Dream Molder progress, technical difficulties and some other stuff...

Hey everyone, I took quite some time since my last post, as always.
Sorry about that.

I've been quite busy with a couple of things since the release of the last Braixen (Fauna) Animation.
Mainly focusing on coloring and animating Fia's Model for Dream Molder but also reworking and properly animating the old Lucario model which people where asking for.

I actually wanted to release the first proper Dream Molder version or at least something similiar to a Braixen "Character Creator" that will go along with the game, but after hitting some roadblocks along the way I had to put in a lot of extra work which isn't quite finished yet.

I'll use this post to go into detail of what was planned and why it failed, but also to show some of the stuff to can expect.
But let's start with Fia's Model...

Work on Fia's Model

Shortly after finishing Fauna's animation I started working on Fia's model to use in the final versions of Dream Molder.
For everyone wondering what the whole model thing is about it's pretty much the main graphic file used to display Fia throughout the game, build in/with Live2D and gives me the ability to animate her sprites.

Since Fia has a bit over 100 expressions and poses there's quite a lot to consider until the model is 100% finished, but once the it's done there's not much left towards the proper releases, with CG-Art being the only thing left to do.

Work on the model was going well and I was expecting to be done with it around now as animations, the ability to change her colors, style, etc was all working fine already.

Technical Difficulties

Knowing that there's not much more to be done to finish it I put it aside to work on the Lucario animations for the month.

When I came back to implement the model into the game however it didn't work out as much as I was hoping for...

The model appeared much lower quality from it should actually be like.

Outlines were fuzzy and some things were missing completely.

Experimenting with the model a bit made it obvious that the problem wasn't the model itself but the engine messing up some of the color layers which made the model appear fuzzy.

You can see how the model in itself is actually quite clear when I dye her fur white which removes all the color layers.


Not really knowing what causes this I had to look into the engines code, rework parts of the model and try to figure out what the problem was in general.

I actually went so far as to rebuild the whole model from scratch but to no avail.
The latest build did improve the quality somewhat to not make it obvious as quickly, that definitely wasn't enough to use it for the game though.

It was obvious at this point that something was up with how the engine uses the model.
The mode actually looks fine when viewed in preview or with any other software, putting it in the game though somehow messes up the colors.

The time it took to come to this conclusion however took way too long and I've wasted a lot of time trying to rework the model to make it work and right now I've got about 3 ways to move forward.

1.: Find whatever causes this in the engines code, change it and use the same model

2.: Rework the model to not dye it in real time and have a limited amount of colors to choose from instead
3.: Use another engine or write one from scratch and transfer everything made so far over time.


The first one I go for will definitely be 1. as this one has the highest chances of keeping everything done so far. The engine seems to mess with clipping layers for some reason, most likely scaling them weirdly?

Fixing this is the best scenario, there will always be some kind of quality issue though which is definitely caused by the overuse of clipping and the engine not being able to keep up.
So I might need to do something else if I can't get it to model viewer quality.

The other two options are suboptimal, giving me a lot more to do to implement this than what it's worth.
I'll wait for some feedback and option 1. to fail before making any choice here though.

But yeah, long story short:
Whatever option I'm going with I will have to do some extra work which is why I most likely won't be able to release anything before end of the year.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to try, I'm definitely taking it slow and put quality first though.

Sidenote

I know this isn't much of an update and more of just me talking about minor problems.
It's not the first problem I bumped into and I've always found/had a solution in the end.

However, it's been a while since I've given an proper update for DM's progress and I think it was really needed. Even if it was about something trivial as this.

I felt like I needed to involve everyone to keep up excitement and interest in the game for everyone.
That's what made me work on it until now after all...

So if you have any thoughts on the whole problem (Do you think it's worth using another engine to keep live coloring or would a few colors to choose from be enough for you?) or are excited about any of the features feel free to share/discuss it here or on our discord.

I need the feedback to keep me going and all thoughts/comments on this are appreciated!

Next update will most likely be with the release of either the first proper Dream Molder Scenes or the Braixen Character Maker, (hopefully) next month.

But for now happy holidays to all of you and I hope to see you around next year!~Dark

Upcoming Braixen Animation

Hey everyone, it's been a while.

Last month was quite stressful for me and as a few of you probably noticed I wasn't able to release all of the remaining H-Scenes until the end of the month as I planned to.

Worrying that quality of the scenes/game would keep declining if I kept going I decided to take a break from Dream Molder to take a break from dream molder to work on random art/animations instead.
I will continue working on DM as usual at the end of the month, but until then I will work on the Braixen animation that my Patrons voted for a while back.


The base idea for the animation plus it's still image are already done and will be downloadable on patreon in high res and different variations, including NSFW ones as always.

I already started putting together the model for the animation and am experimenting with some new things to add to it when it releases at the end of the month.


For anyone that's interested and doesn't follow me on Patreon here's a preview of what the animation is going to look like:

I wanted to make sure that the animation stands out from what we have in Dream Molder as we will already have enough Fia art once the game releases.
It's not exactly what I sketched/planned at first but I hope you like it anyway!

I normally come up with a bit of backstory to have a better picture of how the character in the animation moves and behaves.
I thought it would be interesting/fun to share it with you so if you're interested take a look over here:

https://in-dark-waters.blogspot.com/p/fauna-braixen.html


Depending on how fast I get everything done the animation will be released around end of the month.
Let's hope everything goes well and I see you guys then.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Release of the first few DM H-Scenes and some technalities to why full release is taking longer

Hey everyone!
I was hoping to release DM v0.2 today but sadly didn't get to finish it in time.

At this point, I'm actually still only halfway done with what I wanted to have.
There are multiple reasons for that, all listed down below with some additional details and
explanations since I want to be open with this.

Since I didn't want to not have anything for you at all, I took 3 of the h-scenes that I think are playable enough to already share them with you guys and put them in small, standalone demos.

This way you can take a look at what you can expect for the other h-scenes and have something new to read/play in the meantime. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

There is a another 2 Scenes that are quite far into release, both rather large/important for the story. I will upload those aswell once I think their quality is high enough to be released.

>> Download links will be over here <<
(Keep in mind these are Hentai Scenes, so NSFW material! Only download them if you know what you're doing. xD)

Now to some more details on why it's taking so long..

Short Version:
The quality of the scenes (art/writing) wasn't what I imagined/wanted because I'm still lacking the skill and I had to rework/refine them bit by bit.

Long Version:
I've been working on those scenes in different steps.
1. - Writing a loose script about what happens in the scene, what kind of poses will be used
2. - Actually writing the scene, adding dialogues and making notes for what art appears at which moment
3. - Sketching the art needed for the scene and it's different variations needed
4. - Putting everything together in the game
5. - Add in some more details into the writing to spice things up and bring some harmony into writing and sketches

What went wrong?

Now everything seemed to go fine until step 4, where I realized that it doesn't quite add up.
I did notice that sketches weren't as good as I wanted them to be, and normally that wouldn't have been a problem since I would try around until it works.
I didn't have the time to keep trying for 40 different CG and animation sketches though.

I had to draw poses and perspectives that look as different from another as possible to not make it repetitive and at the same time make sure that it will work with the game and later on animating as well.
Trying out so many new while also trying to keep it fresh was definitely too much for me still and I ended up with 2nd choice sketches to still make it in time.

When I started putting everything together though I realized that quality was lacking.
The scenes felt short and unimpressive, were missing the little something that made them feel alive.
Sketches I thought would look good in the game didn't quite fit in or would have looked stupid animated because I've been missing simple rules you need to make the scene feel good.

All in all it simply didn't look good.
So now I had to decide:
Lowering quality to get it done in time or taking more time to make it feel good.
To be honest, it wouldn't even need to feel good because most of this would have been fixed once I properly animate things.
This would have made the h-scene demo boring though, only filling in the story holes that were missing without giving the fun of playing it.

That's why I decided to work in more details.
I started diong the over scenes from start, adding details and expression to the sketches as I went along.
I started doing simple sketch animations and variations, trying to stay as simple as possible while still giving life to the scene.

After finishing the first one I knew that I had to do it for all of the scenes and definitely wouldn't get done in time to release the demo.

I've worked on 3 of the scenes to the point that I think they have the quality needed, 3 more I already started working on and another 3 that still need to be looked at completely.
Even those 3 are by no means perfect, but in the end it is still just a demo, and the real animation will fix a lot of the problems that I had with the scenes before.

But that's pretty much all there is to it...

I'm still trying to release the full demo at the end of this month so I have enough time to work on the Braixen animation for Patreon.
But for now I'm hoping that you understand that it takes a bit longer than planned and that you enjoy the few scenes that are up plus the ones that are still to come.

Thank you again for your patience and I'll hope to get you those missing scenes asap!
-Dark

2nd Progress Update on Dream Molder v0.2

Hey again everyone!
I was actually hoping to be done by now but it's seems like I need July to finish
version 0.2 (or the NSFW update) after all..

It's nothing too severe since I'm still in synch with the roadmap, but it would have been nice
to have some more time for the coming animations as well...
For now I'm hoping to release it on 15th of July, but depending on how well everything works/looks
I might take a bit longer.

This blogpost will focus on the things that I was working on the last couple weeks and some more of the stuff you can expect in the next update for the game.

For everyone that doesn't quite know what's coming up here's a improvised changelog
with all of the main things I focused on the new version:

> added 9 new scenes containing the main h-scenes of the game and missing story parts
^ (These scenes will be greatly extended, rewritten and improved on in later updates and
     are simply meant as a placeholder to go along with the sketches)
~ 40 CG-Sketches to properly visualize the h-scenes of the game and give an example of how they will look like in the future
^ (some of which are lightly "animated" to improve atmosphere and show off which scenes you can expect to be animated in later versions)
> added roughly 30 Character Sketches, mostly nude variants of already implemented poses
> some minor bug fixes revolving around improving gamplay and fixing the game getting stuck in certain places

For everyone that wants to know what kind of work is left to do before the release or simply wants to see some of the stuff I've done the last few weeks this is your section:

There's 3 steps left to do before I can upload v0.2, everything is pretty much done by now.
- drawing the remaining sketches
- turning some of the sketches into "makeshift" animations
- finalizing the h-scene scripts with said animations and add some fitting music


Step one: Drawing remaining sketches
Now this is an obvious one.
I'm not quite done with drawing all the sketches yet.
I should have been done by now, but not all of the sketches turned out the way I wanted them to or
were simply too complicated for me to draw after all.

I will need a few more days to rework them and try again, maybe even change up the h-scene to make something more fitting in the end.
You might want to see some examples of what is coming though so I've put together a small collection of some of those CG-Sketches that I made the last few weeks, including some of the ones I uploaded on my last post to have them in one place.

(NSFW and Spoiler ahead! Keep in mind before clicking!)
https://in-dark-waters.blogspot.com/p/nsfw.html

Most of the CG's shown will be animated and have variations, but we'll come to that in the next step...


Step two: Creating makeshift animations
This one isn't actually a must do, but something I like to do to somewhat visualize the animation progress before deciding if I want to keep the picture this way.
It also looks nice if the game and it's scenes have some movement, even if it's just sketchy placeholders.

Since this step isn't actually necessary for the update I'm still debating on how many of the CG's I'm going to add like this.
Especially after wasting a lot of time with some of the early animations and putting in a lot more effort than was needed.

For a small example of what kind of animations I mean I've uploaded and linked some of the ones I prepared for the game the last couple days.
They're all scenes/CG's that I've already shown or were in the first Dream Molder demo, so there's nothing to worry about spoilers!

(Unlike the images I didn't go through the trouble of censoring them though, so please keep in mind that the link is highly NSFW!)
Click here to go to see Animation Examples

I might decrease quality of following animations to increase my pace and get out the update earlier, but we'll see how long I'll take for the next few and how much time I have left.


Last Step: Finalizing the H-Scenes
Pretty much the last hurdle before release, finishing the programming/script on the h-scenes.
This won't be a problem in itself, it is time consuming however since I will have to read through the hundreds of text lines over and over while I put everything in place (pictures, animations, music) to make sure everything looks and works as it should.

Depending on the size of the scene I normally take around 3-8 hours for one, but since I'm also retouching some of the CG's while doing so it might take somewhat longer..

Release and what's after
In the end though there is not much left to be done until the next release which I will follow up with a break from Dream Molder, taking time off to finish some of the animations I planned on doing for a while now.

These include another Braixen animation that was votet for on Patreon, finishing some NSFW animations for Lucario that I worked on early this year,  some of the reworked Dream Molder animations and a couple of random ones I came up with over the time but didn't have the time to work on yet.

How many I'm actually releasing will depend on the time I have since Dream Molder has priority for now, but we'll think about that after I've finished v0.2

I already experimented with a couple of settings and sketches for the Braixen animation by the way and if you're interested here's a link to the one I'm most likely to use at the moment:
Likely Sketch for Braixen Animation

This is not set in stone ofc and everything about the sketch (or even the setting/sketch itself) might change.
But I liked the setting and have a small story idea behind it that I was thinking of posting together with the animation. Let me know what you would like though since I want you guys to like it as well and maybe you were hoping for something different.


But that's pretty much it for this post/progress update.
It's a bit all over the place, like always, but it's quite late already and I also need to write the update on Patreon after this.
The next post should be Dream Molder v0.2 itself in (hopefully) about two weeks!

See you then and thanks for reading!

Progress Update on Char Sketch Demo v0.2 + some technical information

Hey everyone!
I'm actually a bit unsure of what to post/show, but didn't want to go too long without anything new either.

So here's some random infos and sketches to see what I'm working on right now and what things you can expect from version 0.2, the NSFW update!

It will be my usual babbling and ranting but I will add a sketch or two for everyone that's more into the pictures.
For censoring and spoiler reasons, I'm going to link every sketch instead of posting it directly.
So don't worry about spoilers, I'm going to tag everything and you can decide if you want to look at it while reading!
And while I'm going to censor images for the blog, please keep in mind that everything will still be NSFW since this post is about the h-scenes.

H-Scenes / Writing

I already talked about it a couple of times, but update 0.2 will add in all the h-scenes that were missing in the latest version.

It will be 9 scenes in total that range from short, mildly teasing scenes that set the mood to longer emotional scenes that are supposed to bring the characters closer together and/or reveal some parts of the story that weren't told yet.

I've also written about 4 more scenes that are not really story related and could be seen as non-canon/optional that I'm planning to add as unlockable bonus scenes for every playthrough.
If they're in v0.2 will completely depend on how fast I can do the sketches though.

Since the scenes are non-canon I was able to go a little crazy, adding/making up whatever I want and ended up having a lot of fun writing them. So I'm actually hoping to be able to ship them with 0.2 to share them with you guys, don't count on it though!

I actually wanted to do sketching first since I would have had more stuff to show in progress updates inbetween, but I ended up doing writing first to make a proper list of what kind of
sketches I need to be able to properly update the progress bar every now and then.


Now I'm done writing for the most part and have a lot of work done that I can't really show off since that would spoil everything and would probably be a bit confusing without the sketches/right formatting, but maybe I can at least get something out of the few sketches I already made...

H-Scene Sketches

While I did start a lot of sketches I only completely finished 11 of them (3 of 9 scenes) so far.
Getting them to be the way I want is taking me a bit longer than I anticipated, but I rather get them right and take a bit longer than rushing things. I'll probably end up rushing some stuff anyway, but since it's just sketches I won't have to worry about every detail anyway.

A lot of sketches are still going to change before coloring and getting some feedback after 0.2 release will help out correcting everything I didn't see/could have looked better.
So don't worry about anything that looks off.
Just mention it somewhere here on the blog or discord and I will add it to the list of things to look into for the next update!

An example for what kind of changes can be seen on some older sketches from the old demo that nobody saw.

Image: Old demo CG / Old demo sketch comparison

As you can see I changed a lot of things like posture, proportions, etc while coloring.
Some of it because I didn't see while drawing, others because I could do it better at that point or simply didn't like what I did before.

Now the new sketches will most likely have less extreme changes, but it can still end up looking completely different if it has to.

That pretty much already brings me to my next point:

CG Variations

CG variations will be a big part of the game.
While a CG-Image is a full screen image that shows a scene in more detail, a variation of it will slightly alter the image to go along with the story.

This can be simple things like changing a facial expression, but it can also have some more extreme changes like a different pose or background.

All in all however, it's still the same base-image that's simply been changed.
That's why you see a lot of CGxxx-1, CGxxx-2 etc in the latest demo.

Variations will help make the game feel more alive and hopefully almost cinematic.


In H-scenes the variations will have an additional use and represent something similear to "key-frames" that will be needed for animations later on.
Every variation pretty much shows me what kind of body parts I need to draw in which angle and at which time of the animation it's used.

Here's a little example of how they're put together to make it easy to replace parts and make it easier to model the animation later on.
Image: Sketch/Variation layer example from office scene (Spoiler!)

For now it's just a few parts layered over each other, swapped out for each variation sketch.
But in later versions I will use them to make animation samples just like the one I made back then for the old demo:

Animation: Old demo sketch-animation test over on Furaffinity (NSFW!!)

If you're interested in some more variations here's a couple of them for the first h-scene in the game, a redrawn version of the old sketch you saw on the first link above:

Image: Variations of redrawn BJ scene from old demo (NSFW!!)
Image: New frames/variations for 2nd scene from old demo (NSFW!!)


While there's going to be a lot of variations, 0.2 won't have any animations yet.
There might be some simple test gifs similear to this:
Image: Old motion test over on Furaffinity (NSFW!)
to test motion and pacing, but nothing too serious since that would only waste time on I could use for the actual animations.

Fun fact:
I'm actually doing these kind of motion tests all the time, mostly to figure out/decide on which kind of animation/picture I'm going for.
I always end up drawing multiple sketches for the same scene and decide which one I'm going to take/animate by doing these little "warp" tests in gimp.
I have a couple of different ones for the Lucario animation, Zoroark, some unreleased ones, etc...
Here's 2 tests for Zoroark that didn't make it if you're interested:
Image: Motion test for Zoroark (NSFW!)
Image: Motion test for Zoroark 2 (NSFW!)
Keep in mind that these were really just to test what kind of pose I want, I was still figuring out which style I was going for and design would have changed a lot after.

I have a lot of these + some random, silly/cute animations I make inbetween to work against stress.
You could call them leftovers from whatever I work on at the time and if you want I can try to share a few more of them in the future.

End word

I think that's pretty much all I can talk about right now and I hope that it was somewhat entertaining and shortens your wait for v0.2.
When I guessed the release dates for the roadmap, I gave myself time until late July.
While I'm hoping to get everything done until end of the month, I probably end up fixing and finalizing things until 15. of July after all... But we can always hope.

If you want I can show of some more sketches on a later post in about 2 weeks when I'm hopefully done sketching.
Alltogether, just let me know what you think about the sketches or whatever is on your mind.
I'm always glad to answer questions and get feedback so I know what to improve in the future.

I didn't want to spoil too much, but since I didn't have much to show here's some more sketches(without variations) from the office h-scene, to at least have something to show if you were only interested in sketches from the start. Sketch 08 and 09 will most likely end up animated btw!
Images: Office H-Scene Sketches with Anthro/Dream Fia (Spoiler!)
H-CG06 (SFW!)
H-CG08 (SFW!)
H-CG08-10 (NSFW!)
H-CG09 (NSFW!)


I know this post didn't have too much in it, but you can always reach out to me if you want to know more about the progress or want more details on what I'm working on right now.

I'll keep you updated on everything, thanks for reading and interest in the project!
-Dark

Character Sketch Demo v0.1.1 Release

Foreword
I didn't plan on posting over here, but because of some server problems with the website I'm currently unable to update properly.
That's why I will instead post the download link and changelog over here until the problem is fixed.



Character Sketch Demo v0.1.1

Main purpose of this update is to complete the Character Sketch Demo and fix some minor bugs of the last version.
So while there will be a lot of new sketches that you might not have seen prior to this update, there will be no major changes since last time. (hence the 0.1.1 instead of 0.2)

If you already played the last version and are interested in what exactly changed since here's a small list of what got added:

• ~200 added Character Sketches consisting of various expressions, poses and character variations (Characters different clothing, facial expressions etc)
• redesigned Anthro-Fia and her outfits in all of her sketches (~40 sketches)
• path 2 was properly implemented into the game, now connecting with events after. (Not it's own ending, but slightly(!) changing every other ending/path on the way)
• some additional lines and story fixes to various scenes to fix mood and improve writing
• various bugfixes, grammar and spelling changes(~250 in total, counting repeated mistakes)(A big thank you to Sparky66 for providing a detailed list that made finding and correcting a big part of these easier)
• some optimization to reduce sketch-file sizes
• updated and rewritten the Supporter List and their ranks. (ranks still use lifetime support, but script has been rewritten to making changes easier)
  
  (+Some more sketches and scenes that were drawn/written but removed for this version
      specifically to stay SFW)

This Version concludes the Character Sketch Demo and will only be updated to fix urgent bugs that hinder playtesting.

Only part missing for a full on sketch demo now are the CG sketches.

Next Update and steps for full/colored version:
The next update will be the NSFW Demo, which will include all of the Hentai Scenes and sketches. (And if timely possible even some of the bonus scenes that have additional ones)

It will have the written dialogue and probably some very simple animation tests which I will showcase over the next couple weeks aswell.


The NSFW Demo will be the point where we have 100% of the art/sketches that is definitely going to be in the full version, only leaving the CG's that I will draw in batches instead of all at once.

This allows me to start coloring and modeling the first part of the full novel and release the game in "episodes" that will be put together once all of them are finished.


Bugreports and feedback
As always, feedback and bugreports can be given on the spoiler page over here:
https://in-dark-waters.blogspot.com/p/spoilers.html

I also joined Discord since it's probably easier to send screenshots/suggestions/give feedback/etc.
So feel free to add/talk/ask me about whatever, I'm not just there for Dream Molder.
(However, I'm awkward and mostly busy working on the game if I'm online. So please go easy on me as I might be (very) slow to answer.)
Id: InDarkWaters#1391
I actually planned on opening a Discord Server instead, but I'll probably need someone who does that for me because I'm simply too shy for this kinda thing.
I can still open one later one, for now having an account has to be enough. xD


Links---------------------------------------------------------------
Mediafire: Win32
Browser Version: https://indarkwaters.com/games/dream-molder/play/
Summary + Changelog: https://indarkwaters.com/games/dream-molder.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Afterword:
I know this update doesn't seem like a lot since most sketches are just slight variations in clothing, poses and expressions.
But I think having all of this (roughly 500 char sketches/all scenes and endings) done and in one place is a big step towards completion.
I could start colorating the base characters and together with the finished music and backgrounds already make some finished scenes by now.

However, I think the h-Scenes are a big part of why this became so big which is why I'm going to prioritize them over starting to colorate.

I hope some of you are looking forward for the next update/showcase and/or maybe even like this version already.

Your support is what enables me to take my time improving and working on every part of the game and I will try to make the best out of it in the end.

Alright, that's pretty much it from me.
As always, just let me know if you have feedback/want to know about anything of the games progress. I always try to answer if I'm able to!
But for now, have a nice week everyone. :>
-Dark

Small progress update on Char Demo 0.1.1 + Sketches

Hey everyone, nothing serious here but I thought I'll show some of the stuff I was working on
these last few days.

This post will mostly be me rambling again as I talk about what sketches I worked on, which reasons I had to do so, etc... As usual it's going to be quite the textwall, so if you're not into reading my random jabbering I added some pictures for you to glance over. ;P
Just know that I'm working on the next patch/update for the demo and hope to get it out in around 2ish weeks


The stuff below might be a spoiler to some of you (sketches from various characters/scenes of different paths), so remember that as you keep reading.
I put put some "heavy" text spoilers into on a black background just in case.


I will divide the sketches I worked on into 4 different sections, beginning why I'm taking a bit longer to make the next demo..

1. Some extra time sketching - "Dream" Fia
First things first, I've been doing some extra work the last few days that wouldn't have been needed but I felt like it was.

I actually would have been done drawing the remaining character sketches for the demo already but this kind of got in the way of it...

Those of you that played the old Dream Molder demo will remember how Fia had two "forms", her usual Braixen and her Anthro one.

Anyone that played the character demo as well probably noticed that the anthro form was completely missing this time around.
The reason for this wasn't because I removed it, but because I was unsure of how I wanted it to look like.

Back then I pretty much added breasts to her design, changed poses a little and called it a day.
For anyone that doesn't remember exactly here's what I'm talking about:

Now it wouldn't have been a problem to just do the same thing again and add a chest to the new design (which I was planning on doing) but the new style simply made it feel off.

I had the choice now.
There's around 30~ poses/expressions that I need for the anthro version.
I'm either using the ones I already have to save time and effort OR I redraw all of them from scratch with a completely new design.


But yeah, I guess you see where this is going.
I wasn't completely sure how I wanted to change the anthro form without diverging from the new style too much, but after trying around for a while I ultimately ended up with this.




I wasn't sure if changing the body-type was something I really wanted (I mostly felt like the anthro version wasn't needed), but I wanted to make sure that it feels like Fia actually changes in attempt to mimik what she thinks the Player likes, (Sara?) to make him "notice her" or even seduce him.

It's definitely not perfect, but I will still change some stuff up once I start coloring anyways. So just let me know what you would like to have changed on it if it bothers you!
BTW, unlike in the old demo you will have an option to switch Fia's chest off in the anthro version.
I'm not sure if I'll do it with ingame decisions or a simple checkbox in the settings, but I think this will make the game more enjoyable for anyone that is bothered by the boobiemon.

Now I didn't draw all of the 30ish variations that I need yet since I'm quite slow at getting the sketches just right, but I'm getting there.

There's 13 left I need to draw but only 3 of them are actual poses while the rest of them are different expressions of said 3.
Once those are done I can start adding clothing to the different poses which will go a lot faster again.

Here's a few more previews and a color sample to show the "style" I was going for..




























I really tried keeping Fia's original/default poses while using her "new" body.
I wanted it to look casual while somehow more seductive...

I think they turned out fine, but It's for you to decide so let me know what you think. :>

Now on to the next topic,
2. The desert Vixen
I already posted a "teaser" for the "character" a while back, so anyone that looked at my older
posts might remember this:

Mostly referred to as the "Beast Princess" in the story, the idea behind the character was simple.

I wanted a character from a book that Fia could identify with so she would end up getting hooked to books/reading in general, but it was also a good filler for one of Fia's dreams that I've got not even nearly enough of yet.

In the end, Fia was supposed to dream/mess up dreams like this almost every night.
Which still happens, but pretty much isn't shown or talked about inGame...

The story of the Beast Princess showed the most basic examples of Fia's usual "dream-ability accidents".
She finds something that stays on her mind or excites her in some way which makes her dream about it. Dreaming herself into the role of the princess she relives what happens in the books story while unknowingly dragging people close to her like the Player into the role of the prince.

Since the princess mostly uses Fia's graphics with some added clothing there isn't much else to show besides the color sample here, but I thought it was a funny thing to know and the missing sketches from this part of the character sketch demo probably didn't make it a 100% obvious that she was dreaming herself and the player into the main roles.
(Btw, the queen is also played by the Players mother in this part. Even though Fia imagines her with some slight differences :p)


Now a thing that I had a problem or two with...
3. Side Characters

While drawing side characters in itself isn't a problem, having the motivation to draw them definitely is.

Most of them only use one sketch or two for the whole game and will be shown once.
Something that makes it quite easy to deal with them and move on to more important things.
However, I feel since they're less important I just don't get to drawing them..?

I did a few designs for a few characters, but it never felt "real".
Not like characters in a way because I wasn't as invested in them or because I couldn't bother drawing them?

A lot of the missing sketches are exactly that.
Random people in the background. The daycare lady, coworkers, ruffians, etc..
Even the mother which is only halfway a side character didn't quite get to what I want yet.

I did get some sketches done but not nearly enough and the quality that I wanted them in.

Another point why I'm a bit behind with those is because I'm unsure if I'm even using them.
While planning and scripting everything I realized that I wanted to animate the characters.

Animating EVERY single of the characters, even the side ones - would probably be only waste time.
But putting unanimated characters next to the actual ones would look plain bad, so that's out of the question...

What I will probably end up with is animate a few characters that are used a lot, lead a bigger role or "fit" in. But every other character will only be shown on CG's which aren't animated.
This way I don't need the extra character sketches and don't need to animate them either.
But it also means less for you guys to see in the character sketch demo.

So I'm unsure of which ones you'll see in the final Char Sketch Demo, but it's most likely only those three here + Players Mother and the daycare lady...

The maid was kind of  a must since she was in the old demo already and I had her sketch ready for a while now. I didn't put her into the first demo since most side characters were missing aswell, but now she's all ready and set up for the next version.

Jasmine isn't exactly a side character, but since removal of path 2 she's also not THAT important anymore..
She's got enough dialogue to be animated and all though.
Same for the mother.

Lastly the Croagunk from the daycare. Nothing special and only appears for a few textboxes, but I thought it's cute enough and kinda helps the scene. It also won't be too much trouble to animate because of it's size, so here it is!


4. Clothing sketches and variations

And as last topic the reason most sketches were missing in the last version, clothing.
If you played the Char Sketch Demo you probably saw a few recoloured unfinished sketches, those were the clothing and variation ones.

With about 70% (~160) of the missing sketches by far the biggest part of what I did the last few days.
Adding different clothing and variations to the sketches and replacing them with their recoloured placeholders.

From the about 80~ sketches that I have left to draw, about 50 of them are still clothing sketches. (40 of which beeing Anthro Fia's clothing, which is why I have to wait for her new sketches before I can keep drawing those)

Posting all of them would probably too much since each oufit has been drawn with a variety of poses aswell. But for everyone interested, I'll add a few variations at the bottom if you don't care about spoilers or anything.



5. Final Word
I know this was all kinda messy and all over the place since I'm quite tired and probably should have gotten some sleep now. :,D


But for everyone that read through the whole thing a big thank you for your interest and I hope you found some interesting stuff in here.

 While this whole sketching and behind the scenes business probably isn't too interesting for most, I like to share how far I've come by now...
My work is by no means perfect and I'm still taking forever to get stuff done, but I think I improved a lot if you look back at the stuff I made when I started this not too long ago..

So for everyone that stayed with me over all this time, thank you for your support.
You're the reason why I'm improving.

I hopefully get the last few sketches and scenes done over the next 2~ weeks and am already looking forward for drawing the sketches for the h-scenes after that!
Next "behind the scenes" post will be about those. From sketching, to animation tests and how I improved / started out with those as well.

I hope you're also looking forward to that one!


Thats more than enough for now, time for me to get some sleep while I still can. :,D
I wish you all a nice start into the week!

Dream Molder - Character Sketch Demo v0.1

Foreword

Alright, I've been putting a lot of work/time into getting this ready those last few days and it's still not quite done. Some missing character sketches, bugs and spelling mistake that I didn't see while rushing through every path as fast as possible, etc...

Most of all this is here to give an idea of in which direction/style game is going and get the story out to people that might have better writing skills than I do and have the time to / or are willing to help me write this.

If you want to help me write this you can always reach me over at Deviantart or Furaffinity.
(Those are the sites that I see it the fastest.)

Besides helping me rewrite the game your feedback on what you like/don't like is always helpful.
I'm mostly looking for information on:
- how to improve the story/writing
- where should I change the music

- where are CG's needed and where are they too much

- which parts do you enjoy most as a reader 

- which parts did you enjoy the least / didn't like at all

Every info to the above will help me immensly improving and building the game in the future versions.
Besides that, I'm also looking for gamebreaking bugs that stop your progress.

So if you run into something just let me know and I'll try to patch it out as soon as possible.

Once the demo is out I will take a few more days to finish the missing character sketches and patch out every bug that you find, then continue sketching and writing the h-scenes to update the demo as NSFW version.

That's it as a foreword for now, everything else will be some rambling and random info about the game and it's progress/making so far.

A big shoutout and thank you to all of you that so far supported me on my patreon, keep me going with their daily messages (You probably know if that's you ;P) and to those that went through the trouble of playing and commenting on the "Reading Sample".

You guys are great and I'll do my best to improve and release something enjoyable in the end.

-Dark
_______________________________________________________________________________

Links:
Download: Win32
Browser Version: Browser Version Test

Summary + Changelog: Dream Molder Summary Page
_______________________________________________________________________________

Random rambling

Me rambling and ranting about some stuff that I thought about for a while.
Gonna be cringy/whiny though so there's no need to read them if you're just here for the games!
https://in-dark-waters.blogspot.com/p/random-rambling.html

Random Updates and Thoughts + Patreon-Poll Winner

Hey everyone, it's been almost two months since my last update over here...

I've been mostly posting on my Patreon which is why I didn't do much updating over here. (Besides changing the progression sidebar ofc)
So let's make this a big one and cover some of the stuff that happened after Lucario!


Last month I focused on scripting/eventing the Dream Molder scenes which are about 65% done by now.
If the speed keeps up I might be able to finish and give out the Character-Sketch Demo with all the main routes of the story.

Just as in the reading sample I gave out before there's no CG's and H-Scenes yet.
However, unlike in the sample all of the scenes will be fully scripted and show character sketches while speaking and proper message boxes/names.

For anyone that didn't play the reading sample the whole demo will pretty much look like this.









CG's will be simple placeholders with a simple discription for you to know what's happening and a CG-ID for me to know which picture I have to replace them with later on.

<< Example




Also since the character-sketch demo is going to cover all the story paths you will be able to make some decisions this time around.



Back in the first Dream Molder Demo decisions only changed her affection to you to unlock different scenes and decisions in the end of the game.

This time it will have a bigger impact on the story itself, changing what happens and the ending of the story alltogether.


There will still be some smaller decisions just as in the old Demo, but for now it's just the big ones to keep focus on the story.

H-Scenes are the only thing that aren't scripted since I'm waiting for everything else to be done before making those.
To prevent confusion it will show/give notice that there should be one right now but will skip straight to the next scene instead.

This can take from the immersion and skip some of the dialogue, but I think the main story parts should still come through. It's just for now after all.

But yeah, if everything works out I can upload the demo around the end of next month.
So let's hope together.


Patreon Poll Winner / February Pokémon

In my last post I was talking about how I'm thinking of putting up a poll on my patreon so you could vote the next Pokémon for me to draw over february.

As my patrons know I did put one up and the winner of said poll was Zoroark.

I need to say this whole poll thing is more of a experiment right now since I  have pretty big motivational problems if I'm just not in the mood/have the right ideas to draw something.

Sadly the exact thing happened and I'm kind of stuck and drawing progress is going way to slow now. (I did get a lot of progress on the Dream Molder scenes instead though, so that's at least something I guess.)

My idea was to draw a comic and animate the r18 panels, so I would have some content for both sfw and nsfw.
Since I cant get anything done however I will focus on the one sketch that turned out alright and make some different variations of it.

Kinda sad that it turned out that way but I guess that's why I tested it.
Maybe I can actually get some more stuff done this month after all, let's just wait and see for now.


For anyone interested here's a little teaser of the sketch I'm working on right now:

WIP > Cropped NSFW Version

 

I'm going to upload the full/highres image on my patreon once the different versions are done.
It's not what I planned on doing but I hope some of you are still looking forward to it.