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!