WickedWare
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Dev Update #46 (LONG)
🕑 Added 2025-02-16 23:06:23 +0000 UTCHi all, pretty crazy week for me and a lot to talk about... Your choice of a 2500 word essay or a TLDR...
TLDR:
1) Will look at saves again in future
2) Many of Elmwood's vaginas look bad and will be updated
3) The colour/lighting of many Elmwood scenes looks bad and I'm aiming to improve this in E4
4) Naomi's skin (and possibly others) will be made more HD going into E4
5) New card collection screen and other HaremWars features in E4
Firstly thank you to everyone who answered the two polls regarding saves. Pretty mixed answers on both and I won't be taking any action on these for E4 but I might look at having a toggle-able feature for naming saves in the future but right now I'm extremely busy with other things which I'll talk about in sec. Regarding save slots - I'll probably ask this question again in future as some of you have suggested.
But anyway - what did I do this week? This week has been extremely busy due to passion and pure obsession with several things but two things in particular: vaginas and colours. We have a lot of episodes left. After E4 there are still 17 more before Elmwood will be complete. So what I've been thinking a lot about this week is that if anything does need to be changed, I need to make changes earlier rather than later. I'm purely talking about visual changes here and particularly regarding vaginas and skin. If a girl's vagina doesn't look like it should, I think it's important that I improve it as soon as possible rather than changing it far down the line or not change it at all. So what prompted these thoughts...
This week I planned to do a load of animation work but when I started this I ran into the the difficulties I always run into with Elmwood sex scenes - shaping vaginas during penetration. This is a much bigger challenge for me than most devs because our mc has one of the fattest cocks out there lol. So sometimes things are problematic and don't look right. Sometimes girls' labia will be pushed into their legs and there will be sharp lines and stuff and I often need to do cheats to mitigate these things - cheats like making girls hips slightly wider in some scenes. And I don't want to have to do this.
There are actually 3 different vaginas/brands that I've used on different girls. The majority of Elmwood girls currently have what I'll refer to as type A (which struggle with the big dick), but with Nina in E2 I tried a different one, type B and with Kat in E3 she has a different one too, type C. Tragically I forgot to include a question in the E3 survey re: Kat's pussy but I think it looks pretty good. (And I think her asshole looks amazing).
So I thought a lot about the vaginas I've already rendered... and I think most of them suck. I think most of them could look a lot better and don't quite have the same quality as the overall appearance of the girls they belong to.
I always planned to have all girls use type A but in E2 I tried type B for Nina's scene because I wanted to see if it was better at penetration with the mc's dick. And it was - it's pretty flexible and capable of handling the dick but... in the E2 survey you guys rated it as the least appealing of all the vaginas you've seen. Maybe that's influenced by bad opinions of Nina overall but it was last by quite a large margin and Selina's was ranked top when she often finds herself ranked close to Nina in other questions. So I think this is accurate.
E2 Pussy Rankings:
1) Selina's pussy - 8.57
2) Lydia's pussy - 8.43
3) Ella's pussy 8.13
4) Chelsea's pussy - 7.72
5) Nina's pussy 7.03
So type B doesn't look good. Let's talk about type C. I tried type C for the first time with Kat and I was really impressed with what I was working with. It is the best by far with dealing with penetration from MC's penis. While type B can actually stretch more I think C stretches in a more realistic way. And not only does it function very well, I think it actually looks the best. I really wish I included a question on Kat's vagina in the E3 survey but I'm pretty confident that you'll agree it looks realistic and appealing. (Please let me know in the comments if you disagree) I think the only thing I did wrong with Kat's pussy is that it didn't look wet enough (common issue with my E1-3 scenes that I've been working on a lot this week). So type C vaginas look good, I think better than A or B. But while this might be only a slight edge, there's one department where it blows the other two out of the water. And that's the anus. I think Kat's asshole looks so much better than any of the others - more realistic and more attractive. And on top of appearance, it behaves much much better with anal penetration and I'm very impressed with it. Don't get too excited - there won't be any anal in E4 but I've been doing a lot of testing for this for future use.
So you can probably tell where I'm going with this. The vast majority if not every single girl is going to be shifting to having a type C vagina in E4 and future eps. This doesn't mean they're all going to look the same though - there will be innies and outies and everyone's will look different, they'll just be all built with the same software that performs much better. This includes girls whose pussies you've already seen. I hate to disrupt what you've already seen but I do remember a question in the E2 survey where the vast majority of you were happy for change in the name of improvement. And I certainly intend to improve them. Even vaginas that you might think already look decent can be improved. I think Tasha's pussy (and the other girl who has a coincidentally similar one) looked pretty decent in E3 and yet... I spent an ungodly amount of time on reworking her pussy with type C this week. In my defence, this time has partially been a learning experience of how to get the most out of type C and will help with the other girls but this week I probably spent about 40 hours on Tasha's vagina alone. No exaggeration. This week was pure obsession and I really let out my perfectionism when I was working. I spent entire days on it and went to bed 3 nights in a row thinking I'd created the most beautiful vagina so far only to improve it the next morning and conclude that last night's one was garbage.
It's now done (after about 50 iterations) , as well as her bestie's and I've done a couple of sample renders with their new pussies in the E3 massage scene and wow... it looks even better. But I'm not going to be remastering that right now - I'm just looking forward to E4 and beyond. And don't think that this is a spoiler and you'll be seeing TeamTashley nude again in E4 - I'm dedicating time to every girl's pussy and I thought that theirs would be the most difficult to improve because they already looked good. Following them I did a couple more (much quicker ones) on girls including Chelsea who was rated 2nd last in this department. I think you'll like Chelsea's new one more than the original but with every girl who you've already seen nude - I am doing my best to keep the original style of their vagina - Ashley has an innie, Chelsea has an outie etc etc. Majora, minora sizes and shape will be pretty consistent with their original, size of a few clit hoods will be scaled down though.
But overall I'm really pleased with how it's going and while it's time consuming I think it's a great use of my time. Elmwood is a very sexual game (in case you hadn't noticed) and so I think it's very important to make this area as appealing as we can. And it's not actually slowing me down much because while I have an extra job to do I also have an extra amount of obsessive motivation which has made me work some crazy hours this week (and I've enjoyed every single one of them).
But while the majority of this week was spent obsessing over my pursuit for pussy perfection... something happened on Friday which gave me something to be even crazier and more obsessive about...
This week, thanks to your amazing and generous support I purchased something which is probably the most important purchase I've ever made regarding Elmwood. No... it's not a new graphics card. It's a monitor. For the last few years (pre Elmwood) I've been using a monitor which I was pretty fond of, but in recent weeks I've been thinking about monitors and I began to think about colour accuracy. One of the monitors I was really interested in went on sale so I bought it and I'm looking at it right now. And this new monitor has been... extremely rude to me...
It turns out my old monitor was lying to me this whole time. When I set up my new monitor on Friday I was the most confused I think I've ever been. I was confused because colours actually looked worse, and more bland on this new one. But that didn't make sense because this new monitor is very accurate on colours - even has stats on its colour accuracy performance and it is VERY good. So why the fuck do many images (especially Elmwood renders) look worse than on my old monitor? Is this new monitor worse?
I went through all the 5 stages of grief as I began to understand that my old monitor would artificially make everything look more vibrant. Red, blue, green - they were all artificially enhanced on my screen. And so what I saw was looking great but it was absolutely terrible from a creator's standpoint. Because it turns out everything I've produced looks blander than I thought it looked. Everything looks more beige and colder than I designed. Red just looks less red on my new monitor. Anything with red in it looked so much brighter on my old monitor and every image just looked warmer.
This was utterly crazy to me. On Valentine's day I was just up all night studying colours and looking at Elmwood renders on every screen I had. (I'm single in case you can't tell lol) There was a point where I genuinely stopped believing that red exists. It took me quite a while to accept that my new monitor wasn't lying to me and it was the old one that was gaslighting me all along.
So yeah my old monitor has honestly been kinda ruining my renders at times. There are many Elmwood scenes where it's absolutely fine. But also a lot where looking at it on this screen shows me that the colours are absolutely awful - people are too pale and the lighting is like a hospital's surgery room. My old monitor made images look a lot warmer than they really are. And I'm so happy that I'm finally seeing that because now I can correct it.
This is getting super long but I feel like I need to attach a few examples to show you what I mean:
So Selina looked way more like a vampire than I actually intended and a lot of other scenes look a bit different to how I intended. I basically thought I was always producing the top image because it looked like that on my old monitor (due to artificial colour vibrance). But now my new monitor has showed me the truth that it actually was the bottom image and now I've adjusted those images as examples and used slightly warmer lighting. To be clear, I'm not going back and remastering E1-3 here, those above images are just to show you what I'm talking about. To be honest, even now I'm still having some doubts and I flip flop between thinking the top images are much better to thinking that I might have overcompensated and made them too warm. Please feel free to share any thoughts - I'd love to know what you think about the above images.
Lighting and colours are going to be a massive focus for me with every scene in E4.
I've done so much work this week, almost every conscious hour has been spent looking at vaginas or colours lol. This week has really changed my perception about a lot of things and I am so motivated and eager right now I can't stop myself from working. I want to complete E4 as soon as possible but by identifying these areas for improvement I have given myself more work to do.
As I've said before I am aiming to complete E4, E5 and E6 this year. I want to stick to this target. But E4 might take the longest of the three because of everything I've talked about above. I'm really excited for E4 but above that I'm excited to improve the overall production quality of Elmwood and that's been my focus this week which will carry on to next.
So I've been crazy busy this week with things I wasn't even planning on working on. So busy that this dev update isn't even over - still two more things to talk about:
Those of you in the VIP discord room (for IR/UV) will have seen an early preview of Naomi in E4 with much more detailed skin. I think she's looking better than ever and I'm now looking to see if any other girls need the same treatment. I want to start preparing the E4 animations as soon as possible but obviously if this work needs to be done then it needs to be done first.
Last thing - the HaremWars card collection screen has been completed. Big thanks to RockStar8, for this and it looks great. I'll probably show you some previews of it soon. HaremWars will have a few new features in E4 including:
Ability to zoom in on cards mid game
Ability to view your card collection and pre select your 5 cards at any time
Ability to purchase cards through a new currency called Battle Points and you'll earn Battle Points from victories
Ok, I'm done. I really should've saved some of this interesting news for next week lol. Sorry for making this so long but it's been a surprisingly big week for me. Thank you so much to all of my supporters - I wouldn't have been able to get this new monitor without your support and it was badly needed.
Hope you all have a great week :)
Comments
Alven
I like the old colours more overall, except for the bar pic - in the new one the colours are deeper and more vibrant. And Selina does look kinda vamp in the old version ngl, not that I mind
WickedWare
Nope - not remastering E1-3 now
Skypanic
With all the changes you want to make are you looking at a re-do of ep 1-3 when you put out ep 4? Also be careful of scope creep
WickedWare
Be-ware of making puns like these
Magz215
Wow, 3 episodes in 1 year, thats 'wicked'. Be sure to not 'ware' yourself out. I'll see myself out...
WickedWare
Ahah - my fault for making this post so long - sorry to disappoint
GuySmiley
I'm embarrassed to say I misread "And don't think this is a spoiler and ..." as "And this is a spoiler but ...". I guess I saw what I wanted to see!
Ichigo Kurosaki
Also Wicked the old ones for the bathroom and gym make more sense to me because those areas tend to be well lit, as for the bar scene it does make sense it would be dimmer but I still feel like the new one looks to yellowish.
WickedWare
Thanks, Ichigo - really appreciate these thoughts
Ichigo Kurosaki
Hey Wicked, as for my input on the vaginas: There is no harm in improving but don't burn yourself out over it or let yourself get stuck in your head about it. As for the coloring: I personally like the bottom ones better, the top ones look quite yellowish to me. Though I may be biased on this as I tend to turn the brightness up on my devices. As for Naomi, I didn't really see anything wrong with her skin, however I never really cared for her hair. Though that is my opinion and I am not going to quit being your fan if that changes or not because nothing is perfect except maybe being perfectly imperfect, lol. As for HaremWars through out my life I have throughly enjoyed just about every card game I have ever played so I very much appreciate the upgrades to it. As always keep up the great work but don't burn yourself out!
WickedWare
Thanks for this feedback - this kinda scares me and it's something I'm worried about because I don't want to overcompensate. Can I ask what sort of monitor/device you're using? Do you have an HDR setting enabled or any vibrant/colour settings on?
WickedWare
Thanks for these thoughts - really appreciate it. In the gym scene I've made the lights slightly warmer and also their skin tone a tiny bit more tanned, maybe only the lights was necessary. Lol I know you're joking but just for clarity - there may or may not be lewd Tashley content in E4 - the above work was happening regardless of their E4 plans. Thanks! You too :)
P L
Is it weird that I liked the "How it actually looked" better in all 3 examples given??
GuySmiley
Wow, thanks for this detailed update, WickedWare! My initial thoughts on the lighting: 1) the bar scene picture definitely looks better: you can really notice that the lighting on the fireplace in the bottom picture is definitely off for an indoor shot. 2) it might just be me, but the bottom picture in the gym scene still looks better to me - on the other hand, maybe it's all that Elmwood orange that's making me pause 3) no real comment on the Selina scene since I haven't played through it but I think you might be right that the lighting in the initial shot was a bit too bright for a bathroom. But the real takeaway from this update is more Team Tashley action in E4 - can't wait!! Have a great week, WickedWare!
