Started working on an intro scene for inviting Alice over to your place. The room is a mess… better tidy up before she gets here! (Oh, and is that chocolate over by the TV…? 
)
5 Likes
I downloaded youre game and i must say its realy nice. I love the storyline and also the main character, she looks beautiful. Also the gameplay is simple and nice to use and the cool thing is that it also have some complex elements. like the money and days and that you have the chance to call her on phone. keep going like this its a cool game 
2 Likes
Thanks!
Like I said, it’s all Work in Progress at the moment. I’ll probably rewrite the starting scenes to have a bit less eating. Don’t want Alice too greedy for food to start with!
Will probably end up redrawing most of the scenes too, once I’m more familiar with Daz studio
4 Likes
this is amazing cant wait to see more
1 Like
Thanks!
I’m making progress, but it’s currently pretty slow. I’ve had a rethink about the way I render scenes. I was planning on doing the backgrounds separately and then overlaying the characters over the top. But, this is causing a few issues. Firstly, if I get the rendered characters even slightly out of position then they don’t look natural at all against the backdrops. Secondly, the lighting often doesn’t look right. Thirdly, and most crucially, once Alice starts to grow, things in the background are going to need to move around to accomodate her expanding figure. Taking the cafe pic below as an example (which also shows how the lighting doesn’t really work), she’s not going to fit in that gap between table and chair when she’s 50lb or more heavier…
So… my plan now is to render a lot more of the scenes as full scenes - i.e. background plus characters all in one rather than separate layers. I’ve played around with a few and they look loads better this way! But… all that extra rendering takes time. Instead of 30-60 minutes for a background and then 10 minutes or so per character render, we’re now talking at least an hour per render. It’s slowing things down a hell of a lot, but looks loads better (in my opinion, anyway). To give you an idea, below the cafe pic is a test render for the pub which may or may not get used. The lighting simply wouldn’t work if I did the background and characters separately.
6 Likes
The way you describe your old style of doing things, reminds me of how a lot of old PS1 games would get around the limits of 3D games, Resident Evil 1, 2, & 3 in particular are probably the first things t come to mind when you talk about pre-rendered backgrounds.
1 Like
Yeah, pre-rendered backgrounds take a hell of a lot less processing power. I missed the early consoles (was a dedicated PC only gamer until the likes of the PS3/Xbox 360 came along), but I well remember most PC games of the era having pre-rendered backgrounds too.
I’ve definitely decided on (for the most part) rendering full scenes all in one go. Loads more time to produce them, but from the tests I’ve done, the results look a lot more realistic.
1 Like
Wow! Over 200 downloads! Thanks to everyone that’s tried the game so far! And especially thanks to those who have taken the time to post comments 
The praise is very nice. but if anyone has any critical comments then I’m more than happy to take them on board too. LIkewise, if anyone has any ideas for story elements, feel free to post them!
Quick update on the state of the game so far… I’ve now pretty much (it’ll probably all get refined further at some point) finished all the intro stuff. On top of what’s in the first demo, you now get to take Alice to the pub for the first time and also invite her to your house for the first time. I’ve re-rendered some of the original images (first cafe scene, for instance) which is taking a lot of time, but I can write and do other stuff (hey, I do have a life, you know) while the rendering is going on. As I mentioned, I’m also doing most of the images as full renders rather than layers which should make things look better going forward.
I’m now just starting on the first weight gain and eating stuff. Lots of variables involved - how hungry she is, how greedy she’s feeling, how confident she is about her weight, etc etc, which is making things complicated to write, but if it all works out according to plan then there should be a lot of random elements to keep the gameplay interesting.
Not sure at this point when I’ll put out another demo. Could do one today, but I’d like to advance the game a bit more first. We’ll see!
Thanks again for all the interest!
4 Likes
Wow you work fast. Really looking forward to the next demo. As to criticism only one I had you addressed in an early post, namely all the dialogue atm is weight/food focused and it’d be cool to see her slowly give in, increase appetite etc. I think given it was a very early stage demo it helped proof of concept. Otherwise all I want is more and seems you’re on top of that.
1 Like
Been lurking for a while, but had to make an account just to say how impressed I am with your project, definitley the most excited I’ve been with a project and on this site that’s saying something!
Played the demo and I’m so hyped for more, plus how active you are with updating us on the forum is so appreciated, there’s no update on progress too small!
Only criticisms I have with the demo have either already been identified your self ( like lighting being off in some scenes but you have clearly already improved that) or just lack of character around Alice besides liking food, but that clearly just because it’s early.
1 Like
Haha yeah, it’s very early days at the moment and there’s hardly any character development as yet. I do have some ideas for development, but it’s going to be a question of drawing a line between too much ‘waffle’ and risking boring players and focussing too much on food and weight gain and making the game very one dimensional. The first cinema scene will definitely get reworked at some point soon to add a bit more detail.
That said, it is a game about eating and weight gain. There are countless other games in this style out there if you want more plot and character development, so I’m probably going to try to keep the focus biased toward the weight gain stuff But again, it’s very early days so this may change!
As for working fast, things are probably going to slow down a lot now I’m introducing more variables. It’ll get boring to see Alice constantly wearing the same clothes and eating exactly the same thing, so my plan is to have pics of her wearing different outfits and eating different things… and of course she’ll get bigger as the game progresses. That’s a lot of different images to produce! (And also a lot of assets to buy, which is why I’m probably going to stick the game on Patreon at some point in the near future.) When I was simply dropping images over a pre-rendered background, it didn’t take too much time, but now I’m rendering the whole image in one, it takes anything from 30 minutes to a couple of hours to produce one image. So that’s gonna be a real bottleneck from hereon in!
2 Likes
Ok… I’ve been thinking. Obviously, the idea of the game is to help Alice get fatter… but how should she look when she’s fat? It’s a given that she’s going to get gradually bigger all over, but I was wondering if anyone has a preference as to how the fat is distributed. So, poll time!
- Top Heavy (boobs and belly)
- Apple Shape (mostly belly)
- Pear Shape (mostly hip area)
- Other (feel free to comment!)
0 voters
2 Likes
I went apple but seems like top heavy is the big favourite and I’m not sad about that. I don’t have a lot of spare cash atm but would gladly give something like £15 to help out in the early stages. I’m invested already.
1 Like
Well, I’m going to leave the poll up for a few days. I have my own ideas of how she’ll look as she grows, but it’ll be interesting to see how other people think and if there’s an overwhelming preference, I’ll take that on board.
If/when I do stick the game on Patreon, it’ll be voluntary donations only, certainly for the timebeing. I’m not looking to make a fortune writing this, but it’d be nice to cover all the bits and pieces that I’ve bought/ am planning to buy.
2 Likes
Maybe do what tainted e did. Were you cam set your preference in body shape at the begining.
1 Like
Yeah, I did have the preferences idea. And if this were a text only game, that’d be relatively easy. Or, if the images were being rendered on the fly then maybe it’d work. But they’re all pre-rendered. There are already going to be different outfits and foodstuffs (which will all need updating as she gets bigger) as well as the various poses needed to combine them. Plus different combinations of these across the varying locations.
Factor in different body shapes too and I’d never get the game finished. I’m just going to have to pick one overall shape and stick to it.
5 Likes
Wow, so far the polls are an almost even split, that’s a very interesting statistic
1 Like
I was just about to point out exactly the same thing. I don’t think that could have been more even if we were trying…
2 Likes
Haha yeah, must admit I was suprised too by how close it is. Given that there haven’t been that many votes yet, I’d have expected a huge discrepancy at this point as even one or two votes would swing the percentages quite drastically.