a little work on Leanna instead, and the result was that I really wanted to focus on that game exclusively. This probably shows most towards the end of of the plot.

The original intention was to have multiple endings, including one where you could redeem Dylan, but this never ended up getting used. This is why some of you may have noticed the variable that is set when you suggest April apologizes to her. The apology was intended to be part of the redemption scene. In a weird way though, I think this works out a little better this way. Dylan switching sides would have been a little too abrupt. Maybe there’ll be space for it in a future game if she returns.

Another piece of cut content that would perhaps make everything make more sense, was that Dylan’s name was not going to be Dylan. It would turn out that Arias’s name was actually Dylan and you would discover this as a clue when finding his ID at the motel. This is why Dylan’s name was unisex. It might have been better to use it, but it also felt like an necessary twist.

The final scene in the cell was also a little rushed. Every one of Arias’s lines was basically exposition just to get everything tied up as quickly as possible. There was going to be a sequence where you escaped, with Dylan’s help if you ‘redeemed’ her. This I think would have been a little better, but my energy towards the game had really gone down by this point. I reasoned that it’s not like I was cutting sex content, so no one would probably be that bothered. I still think it worked well as I did it, but some people were a little confused about what exactly happened to Dylan. She was take away by the cult when they captured Arias, but it’s not 100% clear.

Leanna

Next week, I’ll finally get to talk about Leanna for the entire post. A lot has happened since I last talked about things like the story and I can’t wait to let you know all about it!

For now, I’ll just leave you with an image of Leanna trying way too hard to look ‘fun’ at a roller disco.

Poll

Obviously, I often have scenes with two ladies doing naughty things together, but is there any interest in a threesome with another man (or possibly lots of men)? I don’t mean with the male player being intimate with the man, I just mean a scene where yourself (as a man), and another man (or several) all have sex with, say, Leanna at the same time.

I don’t hear a request for it very often, and although dsp3000 included one in Academy Part 2, not many people commented on it. Typically, people tend to play games which include the things they like,and my games never include this, so my assumption is that it’s not something you’re all very interested in. Or are you?

A b/b/g (that’s boy+boy+girl) scene would make a lot of sense for the ‘low karma’ ending of Leanna, so I’m considering it. A b/b/b/b/b/b/g perhaps even more so. Any interest, or is it not the type of thing you like in these games?

And, just for a little extra detail, now many other guys involved in this scenario would be acceptable to you?