dsp3000
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Chapter Nine remake process
🕑 Added 2023-04-23 20:33:53 +0000 UTCAlthough Chapter Nine was released at the start of April, I never posted up a more in depth summary as to what had gone into making this the biggest episode yet.
There are several narrative pathway choices you can make in this chapter, the first of which is largely determined by the final events which closed off chapter eight.
If Bridgette gave you her phone number, then you have the option to call her and suggest going out on a date together.
The other option is to head out alone instead.
Before that I've added a few tasters of what may lie ahead at your hotel...
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When you leave your hotel you can either go a pick Bridgette up or venture out to explore on your own.
There are three locations to experience in Chapter Nine; the bar, the restaurant or the the park.
You can visit at least two of these locations in each play through. The times at which you visit locations has an impact on what you can see or do there.
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The new solo pathways added a couple of thousand new images to this chapter and the 'existing' images have also mostly been updated.
The images with Bridgette in the bar remain unchanged. There are a few issues that I intend to revisit and correct at a later date, but they mostly meet the grade.
The images from the restaurant however did need some attention.
The images from the pizzeria have all been remade. This was mostly to enhance lighting and composition, but also allowed me to correct some eye and face morph issues with Bridgette and the waitress Susie.
The new restaurant scenes of course also benefitted from the updated lighting settings.
In fact, once I had commited myself to creating the new material I had to go back to remake the other images from the same location so they would match up.
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The images with Bridgette in the park also when through a full remake process with lighting and camera enhancements.
These were almost left alone for the sake of moving the project forward more quickly.
I'm glad I was persuaded to update them.
The improvements to these images are more apparent the further you progress through the scene with Bridgette.
It can get into the late evening if you visit with Bridgette or if you visit alone and the twilight images were just a bit too dark.
It's not much use if you can't see anything...
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The same is true of the 'street' locations during and at the end of the chapter.
Many of the adjustments and enhancements are quite subtle, but tweaking things like background elements, face and body morphs, camera settings, composition and lighting are about improving overall quality.
It also gives me a chance to really check for and correct minor issues with the way for example clothing looks.
Subtly adjusting Bridgette's décolleté is always a pleasure too.
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Then of course there is the major addition and expansion of Alexia's role in this chapter. Moving her pathway foward was a concious decision to allow a bit more time and space for the new events which will be included in the next couple of chapters.
The scenes with Alexia make up more than half of the images in Ch9.
She really does steal the show.
Comments
ThatGuy
Not to keep you from your progress, but is there any chance you can backtrack to Ch. 9 and put Alexia's stockings back on for the whole chapter?
dsp3000
Yes indeed. I've seen some comments on a certain forum that imply that the new releases are basically exactly the same as before. That simply isn't true. As you correctly point out, remaking the old images is a time consuming but worthwhile process. I have to find, open, modify and re-render each file individually as none of the batch processing tools I've tried actually work. It's a long process. Updating the scoring and game engine is also often a file by file task. If I did leave some old images in there, maybe the new images would be more noticeable. But then again, I guess some people can only find things to criticize anyway... The remake process was largely prompted by the quality of the as yet unreleased new work I've been producing since my last game release on vdategames a few years ago. I just couldn't bear to have a game with such disparity in image quality and overall gameplay. When I get beyond Ch12, the episodes are more or less completed already. There is some work to make then fully ready for release but certainly much less than everything before them. It's very much been an evolving production process since I started about eight years ago. It'll never be perfect, but I do push for high standards where I can. Ultimately, I really just want to be happy with what I create.
Jim ACEP
Seeing the comparison pictures between the older series and this new series (side by side), I can see a vast improvement in today's series in terms of the graphic quality. It appears as almost none of the previous images were re-used without being modified which somewhat explains why each of the chapters that "mirror" the older series and just may have one or two entirely new bonus scenes takes such a long time. That and changing the scoring system until it reaches the events from the older DwB#4 when the entire older game used the updated scoring/meter so there should be less conversion involved. Great work!
