thaumx
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Dev Plans & Upcoming Work
🕑 Added 2017-09-18 10:36:29 +0000 UTC So I took a good chunk of time to think about how Accidental Woman would work, and what sort of game it'd be. I started back in May. I didn't start actually working on the game until the beginning on July, releasing the first public version about a month later. When I first broke development up into phases (that I'm calling stages), I was trying to break them up into roughly-equal chunks. As you can see in the timeline above, and Gantt chart below, this didn't quite hold up in the later stages of planning.I was originally planning on taking about 4 months for each of the 7 stages, meaning development would take 2 years and 4 months from zero to 1.0. I figured this would give me a nice 8 month buffer for the 3 year deadline I set for myself with development. Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy, so the timelines for different stages are a bit different. With better planning, I settled on the general outline below. My finished plan takes 2 years and 6 months, with an extra month tacked on the end to finalize things for the "finished release."
A game of AW's scope is a huge undertaking for one person, but certainly not outside the development time frames for many other popular erotic games on Patreon and elsewhere. In fact, some of the more popular games seem to have an indefinite development plan, where content is continuously added (TiTS is a good example). While I'd love to turn AW into a game that has that kind of story content, I'm not a fan of that sort of open-ended approach. The last thing I'd want is to end up with an incomplete game, or one that has the ending feel like it's tacked-on.
I'm focused on reaching version 1.0
I would love to add a bunch of things that I've already ruled out, like being able to play as a male or futa PC, having a more drawn-out transformation period, and several other things. My stance on a closed development cycle means that I can't allow feature creep. In some cases this is going to mean leaving out really great ideas. It'll also mean that a lot of content can't be added without user submission. If I bend too much to add one extra feature, it'll be hard for me to draw the line for adding other features.
What I would like to do, is continue past version 1 if people are interested in that. While I'm not certain whether another full development cycle would be desired or warranted, I do at least want to work on some "expansions" to the finished game, mini dev cycles to add the content and features that couldn't be included in the main game.
Actual Development Time
While I have a nice plan for how development will progress over time, it would be insane to promise you that I'll absolutely be able to keep that schedule. Random events, accidents, unexpected difficulties, things pile up to put a project behind schedule. That's why my plan calls for about 2.5 years. While I'll do my best to keep to that, my absolute deadline is the 3-year point for finishing stage 7. Basically, I've planned out 2.5 years of work, because I want to meet that 3 year deadline. It's a buffer zone, if you will.
Where are we now?
We're still in stage one (about 42%), but we're getting closer to open play, which happens before this stage is finished. It may be discouraging to think of how close we are to the beginning, rather than the end, but look how far things have come in the last few months. The first public release (which was 1 month after development started) was less than two months ago. Hopefully you'll all be able to enjoy AW's growth as much as I enjoy making it grow!
The first two stages are really the roughest as far as development goes. They involve a lot of programming and setting up all the mechanics that make AW an actual game. Stage 3 is where things will start getting exciting, because the system to add content will be in place, and it'll probably seem like the development pace has suddenly sped up. By this time all the guides/info for submitting content will be available or becoming available, and we'll hopefully start seeing even more content from that direction as people start submitting the things they'd like to see in the game.
Upcoming Work
I am starting work on wrapping up the prologue structure, and building the outline of the job system. That'll be in the next release, and then I'll start working on map zones and the week summary and planner. Once those things are done, we'll be out of the prologue, and I'll start building the sex scene system. I think you'll really like what I have in store there, because I'm focusing on flexibility and variety. Imagine the prologue masturbation scene, but with far more options and flexibility to change position/activity. :)
I'll be back soon with an update on the exact plan for the next release date, and a little more detail on what I'll be doing over the next week.
Comments
Garbargle
Looking forward to it! I've enjoyed games like this that have seemed to fizzle out before completion like "Cursed" and "Girl Life" (thanks for showing that one to me in your inspirations page by the way ;) ) I plan to keep pledging an amount to keep it going, but I won't likely play much of the releases until there is something close to a working game. I hope you keep at it though! I can't wait to play.
ChanceOfFoxin
I really like this plan
ThaumX
That's a cool idea :)
Jumpy James Johnson Junior
Assuming you have a wide selection of bad ends, "meh" ends and good ends available in the planned main game, I'd suggest going to 1.0 as planned then turning the "meh" endings into "it's been a year, and you are here; play on," and the good endings into "you're in this position, here's the life ahead of you and you can stop playing now with the knowledge that you 'won' by getting to this position ... or you could keep playing to see what else you can find." That allows the next year or five years or whatever to be added with room for user-submitted content and even some epic story arcs.
