Maintenance Month (Mar. Progress Update)


The plan for this past month was supposed to be for me to take a short break from Ménage à Moi and focus on a small side project. However, in making the characters for that project, I finally discovered why I was running into three troublesome problems. One was from how I initially shaped some character models, another was during converting separate character morphs into a single one, and the last was a script from the extremely popular anatomy asset called Golden Palace.
The varying combination of these three issues was causing head-scratching posing problems since I started full production Ménage à Moi. Since posing is about 75% of the work of VN creation (yes, seriously), having to constantly fix them cost me a ton of work hours I really wish I could get back. For months I believed these seemingly random annoyances cropping up were solely my fault and had thoughts like "I just need to improve my skills and speed." or "I'm just a lot slower than I used to be." The entire tale is a very long and winding road that's also going to need heaps of pictures to explain.
I'll turn that whole saga into the next BTS post so this progress update isn't bogged down any further (plus, I'll need to take about a dozen screenshots to show what I mean). However, the fallout from all of this affects the next releases of Ménage à Moi, and some of the highlights are:
Total rebuilds of the models for Kiersten and Janine.
  • Unfortunately, this was unavoidable because the way I shaped their bodies was part of what was making them so difficult to pose. Part of this is due to how Genesis 8 handles thin torsos and I can't change that (or want to spend who knows how many hours trying). The choice was either to make them not petite anymore or try to rebuild them to be as close as possible to their original shape. I chose the latter. Besides their body shape, their faces/heads are about 95% the same and hopefully, these changes won't be too noticeable during Chapter 1.

Annabelle's model has been restored.
  • Converting separate morphs into a single one is fraught with pitfalls, and Annabelle fell right into one. I'll now be using her original model, which hasn't actually changed as nothing was wrong with it. She should look better (and bustier), but overall it shouldn't be super obvious (while clothed *wink wink*). I have completely rearranged my Daz folder structure to properly handle morph loading (a well-known Daz issue) and no longer need to bother with converting any characters (a popular but flawed way around long load times).

Creation of the last character to be introduced in Chapter 1.
  • Now that I figured out how to properly set up new customized characters, I recently finished one that will be introduced in Chapter 1 Part 3 (not 2 so not the next release). All I'll say about him is those players who were waiting for Rico to begin his (optional) bisexual romance arc will be pleased.
After all of this time spent troubleshooting and implementing fixes, I really hope that I've at least cleared a major roadblock on the road to a more productive and less frustrating development process.