VN Ren'Py CAMP Dev Thread

[RedeemedRooster]

Hey, long time lurker and occasional poster on my normal account, but I'm shifting off of that one and onto this one because it has the name I want to use for development. I recently cooked up an idea for a game, and after a few months of learning to use Daz, writing up my story outline, and the script for the first release of my game, I'm finally starting up on the render process. Just wanted to get opinions on my main cast before I got too deep. Hope you guys like them, I'm trying to avoid using assets I haven't purchased yet, so sorry if the outfits or hair styles look a bit shabby or familiar!

For some insight into the game itself, the current working title is Counselors Are My People, however I'm more attached to the acronym than the official working title. For all intents and purposes I refer to the project itself as CAMP and that's all it's ever been to me. The story revolves around your character taking a job as a counselor at a summer camp that had previously been destroyed by a large storm. The timeline of the game covers the two weeks before reopening as you get to know the other counselors and their history while putting the finishing touches on the campgrounds. Your character is the only newcomer, replacing the previous wilderness survival course instructor, who the other counselors are hesitant to speak about at first. There's a bit of mystery to that character and how he impacts the deeper themes of the games planned story, so I don't want to divulge too much on those themes quite yet. The initial release covers a very short time before getting hired, and the first day of arriving at the camp.

Planned tags for the initial release are VN, Ren'py, 3dcg (obviously), male protagonist, romance, comedy, animated, groping, handjob, oral sex, vaginal sex, and teasing. Two of the three sexual encounters in the first release are dream sequences because, while the game will feature some obviously accelerated relationship timelines, I wanted to give the characters at least a day to get to know each other before they started fucking. The second release will likely have four sexual encounters with my planned relationship progression, and future releases will aim to have at least 5 per release. The game also contains sandbox elements for interactive events.

Future tags include anal sex, virgin, creampie, exhibitionism, and masturbation, and distant future (towards the latter third of the story) include lesbian and group sex, although all relationships remain strictly optional.

No mini-games to try to flex my skill at renpy, no time based events or anything fancy, I want the game to be simple and accessible. Future and distant future tags remain flexible as I do plan to eventually poll users on what they're looking for, however the game will never feature any form of NTR, and any pregnancy wouldn't be feasible within the timeline of the game's story.

As for brief character summaries, from left to right.

Mary : The camp's craft counselor, shy and quiet they're a bit of a shut-in and are initially hesitant to reunite with the other counselors.
Nikki : The camp's music counselor, she's got a dark sense of humor and can tend to nerd out about music. She's got a bit of a rivalry with Jane, and is constantly trying to break Mary of out their shell.
Jane : The camp's medical director, she's not a nurse, don't call her that. She's incredibly self-confident and can be a pretty huge flirt.
Main Character : This is the player character. Personality is a bit flexible, as there are choices to be made in game, however he's driven, experienced in the outdoors, and is ready to do what it takes to impress the other counselors before the camp opens.
Olivia : The camp's physical fitness instructor, she's incredibly bubbly and cheerful, as well as highly competitive. She's trying her best to push Fiona to do more for the camp, and her and Ellie are incredibly close.
Ellie : The camp's swim instructor, she can be quite cold and guarded, especially when it comes to the other counselors. She'll warm up to the player over time.
Fiona : The current camp director, she can be kind to a fault and is trying her hardest to put on a good face for the counselor's who work for her despite being worried that the camp won't be ready in time.
Kurt : The player's roommate and the camp's chef. He tries to keep things light and is constantly looking out for the other counselor's at the camp.

I can't divulge much more about these character's motivations without unraveling the mystery the first release aims to set up, so that's all I'm willing to say about them for now.

 

[SSSnowman]

Good Luck

 

[RedeemedRooster]

What's up everyone, figured I'd start a weekly check-in here, share progress and preview shots each week, the kind of stuff that I'll eventually move to patreon once I have an actual product to get into your hands. As of right now the script for the first release sits at around 100 pages, or 20,000 words. This includes a couple CG descriptions and the speaker notifier, so excluding those the first release is probably somewhere between 16000-18000 words. I've got a few scenes prepped from my initial time learning DAZ, so some render weeks (like this one) may be a bit faster than others. I'm currently working so I don't get to commit as much time to this game as I'd like, but hopefully one day down the line that'll change.

For actual progress this week, I've rendered the first scene in the script, around 6 pages of content, as well as the first part of the second scene, which itself is split across two locations. I already had the initial scene prepped and ready to go so not much time was spent there, however the second scene's A location was completely redesigned, and the B location needed to be built from the ground up, both of which have been completed. In total I've completed 96 renders, 6 of which need to be re-rendered due to forgetting to tweak camera settings. I also have completed an additional 18 pre-renders which are ready to go tonight while I sleep.

In all I'm happy with my first week of progress. I'm saving the animating and lewd scene shooting for the final updates before release because I want to gain as much experience working with DAZ as possible before shooting those scenes, and want to be sure I get as much input from you guys as I can along the way! Hope you all enjoy this weeks preview shots, even if they're a bit boring!

 

[osanaiko]

You'd do well to add some more context about your game to your first post, rather than just talking about your plan to make "a game". Title, plot summary, character info, planned genre tags.

 

[RedeemedRooster]

You'd do well to add some more context about your game to your first post, rather than just talking about your plan to make "a game". Title, plot summary, character info, planned genre tags.

Thank you for the suggestion! I've updated the original post with a bit more information.

 

[RedeemedRooster]

Hey everyone, a day early this week, but I'll be out tomorrow celebrating my birthday with friends and I don't expect to check in during the evening, and I doubt I'll be working more so I figured now's as good a time as ever!

This week I finished up that second scene, which ended up being a lot more work than I intended! As it turns out, having your character searching through a pile of junk for a couple of throwaway lines eats up a lot more time than you'd expect when you have to then create that pile of junk, and carefully craft your character interacting with that pile. I ended up going a lot less interactive than I originally pictured but I'm still happy with the end results! I also began work on the third scene, which means we're finally bringing Liv & Ellie into the story proper! These two have known each other for quite some time, second only to Jane & Nikki, however unlike those two, Liv and Ellie actually get along. Ellie won't be sticking around too long, but we'll taking the opportunity to have a nice long chat with Liv and learn a bit more about her and the camp!

So far this week, I completed 80 renders, with 3 needing to be redone, 2 due to not having enough memory to load the scene onto my card, and one due to forgetting to tweak eye reflections on the eye giving our MC some serious stars in his eyes. I unfortunately spent Tuesday redoing 44 renders after realizing how badly the shadows ended up being cast over Kurt's face, so that ate into a lot of my free time this week. I also currently have 15 renders sitting in the queue ready to go putting me at 95 scenes completed in the 6 days since my last check in. I was hoping to get more done this week, but between redoing shots and posing for the junk scene I ended up falling a bit short. For now, I'm going to enjoy my day off and look forward to checking in next week!

 

[RedeemedRooster]

Hey guys, back again this week with a smaller update as we don't have a lot to talk about with this one! I finished up that scene introducing Liv & Ellie (Briefly) and got to work on the scene where the player meets Nikki, that one's nearly complete as well at this point which means next week we'll likely be getting into Jane's introduction, and maybe a bit of an interlude catching up with Kurt & Ellie again!

I completed 117 shots this week for the render queue, however with the ongoing heat wave I haven't had a chance to run those through yet aside from a few preview shots that are undercooked, so sorry if the previews seem a bit lacking in quality this week, it's because they're partially unfinished! Typically I'll run the queue overnight while I sleep but it's been far too hot to keep that going through most of this week. I purchased a few outfit pieces for some bonus shots that'll be in this episode for Ellie so I'm looking forward to hopefully get to those sometime soon as well! Enjoy this weeks preview and I hope everyone out here is doing well! I'll likely update these preview shots with a few of my favorites once I get this weeks work rendered.

 

[RedeemedRooster]

Hey! Back again with my weekly update! Feeling pretty great about my progress this week. I made a fair bit of progress, completing 122 renders, and setting up two new scenes, one for my now-relocated catch up scene with Fiona, and one for the catch up scene with Kurt & Ellie! I didn't expect to actually finish up that scene this week so I'm really happy with the progress I made. I also crunched through my render queue for the previous week and most of this weeks work so I've got that all out of the way now, although 3 shots from that weeks counted renders were actually doubles, making last weeks count 114, not 117! The queue is currently sitting empty as I'm doing my check in a bit early tonight, however I may try to get started on the Fiona catch up scene later tonight if I find the time after celebrating the fourth.

I've only got one more scene to shoot before I start working on the big free roam event that marks the second half of the chapter, and is where the entirety of the second half takes place! This one's a bit more hefty and will likely be a bit tricky to shoot as I'll need to separate the shots into sections to get all the characters on screen at once, but I'm looking forward to finally get some key shots, including the one that I intend to use as the cover for the game! We'll likely get to see an early version of that shot during my next update, as the catch up scene with Fiona is only 50 shots, which means I'll finally be working on that end of things!

As a heads up to anyone who may be following this or occasionally checking in, I will be gone next week as I'm going to be on a vacation, and I don't intend to take any work with me, even if I could get everything moved over to my laptop before I left I wouldn't want the temptation to take me away from enjoying my trip.

I look forward to dropping my next update on you guys in two weeks, and in the meantime enjoy this week's preview shots, and the finally updated shots from last week, and a bonus shot of a partially unfinished set from the camp!

 

[osanaiko]

I've only got one more scene to shoot before

I like the approach of thinking of the VN as something you put together like a film. Script, actors, costumes, sets, props. And treating the story beats as "scenes" that get "shot" and only then edited into a seamless whole. It matches how I think about it in my head, that's for sure.

 

[RedeemedRooster]

Just a quick check in, I'm home now but caught something on my trip, likely be down a few more days so my check in this week may be pretty light.

 

[zerofreak]

Just a quick check in, I'm home now but caught something on my trip, likely be down a few more days so my check in this week may be pretty light.

I hope you get better soon. I hope the thing you caught is not ebola

 

[RedeemedRooster]

I hope you get better soon. I hope the thing you caught is not ebola

Nah, down with covid unfortunately. I've basically been asleep a solid 90% of the time the last few days. Hoping it passes quickly, thanks for the well wishes.

 

[RedeemedRooster]

Alright, here to cook up my report for the week even though I've been down for the majority of it. Vacation was good, covid after has been pretty shit but the fever's gone down a fair bit now and I managed to make a bit of progress tonight. I'll try to cook up my renders while I sleep today so long as it's not too hot in here, although it's a 50/50 on rather I remember after I take more meds later.

Made a bit of progress with the Fiona check in scene, and made some changes on how I'm handling lighting, I don't think it'll be a noticeable difference between the old way and the new way, but this version is much easier for me, and I think will be a lot more consistent both indoors, and for darker scenes which we'll be getting into next week. I finished 50 renders, which is the entirety of the Fiona scene, in which the main character gets a phone and made a bit of progress setting up the final location with the new lighting I'm using. She also gives a rundown of exactly what the main character will be doing for the first week, and this section will be expanded upon once I start finalizing things in renpy to include the tutorial for objective tracking and general phone usage.

Only got one preview shot tonight since, as I mentioned, I haven't had time to render up the whole set up, but I wanted to leave yall with something, so I rendered up the one where Fiona was 1. Facing the camera, and 2. The most visable, as you spend much of this conversation talking to her from across a table again. Once I render up the full set I'll pick out my favorite 3 and edit this post with those tacked on instead. Hopefully a better report next week! Hopefully should be to normal output rate soon.

Edit : Sorry for the slow update on the previews, honestly just slipped my mind. Making solid progress this week and excited to share what I've got done so far!

 

[RedeemedRooster]

Hey everyone! Kicking in for my weekly check-in a day early this week, since I'll be at the movies tomorrow and I don't want to be distracted thinking about needing to check in all night. Pretty solid week for renders! I'm currently sitting at 64 completed renders for the week, with another 59 in the queue that need to be cooked up tonight and tomorrow night, bringing us to a total of 123 renders this week, or 103 depending on how you look at it.

20 of these renders are 5-person shots as I get into establishing the big free roam event. The conversation that happens here involves most of the group, so it took a lot more time to set up each of these shots, and due to hardware limitations, I have to render each of these shots as 2 separate shots, which I then combine later. One of my previews this week is one such shot! I've been trying to aim for completing 20 renders a day when I work lately, but that really depends on how heavy the shots are, and how busy my day job keeps me.

Most importantly, however, we've finally introduced Mary! Our final entrance into the main cast and a bit of a shut in. We get a brief check in with them where the MC attempts to get them to come out to the campfire before moving on, but we'll get more in the second half of the night when we go back! Additionally, the shots at the campfire are some of my favorite. When I initially had my idea for this game, the idea of a shot of the entire gang gathered around the campfire was the big one in my head for something to really capture the spirit of the game, so this first rendition of it (That lacks Mary & Nikki) is a big step towards finally seeing that vision come together.

Thanks for checking in, and I hope y'all have had great weeks, see you soon!

 

[protonatom]

This looks great. Best of luck with your game!

 

[RedeemedRooster]

Hey guys! I honestly expected to make a lot less progress this week than I ended up doing, a new PoE league dropped and since I'm doing this in my spare time I wholly expected my productivity to nosedive when this week started. But I managed a pretty consistent schedule this week, despite putting... way too much time into this league. But yall don't care about that, you're here for the progress report! This week I completed 104 scenes, including spending way too long on a single render that'll be included in this post! Currently about half of these shots are rendered, as it's been too hot to leave my computer on overnight.

As far as scene progress goes, I wrapped up the Nikki retrieval scene, which marks the end of the initial phase of the free roam! I followed up with a large group scene where Fiona officially kicks off the night's celebrations, as well as covering a piece of the free roam section where you sit down for a chat with Kurt and Ellie, where we learn a bit more about his history, and make a bit of progress with getting Ellie to like the MC, or not depending on your choices.

I also worked on the first shot for the bonus image collections. These are non-canon images that you can collect as bonus rewards during free roam sections, and some versions will feature 4k shots which will eventually be included as a patreon reward, but for now I'm keeping everything fee, since I'm not going to ask anyone for money until AFTER people have had a chance to get their hands on the first version of my game.

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me today! Enjoy this weeks preview images and I'll see you guys next week! And thank you Proto, for the luck!

 

[RedeemedRooster]

Hey everyone! Back for my weekly check in and I'm absolutely ecstatic with the progress I've made this week. Now that the big free roam event is set up and everyone is already in place, I've really been able to crack down on shots rather than setup, and I've felt especially motivated this week to get things done and it shows. This week I have completed 152 renders, with 23 currently sitting in the queue, leaving me at a nice and even 175 shots worked on.

On top of that, I ended up having to make minor changes to a lot of last weeks work, and some of this weeks early work, with approximately 60 shots being redone that aren't included in that count of 175. These shots ranged from redoing DoF in one scene, fixing a characters outfit in the other (A keen eye will note that Nikki's outfit has changed, and it should have been that case from the beginning, as she changes when the player goes to pick her up) to making some last minute tweaks to lighting that I wasn't happy with. All in all I got a TON of work done this week for my usual pace, and I'm incredibly happy with the progress so far.

I don't want to put a solid date on getting my first release out there, as I've still got animating to go through for the adult scenes, and I've got to plug it all into ren'py, as well as getting all of the basic features I want included. I've got a fair bit of experience in game development as a hobby, and a bit of familiarity with ren'py so I don't expect to run into too much trouble there. All in all I'm hoping to have a playable chapter one before the end of summer, but I don't want to jinx anything.

Thanks to all of you who check in and read this thread! Hope you're all doing well and I'll see you next week!

 

[RedeemedRooster]

Back again with what should nearly be the end of these typical weekly updates! As we get closer to finishing the collection of still images for this release, I'll have to reevaluate what I'm sharing each week since I won't have fresh renders. Likely it'll be preview stills of the animations, but I'm not sure just yet!

This week I completed 128 shots, with about 30 of those sitting in the queue to be rendered back to my usual pace while I work on this slightly-more-complicated event that takes place halfway through the free roam section. This leaves us with only 4 non-animated scenes left to render for this first release! Honestly I hit the wall about 2 days ago where I just couldn't keep up with the pace I was doing while balancing work and other hobbies, or I probably would've gotten even more doing. Instead I took the opportunity to start porting things over to ren'py and converting my script to something I could quickly send over and get converted. After setting up some basic things I wanted and giving the title screen a bit of customization, I don't expect the porting to ren'py to take very long, so things are looking good for my hopeful estimate of when I want this out.

This week I'm hoping to burn through 3 of the non-animated scenes, which will only leave me the big final set-piece around the fire where everyone is interacting, which I expect to take a full week on its own. But I mean any dev will tell you that giving a for-sure date is an awful idea, so I won't promise anything.

Enjoy this weeks preview images, featuring the end of our sit down chat with Fiona, and the long walk to go convince Mary to join us at the campfire!

Quick minor edit : Got called in to house sit for a family member this week, going to still try to commit time on this since I've got a deadline set for myself I'd like to make, but it may be a bit rougher than I hoped.

 

[RedeemedRooster]

What's up everyone! A lighter check in for this week than I hoped at the beginning, but still much heavier than I hoped after finding out I'd be house sitting.

This week I completed slightly more than 100 renders, 23 of which are sitting in the queue right now. I'm only giving an approximation because while I have completed these new renders, this week I finally got around to fixing up shots I was unhappy with, and ended up needing to reshoot the entirety of the first scene with Fiona because of a really stupid mistake I made early on. In total I worked on 213 renders this week, and I believe all of my old shots in need of reshooting have been completed. I also put a little bit of time into working on the first animations, although I've made very little progress on that part, as I only spent about an hour on it.

On top of these renders, being away from my desktop and sitting on my laptop at the place I was watching gave me a lot of time to start working on things on the ren'py end of development. I have converted approximately 40% of my personal copy of the games script into workable ren'py code script. I've got a randomized cycling image main menu set up and have begun picking out music for the game, as well as creating several ui sfx. I also have the first few scenes as a working demo for a few close friends who have been interested in my progress. I've also begun the tedious task of renaming all of my daz photos to something a little easier to work with in ren'py. While I could just keep my current file name structure, I think it's better to set up an established and consistent reference system that's easier to work with in the future.

Overall I've made solid progress this week, I'm debating setting aside a couple hundred dollars in order to purchase animations, but at the same time I do think custom hand-made animations are a lot more attractive to an audience, so I want to complete at least one complex animation and see how I feel about it visually before I make any decisions on that. At the very least I know that cookie cutter animations will still likely be a fair bit of work given that my model sizes aren't standardized so I can't just slap some common sets on them and call it a day.

Anyway, enough ranting, here's this weeks preview images! Looking forward to catching you all up again next week!

 

[RedeemedRooster]

An early Thursday post for you folks, with some news on what I'll be showing off for these last few weeks!

As of last night I am officially working on the final chunk of still renders for the update, with 79 shots remaining. I expect to be finished with those by the end of the month, with all of my work from there forward focusing on animation. I think rather than posting 3 update preview images, for these last few weeks I'll post one of the animations I worked on through the week in a blank test environment. As such, and given that this week I finished the first animation of the set I am working on, that'll be what I'm posting from here on out, instead of giving you guys a bunch of similar looking photos from the campfire.

I went into this week unsure if I was going to be happy with my own animations. While I have a little bit of experience working on animated projects, I wouldn't call it anywhere near professional. As a matter of fact I really wouldn't call any of my work professional but I'm doing my best out here. In the end I'd say I'm fairly happy with how this first one came out, and I'd love any feedback you guys could toss my way. The version I'm posting here tonight is the second to last iteration, as my computer decided to shut itself off at 6 AM instead of rendering through the afternoon like I had planned. The changes in the final iteration are just some tweaks to her hair in the frames where she is blinking, it unintentionally slides around far too much. I've also got to cut off a few frames so she doesn't pause between loops but that's not a major issue.

Once again, I'd really appreciate any input on the animation. While I can't promise that input will affect this render since some changes can require a lot of work, I'll be sure to keep anything in mind for future animations! Thanks everyone who checks in on this thread, and I will see you guys next week!

Quick little edit : Whoops, didn't include my render count for the week, it was 125 renders, with around 80 of them still sitting in the render queue since animation took up a lot of my queue time this week.