BM Development Post #1
Hello everyone! Since some people might be interested I decided to create this new series of posts to go into further detail regarding the development of this game. Here I will share a bit more about the development process of Brothel Megacorporation, the technical challenges that I'm facing and also new features that I want to add to this game. I will start with some general ramblings regarding the development of the game and finish the post with information regarding the progress on the upcoming update. I will try posting these between every release.
The first thing I wanted to talk about is the release schedule of the updates. I’ve always been reluctant to to set a release schedule for this game’s updates for a few reasons. But mainly it is because I have no idea how long it will take to implement certain things. For example, there will be a simple feature in the next update where you will be able to quickly cycle between the different courtesans in the training/CCTV menus. Since it is such a simple feature I though it would be quite trivial to implement. However, it took me quite a few days to learn how to code a scalable system that takes into consideration what courtesans are available at any point of the game and which ones are unavailable because they were sent to train in the stalls. The spaghetti code from 0.1 also didn’t help in this aspect.
In fact, when I first started developing this game I actually envisioned that I would be able to release 2 new public updates every month (lmao how naive). But it seems that I underestimated some of the planned updates so much (ended up taking 2 months to complete). For now my goal is to release 1 update every month consistently. In order to accomplish that without rushing (which could result in poor quality and builds with game-breaking builds) I will divide certain planned updates in two parts if I’m unable to complete everything for that release in 1 month.
I would also like to discuss the idea of bringing new personnel into the development of this project. Well, the most obvious obstacle in doing so is the lack of money to actually compensate someone fairly for their work. But there are also other challenges. The first is the uniqueness of the workflow for this game. Most devs in the NSFW game community are specialised in visual novels and Sugarcube text-based games so it will be a bit difficult to find someone that is experienced in making sandbox/management games in Renpy who is not already busy with their own projects. As for the animations, I use Daz → Blender, it would hard to find a good NSFW animator that would fit this particular production pipeline. Therefore, there are only a few things that I would truly consider hiring someone (if I had the money to pay them). First is someone to improve the UI. As you might have noticed that is not my specialty and I solely rely on the feedback and advice of players to make it better and more ergonomic. Second is someone to make some nice backgrounds. As of right now, I have been relying on blurry stock images for some events since it is not worth buying or modelling an entire scene from scratch that only shows up once and for a few seconds, right? However, it would be nice to have more backgrounds that make Epifania City look and feel more like a real city. Finally, I would like to hire a writer at some point. As of right now, the game is not writing-intensive (and I find it quite fun to write the events myself) so it is not a high priority. But it would be cool to have someone that could write some extra event chains if I had the resources to spare.
Progress on the upcoming update: For the first time, I will be making a scene where three courtesans appear at the same time. The main challenge is rendering all those damn hair particles (my PC crashed a few times already). The next update will also introduce a content filter option. This is feature that I would definitely add eventually as some of the content in this game becomes more “alternative”. But since some people complained about certain kinds of content I decided to anticipate its development and release it right away. Something I’ve also been working on which will only be released around update 0.8 is the new training system for B rank courtesans. I think the current training system is alright but it will get boring if it remains the same all the way to rank S. Therefore, I’m designing a new system where you will be able to use EXP points to upgrade new stats for your courtesans. These stats will be used in a courtesan war that will be fought against your competitors. Each courtesan will need a different combination of stats to defend your brothel against rival brothels or something like (it’s still in the drawing board). Anyway, 0.6 is going smoothly so expect early access build in early June.