Remastering BEW??

[Cabin Fever]

While we all wait (somewhat impatiently), can we have some fun speculating on what Wolfshadowe meant by "remastered"? Is it...

• Updated 3D models for the characters?

• Move to a different game engine like Ren'py?

• Rewriting the background story of a character?

• Something else?

[JFR]

Welcome to BEW Forum posting.

I think a conjecture thread is fine and I hope you can get a discussion going. I do, however, prefer to keep the original thread for status updates and related matters so I split your post off to a new thread. Good luck.

[infiniteignorance]

I hope he meant I am going to be a new character in the game and have Faith all to myself.

[xsandman78]

Updating character models could be worrying, I fell in love with Natalie as she is and would she come out the other end looking like the same character. Equally rewriting characters for the same reason.
Moving to renpy, well I see the elsaverse games were so while I know nothing about technicalities that might be possible here.
If it helped with development of releases that would be a boon too.
At the end of the day it’s wolfshadowe’s game so it’ll be what it’ll be. Just hope I get to see how Natalie romance plays out to a finish line someday.

[infiniteignorance]

Updating character models could be worrying, I fell in love with Natalie as she is and would she come out the other end looking like the same character. Equally rewriting characters for the same reason.
Moving to renpy, well I see the elsaverse games were so while I know nothing about technicalities that might be possible here.
If it helped with development of releases that would be a boon too.
At the end of the day it’s wolfshadowe’s game so it’ll be what it’ll be. Just hope I get to see how Natalie romance plays out to a finish line someday.

These discussions always make me feel like I'm putting words in someone's mouth but if I had a concept for a game and was unable to see it through to fruition due to limitations in the available software and then, at some point in development, the software progressed to the point where I could realize my original concept I might be highly tempted to reboot the project. Only Wolfschadowe knows what he had in mind when he began this game. If what he has done up 'til now falls short of that then I fully understand why he might want to "remaster" the game.

[Tao Dude]

Updating character models could be worrying, I fell in love with Natalie as she is and would she come out the other end looking like the same character. Equally rewriting characters for the same reason.
Moving to renpy, well I see the elsaverse games were so while I know nothing about technicalities that might be possible here.
If it helped with development of releases that would be a boon too.
At the end of the day it’s wolfshadowe’s game so it’ll be what it’ll be. Just hope I get to see how Natalie romance plays out to a finish line someday.

These discussions always make me feel like I'm putting words in someone's mouth but if I had a concept for a game and was unable to see it through to fruition due to limitations in the available software and then, at some point in development, the software progressed to the point where I could realize my original concept I might be highly tempted to reboot the project. Only Wolfschadowe knows what he had in mind when he began this game. If what he has done up 'til now falls short of that then I fully understand why he might want to "remaster" the game.

Pure speculation on my part, but I understand that the BEW engine is based on Tlaero's Adventure Creator software, which she wrote herself to enable the Elsa-verse and other games to come to fruition. Tlaero has retired from adult game production to spend more time with her family and Mortze and his new collaborator have moved to ren'py, because they can no longer call on the services of the good lady T to do the coding. There are still some good games out there using a similar HTML game interface (Chaotic and friends), but it has started to look a bit dated with the flood of Devs using ren'py, RPG Maker, Unity and Unreal.

If Wolfschadowe was to port the game into the ren'py engine, the game management element (settings, loads and saves, stats, etc) would be already there and he would not need to redo the renders that he has already completed, unless he had other reasons to change them. The dialogue choices would move to on-screen from under-screen, so the look and feel would be a bit different, but not to those of us who have played other ren'py games. The tricky part would be ensuring that the game variables that track who has done what with whom map across in the correct way. With the multiple paths in this game, testing the new release would be a challenge, but we would have the original as a comparison.

[infiniteignorance]

Pure speculation on my part, but I understand that the BEW engine is based on Tlaero's Adventure Creator software, which she wrote herself to enable the Elsa-verse and other games to come to fruition. Tlaero has retired from adult game production to spend more time with her family and Mortze and his new collaborator have moved to ren'py, because they can no longer call on the services of the good lady T to do the coding. There are still some good games out there using a similar HTML game interface (Chaotic and friends), but it has started to look a bit dated with the flood of Devs using ren'py, RPG Maker, Unity and Unreal.

If Wolfschadowe was to port the game into the ren'py engine, the game management element (settings, loads and saves, stats, etc) would be already there and he would not need to redo the renders that he has already completed, unless he had other reasons to change them. The dialogue choices would move to on-screen from under-screen, so the look and feel would be a bit different, but not to those of us who have played other ren'py games. The tricky part would be ensuring that the game variables that track who has done what with whom map across in the correct way. With the multiple paths in this game, testing the new release would be a challenge, but we would have the original as a comparison.

I believe Tlaero's Adventure Creator was based upon ArianeB, which is now well over ten years old so technology has progressed immensely. Even ArianeB has been redone with ren'py now. All of what you say is true but since Wolf isn't howling at us we're just guessing. Whatever the case may be I'm not paying his bills so I have no right to complain about the amount of time it takes to do what he wants to do.

[Tao Dude]

Whatever the case may be I'm not paying his bills so I have no right to complain about the amount of time it takes to do what he wants to do.

Me neither. Real Life has got in the way of most of the projects that I wanted to do, and I'm (literally) still paying for the one where I refused to let it, so there's no way I am going to give Wolf a hard time about timetables or any other aspect of the game.

[Wolfschadowe]

This is a fun topic, and I wanted to let it marinate a bit before I chipped in.

One thing I played with was the idea of porting the game to Unreal engine, and I have to say, it looked AWESOME. I got the Day 1 office scene partially set up, got the characters in and was able to cruise around the set with ray-traced lights and etc. I even threw on the ole Vive and had a look in VR which was also AWESOME. Ultimately though, it just didn't work for one reason: Animation. Everyone is just there like a statue. Oh, I tinkered a bit with living effects (Blinking, breathing, etc..) but to do it right I'd need a lot of animation work, transitions, walking, movement, sitting, gesturing. I messed with it a lot, but without a mocap rig, and some actors, there's no way I could make it look good once I brought the characters to life.

Ultimately, I abandoned the idea. I just don't have the talent to make BEW the way I want to in Unreal, and it's only the animation that keeps me back, but if you think about it, that's the most important part in a game like this. (There might be another game in the Schadoweverse (BEW's universe) coming in a few years in the vein of X-com meets Fallout meets Rimworld, but don't hold any breaths.

BEW will continue in the current format and the current characters.

When it comes to the characters in the game, there are a few I'm not happy with, especially since I'm a bit more experienced now. Here's my list in spoiler for anyone interested. the list is in the order that I created the characters. (They are all here as a teaser/thanks for sticking around.)

spoiler: show

• Emily.png
  Emily - 80% of what I envisioned. There are some tweaks I'd make if remaster, and some have been snuck in for her "makeover" for Thursday (Day 2) evening a later.. The makeover was always intended and takes her closer to 90% of my vision, but it's the best I could do without doing a character swap. She's supposed to look a little tougher while keeping some femininity.
• Serenthia.png
  Serenthia (Sere for short) - Perfect. I wouldn't change a thing about her.
• Brad.png
  Brad - Honestly, I just threw something quick together because I didn't care about the guy. It was a bit of a mistake on my part, but I think I lucked out ok because he's actually pretty close to what I envisioned. To be true to form, he'd be a bit ganglier and geekier, a little less muscular, but this is actually pretty close.
• Faith.png
  Faith - The original was lost about halfway through the Wednesday bar, and she was perfect to my vision. The "new" faith that I tried to recreate is still good, and I'm happy with the model, but part of me wants to bring the original back. I actually can recreate the original Faith now, but I don't want to swap the character again, so I've mostly decided to keep the "New Faith" but I did like the original model better.
• Natalie.png
  Natalie - Perfection to my vision of the character. I wouldn't change a thing about her
• Azumi.png
  Azumi - HATE HATE HATE. I saddled myself with the wrong model for this character. I love the character of Azumi herself, but she should be less cutesy and more severe looking. If there is one character model in the game that I regret, it's this one. To make things worse for myself, I've actually built out the "perfect" Azumi model, but it's so different I could never inject her into the game, so were stuck with this one. It's not horrible, she's just not anywhere near my vision of how the character should look. Think more of a blending of Lucy Liu, Jaymee Ong and Ko Shibasaki, heavy on the Ko, for an idea of how she should look.
• Lorien.png
  Lorienthalia (Lorien or Lori for short) - First time many may have seen her and she's playing a bit of dress-up here. We will meet her on Friday. Another one that fits perfectly to my vision. Her model is older technology, and I've tried to upgrade it a few times for additional functionality and ease of use, but at the end of the day, it has to stay with the original model.
• Jasmine.png
  Jasmine - Hit's the mark perfectly with my vision.
  
  Muirgheal.png
  Muirgheal - Another character we haven't met yet. As early as Friday for a couple storylines, but mostly a Saturday and on character. She's also a perfect match to my vision.

[infiniteignorance]

I just appreciate that you haven't abandoned the project. I had intended on trying to contribute to the game at one point with renders and at another with writing but my life circumstances changed to the point where I have considerably less time for everything and I didn't feel like I could honor any commitment I made to the game, which would be fair to no one. I've done animation in Blender but moving it to Unreal or Unity is not nearly as easy as I would like. I wouldn't be much help in that regard even if I had the time. I'd definitely like to contribute to any future project(s) as my schedule should be back to normal once I no longer have four children in college at the same time. Let this be a lesson to you. If you want four hot college age girls at the same time make sure you become a game developer, not the father of all four of them.

[Valerielychee]

(They are all here as a teaser/thanks for sticking around.)

Thanks for the present! Higly appreciated

[boulimanus]

Good to read some of that, in particular that Natalie will remain the same. I love her a lot how she is and she is the reason I got into this game in the first place many moons ago.
As for the format I quite like the html format actually. I understand it may be different compared to all those game engines these days, but ensuring perfect portability and being able to run it from a tool of your choice is a great benefit in my book.
Either way, I'm sure it will be great and I will burn a candle when I see an update with new gameplay

[lurking]

Faith!

Honestly, I found Emily rather boring, but your spoiler made her more interesting, visually... Still, Faith!

I agree with boulimanus about the HTML format. It sucks to debug that, but it is perfectly portable and you won't have to care about OS specifics too much. Also, it has an amazingly low overhead!

[dutch]

Okay, I'm going to take a chance here and give my opinion. Now I can't offer anything helpful on the formats or platforms. But as a consumer I can give you a view of a lay persons perspective. I have placed more importance on the story line then the art work, but everyone looks for their own thing and that's fine. When I first saw the game I noticed that the artwork for Azumi was by far less then the quality of the other ladies. I thought it was because she was only a support character to move the story line along. But she seems to have developed and will be a part of the story. I like that. I find her interesting and she adds a lot of aspects to the story. As her character has grown the artwork has improved a great deal. I hope she stays in the story to the end. Muirgheal and Lorienthalia are two I don't know much about but they look interesting. Jasmine seems to be a favorite but I never developed a like for her. The character seems a touch flat but there is plenty of time for it to develop. Serenthia for me is a total miss. While she hasn't had much time in the game, she is interesting. but for me she's the least favorite character. Nat seems to be another popular one but again doesn't rate high with me. Rather flat and almost a little boring in her character. Now that leaves Emily and Faith. Poor Emily doesn't seem to rate too high with the many, but it's a strong character and with a little tweaking could be great. I like her myself. Faith is a another strong and defined character. She's not my favorite but she's a good add to the storyline.

Now as I'll point out this is only my opinion and as such no more or less important then anyone else's. So before folks start ridiculing this in their "infinite wisdom" . Feel free to share your opinion everyone is entitled to have one. But there is no right or wrong. So be gentle, Clear?

[Wolfschadowe]

I hope she stays in the story to the end.

Referring to Azumi there, and yes, she will stay until the end. Azumi is one of my favorites from a character perspective, I just totally screwed up on the model and artwork. Her storyline is independent of her visual appearance and will continue throughout the game.

A few things to keep in mind for everyone if we talk about more than just the characters' appearance. I fully expect that there will be a variety of favorites and also that some will be hated or disliked. I'm perfectly fine with it, and it's kind of the point. One main thing to keep in mind though is that when it comes to character development, Emily, Faith, and Azumi actually have the most development and story so far. Natalie has barely been touched as most of the content has focused more on Azumi and her interaction with Natalie. Serenthia hasn't even been touched yet and won't be until later in the week, similar to Lorienthalia and Muirgheal. Jasmine also has had next to 0 character development so far. I expect that apart from Emily and Faith, and possibly Azumi, everyone else seems flat and unknown, or stereotypical so far, and that's expected at this point in the story. As we explore all the characters further, some favorites might become hated, and vice versa...or maybe not. It really depends on everyone's individual preference and nobody is wrong. I hope everyone feels free to share their true opinions, and please be accepting that others opinions may differ.