Detached: The Final Stretch
With Sam's third event done, I only have a few more steps to go until the public beta. The final stretch, if you will.
Detached is also officially over 30k words, sitting at 31,840 words.
I've also discovered a different image format that debloated Detached by over 1gb without sacrificing visual quality by any noticeable degree, which was super nice. I might be able to have at least one official Android release.
The final checklist:
- Lupe's, Hanako's, and Jessica's events (9 in total)
- Lupe's, Hanako's, and Jessica's generic events
- Partial rewrite of Automatonophobia (Possibly breaking it into two events)
- Finally finding a suitable song for Automatonophobia
- Visual touch ups on a number of earlier renders now that I'm not a potato at Koikatsu
- Main Menu screen update to include all the waifus
- Custom backgrounds for the Events, Girls, Save, and Load screens
- Multiple bug finding/variable test playthroughs
I don't do these often, but since I've found myself becoming drastically more active as I use this place as one of the ways I share the development of Detached, I figured that it's time to start. For the past... Almost a year now (wow, that shit flew past fast) I've been in active development of a comedy/psychological horror adult visual novel and dating sim with sandbox elements that touches on topics of mental health and addiction. All the while juggling full time work and making sure I'm not neglecting my wife and kid bahaha.
I've always been a bit of a writer. Unfortunately, as with my drawing, it's been an uphill battle completing anything (I'm currently sitting on 1/4 complete military dark fantasy novel that's sitting there collecting dust). However, ever since discovering a few extremely well written AVNs that have completely enthralled me, I became inspired... And almost a year later, here I am. Since my own art is drastically lacking the ability to meet my visions, I've turned to using Koikatsu Party for the scenes. Illusion games have AMAZING character creators and studio apps that are only made infinitely better with the very active and creative modding community. If it wasn't for them, the project would never have been started.
In the adventures of making this Visual Novel, I've also been forced to learn how to use Ren'Py (a visual novel engine), and by extension the Python coding language. That's been a ride. Now about the current state of Detached:
It's currently still very much in alpha development. I started it somewhere in May 2022 when I was just playing around with the idea, learning Koikatsu, and haven't even looked at Ren'Py yet. But I had a vision. It's been the most inspired I've been in, what, 10-15 years? The actual coding began in August. The first event took almost four months while I learned to code and struggled with getting better with Koikatsu. Since then, development has exploded.
I had an original goal. A set of 6 Main Events. The prelude to the story. Set that stage, release the beta, and go from there. Then a developer of a different AVN (fairly successful one at that) suggested I go in strong, and my mind went to work. I was ready to release the prelude in <i>fucking November</i> if I hadn't heard that advice. Instead, I went balls to the wall. 4 extra Main Events to introduce the sandbox elements, and 3 events for each of the girls to introduce the game play cycle... Increasing the event count from 6 to 31 events. And having learned a lot in this time, once I'm done with the 31 events... I'm going back to do a remaster/rewrite of the first event and breaking it into two. Increasing the total events to a whopping 32.
As of this Friday, I am officially half way done the beta. At the rate I'm going, the first beta should be ready for public release in the next 2-3 months. That's about it. I'll be posting more Detached stuff as I go, among them being the non-canon lewds that are a necessity because reasons.
I hope you look forward to more Detached stuff as I go. ~Scruffles
Challenge
While I'm not active, I'm always taking at least a bit of time to at least practice. As some of you DA veterans that still follow me and are active know, I used to be quite active during my middle school and highschool days. I've since gone through EVERYTHING from archiving art to outright deleting (all) journals. A professional artist friend and I were going though and sharing our cringe-ass art from ye olde days, and decided to challenge each other to redraw art from a long past era. And so I delved. And fucking HO BOY did I find some fucking shit. I'll post all involved once complete, but goddamn I didn't think such cringe would be uploaded in the future.
Visual Vomit
With breaking through the 10 years of artist block that crippled my already trash art, I also seem to be able to make those false claims of art coming a little less false. I hope y'all enjoy what I've to offer. I may re-upload some of those less trash drawings from ye days of olde under scraps at a later date.
Peazy
I've been active...
... Just not on DeviantArt. A lot has happened, and I'm not really going to get too detailed. As I mentioned in my previous update, some shit went down, and I've been having a good run of things since. I've made a family, got promoted at work, moved far away from Calgary. It's been good.
My novel is about 1/4th of the way to completion. I don't really write as often as I should, and usually delegate it to my breaks at work, or if I'm at home alone and bored. I do carry around my notebooks everywhere, as I do tend to jot things down if I've an insatiable need, or if an idea pops. I have begun the process of transferring what I've physically written to the computer though. I've been using a wonderful writing app on my Linux laptop called Manuskript. It allows me to break up different chapters, rearrange the order of things, make notes on pretty much anything you can think of, and a ton of other useful utilities for someone as detail oriented as me. This has lead me to several hours of editing, rewriting, revisions, etc. If I ever decide to publish, the editing process is going to kill me, bahaha.
These past couple of years have also seen a rekindled, and actually drastically improved, my artistic ability. With pencils, at least. I am officially willing to say that I have finally broken free of that 10+ year crippling artist block. It was a process though.
One day, I was just staring at my sketchbook and wondering if I should try and shit out some half-assed drawing. Then I did. It was fucking trash. But then, I did it again. And kept forcing myself to pick that sketchbook up and keep forcing myself to put that pencil to paper. Fuck what the outcome would look like, just do it. Forget what my art looked like before, stop trying to achieve that style, just do it.
And what do you know? I actually got better. I started to experiment a bit, finally turning away from trying to emulate what I used to draw and started to redevelop my own current style. I contemplated posting on DeviantArt, and always seemed to put it off. I've since made a Facebook page, and have been posting fairly regularly there with some limited success. I've also decided to take my inactive Instagram page and began to post there as of yesterday. I've joined all sorts of drawing groups. I've even made a picture as a gift to an extremely talented artist friend of mine, something I haven't done in years and wouldn't even consider due to my self imposed lack of skill and confidence in almost just as many. Alas, I have decided that I am going to poke around the old DeviantArt. I may start archiving the trash off site, cleaning it up, and making it more... Appropriate for my current state of being. Anywhore, for anyone that wants to check out my new art, feel free. Peazy