Progress Report - June 19, 2023 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone!

This past week's focus has been predominantly split on the Life is Strange projects and the Overbreed storyboard.

Overbreed

I've added 4ish minutes to the storyboard, taking it from the 17.5 minutes to 21.5 minutes, and (almost) concluding Sequence B. Once I've finished the climax sequence of B, the narrative tissue between Sequences B and C will be next. After that, the narrative tissue between Sequence C and the conclusion of the episode. Recall that I am not storyboarding Sequence C, since it's already in the middle of being animated and I don't want to disrupt its flow.

If you haven't guessed already, this week's post gif is a (sped-up) excerpt from the new segment of the storyboard. Pretty fun stuff, I gotta say. I think it'll look (and sound) absolutely fantastic, when it's fully put together.

Epilogue

When it comes to Life is Strange, my attention has been splintered. Off the top, I made a little bit of progress on Epilogue. I mentioned last week (I think) about how I intended to graph out the gas-station confrontation.

Boy howdy am I glad I did - I absolutely wouldn't gotten lost trying to keep track of this linearly, putting everything together in Source Filmmaker. This is what the conversation tree for that confrontation looks like. And do be aware, this is just the confrontation.

I apologize for the graph being a bit clunky and hard to read. While putting this together, I very quickly realized that the tool I was using, an open-source program I used to use back in university called Violet UML, was absolutely not designed for what I was using it for (and had quite a few bugs in it besides).

Beyond just wrenching it into doing something it wasn't meant to do, it was just extremely clunky to use, and had virtually no quality-of-life features. The next time I need to diagram out a conversation tree, I am going to write a system to do it directly in the game editor - the graph library I am using for its graph view is much easier to work with, and gives much better results.

I'm not 100% happy with this dialogue tree. My two major problems with it is that I feel like certain branches have a lot more that happen in them than in others, which feels unbalanced to me; and that it feels like there are some inconsistencies in how the Attendant reacts to Max's condolences, depending on when in the conversation they're brought up.

The latter issue is the less significant of the two, and I think it could be resolved just based on the actual writing. The high-level thinking I have in saying that is, if Max jumps straight into offering condolences for his family, he interprets it as hollow patronizing, generic greeting-card-tier drivel offered to anyone automatically. But if Max waits until hearing him describing how exactly his family died, then she offers more sincere condolences tailored specifically toward him, and that convinces him that she is genuine in her sympathy.

The former issue, I think while it is unbalanced, it also feels natural to me. The general thesis I had in this is that the Attendant calls Rachel a whore in various different ways, and Chloe has zero tolerance for him insulting her honor - without fail, she punches the asshole for it. In the paths where he isn't antagonist toward Rachel, but is instead antagonist toward Chloe or Max, Chloe doesn't get physical with him but instead threatens him, resulting in him pulling a gun on them.

Importantly however, I didn't want to make it a simple "always pick nicest option, always get nicest outcome". I want the player to think a little, consider the emotional states of everyone involved, and navigate the conversation with delicacy. Chloe's in a combative mood, trying to calm her down won't work; the Attendant is being needlessly aggressive and sometimes people like that only respond to reciprocated aggression, but that aggression isn't unfounded; and if the situation is left to its own devices, Chloe's destructive personality will very quickly implode the situation.

The idea of having the Attendant attempt to pull a gun when Chloe punches him is very much inspired from my recent playthrough of Telltale's The Walking Dead I've been doing over the past few weeks. I really liked the idea of upping the stakes and giving the player some more dramatic agency in this scenario, with Max being able to get the gun and take control of the situation.

It was while writing this Walking Dead-inspired sequence that I also had come to mind the idea of complimenting the Life is Strange icon-based "this action will have consequences" message with more descriptive Walking Dead-based descriptions. Less "They will remember that", but more hints to abstract ideas. Specifically, notifications that Chloe is confident Max's powers will return, or Chloe is afraid that Max's powers are permanently gone. Provided, of course, the dialogue branches in that particular way.

I haven't gotten around to actually implementing this dialogue tree into the game yet, but that is the next thing I intend to do when I work on it next.

Life is Strange Minivid

I mentioned last week how I am looking into a Life is Strange Minivid between Chloe and Max. I had aspirations to explore Max's time abilities in that Minivid, and explained a possible idea. Upon further reflection though, I didn't much care for it - I couldn't figure out a reason to justify why the exploration-and-escalation had to be rewound, when that's just a natural part of relationships and could be explored in traditional linear time.

So I started to explore alternative ideas, but no matter what I came up with, it didn't really work. The time abilities just require too much context to make sense, and at that point it fell out of Minivid territory.

I did finally come up with a premise I think works well for exploring Max's time abilities, while justifying why it's a rewind as opposed to just letting time progress naturally. The idea is that, after Chloe and Max have their first time together, Chloe reminisces about the first time she and Rachel had sex.

The memory quickly turns sour though, as Chloe has the reality of the last four days crash down on her, notably the closure that Rachel is indeed dead. This understandably puts Chloe in a dark mood, and she retreats into herself. Max absolutely hates to see Chloe hurting, and so she decides to rewind time and change the course of their intercourse to find a way that doesn't remind Chloe of Rachel. After a few attempts, Max is able to sufficiently surprise, overwhelm, and exhaust Chloe such that they manage to fall asleep in each others' arms, contented and satisfied, with nary a sour thought of Rachel's fate in Chloe's head.

I really love this idea, which is why I don't want to butcher it to fit it into a Minivid. With Minivids ideally being 4 minutes or less, there's simply no way to fit all of this in a way that doesn't do the premise a disservice.

As such, I am escalating the idea as a potential on-stream video. I've mentioned previously that I am locking down my off-stream schedule, and I am committing to that. So floating in the limbo of on-stream projects is where it will stay.

However, this now leaves the Minivid in a vacuous space. I don't want to impede upon this idea, which means I need to find something new altogether. And I haven't figured out what that will be yet. At the same time, this idea is now sufficiently different from the Epilogue film-script I was originally adapting for the minivid, that I feel I want to completely dissociate it from Epilogue and change the locale from the truck.

This led me to explore a bit, and I found that Chloe's room has been ported to Source Filmmaker. I am contemplating doing something there. I've had ideas of exploring the first night Chloe and Max have together, after their pool escapade. I've also considered ideas of Chloe and Rachel together - despite my dislike of Amberprice, I can't deny they have a lot of potential for hijinks together, without needing to invent new canon like Epilogue does.

I still don't have anything definitive for the Minivid, however. I am still trying to figure that out.

Other Life is Strange On-Stream Video Ideas:

Idea 1: Exhibitionism

Next Saturday's stream, on the 24th, is on my birthday. As such, I am considering I may want to take a break from the Frozen project and do something else. Naturally, Life is Strange is my current obsession, and so I am feeling I might want to do something with the characters for my birthday.

Toward this end, I've actually had two other ideas come to mind. One of them is a cute experiment, inspired by a Twitter comment on a release image where the ladies are showing off their exposed outfits. The comment said "now they should do this in public," which led me to consider a sequence involving public flashing and/or streaking.

This idea just immediately stuck to Chloe and Rachel to me, since that is absolutely something both of them would do. I also immediately had the idea of it being a Truth or Dare thing. From there, I imagined there should be people involved than just the two - and toward that end, I immediately pulled on Steph from Before the Storm. And that idea was just fireworks.

Steph is canonically and unambiguously gay, she canonically becomes best friends with both Chloe and Rachel during their time together before Rachel's disappearance, and she canonically has the hots for Rachel and is bummed that Chloe and Rachel are so close together.

The idea of the three girls daring each other to gradually take off their clothes and do more and more bold things is just so exciting, between Chloe and Rachel having their electric relationship, the sexual tension between Steph and Rachel, and the envy between Steph and Chloe. There's potential for some absolutely fantastic development there.

The thing about the public nudity project is I can't really find a way for traditional sex in it. I mean, it's easy enough to go "hey we're already naked let's do the sex", but that's a very flimsy connection. I'd much rather the sex be a natural development from the nudity, such as being foreplay or something.

But at the same time, I honestly don't think it needs to have actual sex. I'm no stranger to softcore ideas - the Leliana Minivid is basically just two minutes of femdom dirty talk, after all, and the first Leliana video is honestly not much further removed from that.

Toward that end, I am considering tooling this idea into a minivid, and just having it be an exhibitionism piece. If I can sneak some character development in between the three girls, then all the better.

I also had a quick derivative idea come off this, playing off the fact Steph is a huge dungeons-and-dragons nerd: Strip D&D. Instead of the players losing hitpoints, they lose clothes instead. I haven't explored the idea any further than that. But I won't lie, it is a cute one.

Idea 2: Rebellious Kate

I also had an entirely different idea come to mind. Someone on my Discord is a huge fan of Kate Marsh, and has been banging the drum that she needs an on-screen hug for weeks. During our regular brainstorming sessions on the Discord, he also brought up the idea of "Kate having rebellious gay sex to piss off her overzealous aunt."

And honestly, I love the idea.

Right out the gate, I too love Kate Marsh. In fact, from the very opening moments of the game, the moment I saw Victoria throw that paper ball at Kate, I made it my life's mission to protect Kate and make sure she knew she was loved.

To say that the events that transpire through the first two episodes of the game absolutely crushed my soul would be an understatement. If you know, you know.

So I was already on-board from moment one, because Kate's aunt in the game is extremely cruel to her and is a strong contributing factor to the decisions Kate makes in the game. For those not aware, Kate is from an extremely religious family, and when a video of a drugged Kate kissing boys is candidly leaked onto the Internet, Kate's aunt immediately disowns her and asserts she will burn in hell for being a harlot.

Yeah, Kate's aunt is a real nice lady.

I put together this nifty little timeline, showing the times from when Chloe, Rachel, Max, and Kate all turn 18 in the game (conveniently they all have exact birthdates canonically provided), up till the time of the Storm (or Rachel's disappearance), with the events of Life is Strange proper put on for good measure.

While Chloe and Rachel have the lion's share of free time where they are 18+ and can have hijinks together, Kate and Max have much less time to play with.

But they do have time. Conveniently, Kate and Max both turn 18 about a month before Life is Strange begins, which gives me a little bit of wiggle-room. Kate and Max both have an established relationship which I don't want to fiddle with if I can help it.

But you know who has an undefined relationship? Chloe and Kate.

Together, we brainstormed together a framework for an idea that I consider to be, if not strictly canonical, at least lore-ambiguous. Namely, the idea that Kate is at least bicurious and came out to her family on her 18th birthday, only for her mother and aunt to shun her for it. This results in a sad Kate going to the pier to contemplate - and she just so happens to come across Chloe, who I can easily see being someone to frequent the pier to smoke and just stare at the water dreaming of escape. Maybe she's putting up missing-person flyers for Rachel, too.

Misery loves company, and so Chloe and Kate end up talking and Kate describes the situation to Chloe, who so aptly points out, in her usual eloquence, "that's fucked." Chloe then offers to give Kate an 18th she won't remember ("don't you mean an 18th I won't forget?" "not if we do it right"), but when Kate refuses to drink or do drugs or party or really do anything that Chloe does to numb her self-hatred, Chloe takes it as a challenge to overcome.

Somehow, this leads to Chloe and Kate having gay sex.

Hey. I said it was a kernel. We still gotta work out the details.

So yeah, over the next week or two, I am hoping to hammer out all three of these potential on-stream ideas. In the meantime, I started work on putting together a Steph model, and will likely be jumping ship into making a Kate model in short order.

I'm not sure what we'll end up doing for my birthday stream. I intend for this to just be a one-off thing, so maybe start work on a minivid? Or we could start work on an on-stream video, just work it for one day, and then come back to it once the principle animation of the Frozen project is done and we take a break to make a different, smaller video.

At any rate, that's all for now. Until next time, everyone!