Defiant Explorer
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Mount and Stone.
🕑 Added 2024-11-28 18:50:20 +0000 UTCPatience will be rewarded. But it's still a while off...
Anyway, before I give a new, more realistic deadline, I'm going to open the veil on why it turned out the way it did. There will be no spoilers (in the classical sense), but, figuratively speaking, on some points, I still have to throw light, otherwise it will be very difficult for me to tell you how the development of this update is going. For those who do not want to know anything at all, even hints, on the events of 1.8 - go straight to the last header with the new deadline.
And now to the point. It started with...
Unexpected expansions.
Expansions that were not in the plan but had to be done for objective reasons. For example, Yuturna. In the planning stages, when the update still seemed "normal" sized to me, I missed something that became well, very obvious when work actually boiled over on this episode. Namely - Yuturna and Selene are the only members of the troupe together at this point in the story. Sargon isn't handing out orders, Murella isn't blushing cutely somewhere nearby, Cadonis isn't rolling up his balls, Tabius isn't throwing back greasy jokes, and Iolanta... well she's Iolanta! She's always up with something.
My point is that no one is a distraction from the main character pool. And it's the perfect moment to reveal Yuturna best. And with the very tight timeline of events at the end of the chapter, as well as the future events in Chapter 3, it's just the perfect moment to get to know him better. A moment like there won't be for a long time to come.
So, Yuturna will get a lot of attention in this update. Right down to some of the little details. Well... have you ever wondered why he's so muscular? Good genetics alone can't explain it...
But far more interestingly, it's in the next episode that you'll have the opportunity to find out why he does what he does. Or, in other words, doesn't do what many players expect him to do... And ask me to add it, not realizing how badly I'd have to break this character's motivation to make it possible at this point in the story.
Well. The answer as to why this is so will only be on one of the branches in one of the possible dialogs with him. The hint will be quite "big", but still a hint and not direct speech (there are valid plot reasons for this). To catch this hint of his, you might want to remember and match the hints (and accidentally dropped phrases!) of many other characters throughout the whole game. Yes, I've already left a lot of "breadcrumbs" out. Globally, it has to do with things still being behind the scenes, though I've seen comments where people have already guessed some things. And some quite accurately.
A little hint. An overactive Selene, obsessed with her desires, can fly past this hint at full speed in that dialog and simply miss it. But moderate, not obsessed only with her passions and curious Selene, most likely to stumble on it. And by her reaction, you will understand a lot too.
Meanwhile, the lewd scenes have gone nuts.
No, no, I originally intended it to be the biggest update in this context. Like, 4 scenes. Haha... Not anymore. Not 4 and not even close. Nothing like this was there before. Oh, okay, I'll try to clarify without spoilers.
Only one of those planned scenes remained the actual scene. The rest became sequences of scenes... Well, I can roughly put it this way:
1. Going Wild. Became a sequence. I named it conventionally, like all the others, but it captures the essence correctly. It is, you could say, the cornerstone variation of lewd scenes in the next episode.
2. Spontaneous and Intimate. This sequence is a direct alternative to Going Wild. Yes, they are mutually exclusive.
3. Continuation. Um... of events that may be your Selene started back in the last episode. Well, you didn't think it would be over in one (I mean, two!) time, did you? It's not a sequence, though; it's just three scenes. Yes, for the next update, it's "just." Mind you, there hasn't been an update to the game with more than three sex scenes.
4. Proposal. No, no, not that kind of proposal! The other one. It's basically still 1 scene as it was in the original plan. There is no need for more... Although, perhaps in this case it is more appropriate to say 1.5 instead of 1, but enough about that.
If the last two are more or less clear (3 and 1 scene, respectively), what are these "sequences" in the first two cases?
Let's take Spontaneous and Intimate as an example. This sequence will start if your Selene rejects Going Wild. The first step is a possible fork of a nutty and more sensual variation. Yes, they are completely different. That said, on the more sensual one, if your Selene is still a virgin, it will automatically be replaced with... an alternative. Well, how alternative... It's 70% completely unique, 20% shares passages with the base variant (not for a virgin) but completely different lines, and only 10% identical to the base variant.
Yep, I made a full scene for 0.1% of the players. After all, not only does the virgin = true variable only have Heiress and Vagrant at the start of the game, but how many players have gotten their Selene innocent to that stage? Well, now that I've written about it, maybe the percentage of those who will open this scene will become a whole 0.5% xD
And these three scenes are just the first stage of this sequence. Next, if the sequence is not terminated prematurely by you, there will be one more scene. And then two more (but you can only choose one of them).
So, there are a total of 6 scenes in this sequence. Not hypothetically, they are already written. It's impossible to open them all at once, even within this sequence, where the first scene is 1 of 3, the second stage has 1 more connecting one, and the last stage has 1 of 2 more.
Yep, that was a general description of just one of two such sequences. Feel the scale? Now imagine me writing all of these. In doing so, I try to give each one a unique criterion, a different vibe, so to speak. So that none of them, anywhere, repeats any of the others from this episode or past episodes. Yeah... You feel me, I'm sure.
Why? Is it so important?
Yep. It's necessary. And important. Sexual content may not be the main focus of Inner Empire, but the protagonist's sexuality and sexual activity (or absence thereof) will have a very significant impact on many plot events, somewhere indirectly and somewhere quite directly.
As I was working on this episode, I realized that this is essentially a turning point in this context for this entire chapter and with possible consequences afterward. And I did my best to make sure this moment was well integrated into the narrative. Your Selene can either "break bad" in this sense or moderate her passions, still getting her part of lewd thingies. She even can come to this point as a virgin and leave it already very, drastically, experienced. Or, on the contrary, keep her purity, which will give it more value. After all, what is not tested does not have much value. And all of these choices are worked through. Smoothly and realistically, as much as I was able to do so.
This episode, and in this context, will have long-term consequences as well...
4 for lewdness.
I think everyone is familiar with the mechanics of corruption in adult games. You know, when you have to reach some numerical threshold to open a particular scene. This mechanic is usually used to artificially prolongize gameplay, where players first open with some petting and, hours and hours later, end with penetrative sex. Now, there's no such thing in the Inner Empire. And there won't be. Penetrative sex has been around since the first chapter. Without any petting.
The game keeps track of a sort of sexual counter of new men Selene has been with. That is, every time your Selene becomes intimate with a new man, the game adds +1 to this hidden counter. But only the first time. So if, for example, your Selene got into a relationship with Cadonis, then despite all the sex scenes with him, you only got +1 for the very first time. There's nothing particularly depraved about dating someone while having regular sex with that person. So, it's still just a +1. But if your Selene also slept with Meralion, that's a +2. And if she also slept with Chat... Well, you get the point, +3. Don't forget the events of the first chapter. You could get up to +2 there too.
In total, the most lecherous version of Selene, who, in fact, leads a promiscuous sex life, will have +5 at the moment. And those Selene who haven't slept with anyone will have that score at 0, whether they're virgins or not because of their chosen Origin. And yes, Iolanta doesn't count, bisexuality is played up by other parameters.
Well, after this update, this parameter can get up to +4 at once. Which is roughly an average median number between 0 and 9 (up to +5 max from previous events and up to +4 from the upcoming update).
Why all these numbers?
The point is that in neither the first nor the second (current) chapter, Selene's ability to, shall we say, engage in lewd behavior was limited. It was not limited by me, because it is in these first two chapters that it is defined by you, the players. As early as the next chapter, that will change.
No, I will not block the very possibility of future scenes because of this hidden parameter, well, except for the most lewd ones. But Selene's dialogs will change a lot depending on it. It's one thing to be an innocent girl or woman with little experience and quite another to be a woman who has already slept with half a dozen different men in less than a couple of months of her life. That's saying a lot.
So, if you want your Selene to be able to show reactions such as aggressive female sexuality, like "shut up and go to my room!", or very blatant flirting and stuff like that - then such lines in the next chapter will require this hidden counter to be about 4 or more. And as the game progresses, the required value will grow, according to the approximate formula:
Hidden sex counter (sex with every new man first time)/2
A less experienced Selene will likely get more moderate dialog options in the same places where there will be a potential sex scene. Which, won't necessarily cancel out the very possibility of such a scene, but rather change the approaches to them. On the other hand, the most lewd options, yes, could be blocked. I can hardly rationalize, conventionally, a virgin suddenly and joyfully going to an orgy or something.
Thus, you don't need to sleep with everyone to have 100% ability to, um... sleep with everyone! Just half of them, hee hee. And by the way, in the next update, some lines already change depending on this hidden counter. For the first time in the game. However, it's more of a roleplaying aspect there, for now, but still.
Lots of sex, okay, but what else?
I'm going to be super brief here. I wouldn't be me if all I planned to entertain and surprise you within the next episode was a round of sex scenes. But that's where I'm going to stop. You've already realized that there's something I'm not willing to reveal to you in any way, not even in hints.
Approximate numbers.
600+ pages of draft. Still in the works. I haven't reached the 600 mark yet, but I have no doubts about it. It's more a question of how much over 600 it will end up being. With a full English translation, the text will "sediment" a bit (English is more compact than my native language), but still. That's at least x2 content compared to any of the past updates.
and...
~300 pages of it - is every possible variation of sex scenes. This means that there will be more sexual content alone in the next episode than were these very updates before it entirely. That said, it's impossible to open all these scenes at once. They are structured in such a way that you will miss something anyway. After all, roleplay involves choices, and choices involve consequences, and consequences give you one thing but take away something else. Otherwise, it would not be a choice but an illusion of it.
Estimated deadlines.
January 2025. The very end of the month. Assuming I work on the verge of burnout every day with no breaks at all. So you better count on February. It's more realistic.
The post below (if you haven't read it) will give a rough understanding of why the work is taking so long. If this was a standard-sized update like I originally wanted - you would have played it by now, probably for about a month. But this update is unprecedented in many aspects. Including the wait time for its release. Sorry about that. I'm working as fast as I can, but this episode is not one that can be cut into smaller slices and served to you. This dish needs to be served whole. And gosh, it turns out to be really big.
Sometimes I feel like I'm pushing a stone up a mountain, and... no, it doesn't roll down like in that Greek myth, it's pushing higher, making significant progress. But this mountain itself... it's as if it just grows higher and higher. Nevertheless, sooner or later, this mountain will end. And hopefully, from its summit, there will be a beautiful view that was worth it.
Comments
Gript
Definitely keeping you in thoughts and grateful for you! 😁
Defiant Explorer
Thank you for such kind words and your sending good energy. I will try to follow this way. Yes, such a big update, among other things, deprives me of the ability to read opinions and feedback on my work, because the previous update was a long time ago and everyone has already discussed everything. Well, or almost everything. Nevertheless, it really makes me very happy that people don't forget about my work and even me. Thank you again. It really means a lot.
Gript
Dear devoted game developer defiant explorer, if not for your own sake as others already brought up, please consider taking the time you need to take care of your health alongside the growth of the stunning world you’ve created for us all to adventure in, for the games sake. That way, as you work on the next update after 1.8, you’ll be all set to keep up with your creativity and imagination, not fried after burning out. Of course, please ignore anything that is Parasocial or overstepping. I am sending you my excitement fueled energy for your best care and creative crafting. I am also sending everybody reading this end of the year best wishes and joy. ☮️💞📣
Defiant Explorer
Congratulations on finding the moment with Chat and his spear. It's not easy to find it at all there, if I remember correctly, you need a certain selection of lines for the Vigor check to appear to try to take that "damn spear" away from him and see what happens next. As for your question, strictly speaking, Selene cannot be purely “lesbian”. I've written about it many times and there are plenty of reasons for that. Selene can be either straight or bisexual. However, players can choose to only open sex scenes with women (which are and will be the minority), avoiding scenes with men (which are and will be the majority). This still won't make Selene 100% lesbian, though, as there will still be all descriptions with attraction to men. Although on the bisexual "branch", descriptions of attraction to women are also added as well. So yeah, the idea is that an innocent (or with minimal experience for that matter) Selene would get more restrained lines in dialog that could potentially lead to a sex scene. Not that her orientation matters here. The game will only take into account actions taken, not assumed intentions. But it won't be until Chapter 3 at the earliest.
Lonely Wolf
Hiya to you, D.E.! [^-🤝-^] Are you okay? The development going well?&? Ok, today, I have a light comment to sharing as well as a few questions. So, this last weekend I replayed one part (precisely at the hunters camp), and as usual I went to see the healer/charlatan to get some news about my dear Meralion! Once again, this proud savage of Chat was faithful to the post, in the process of tirelessly sharpening his f#cking big spear. And there, I don't know why, but it really got me drunk, and... I lost my temper, you see?😤? So yeah, I decided to do the test (very difficult, but justified here) of vigor by drawing from my Insight reserve!! I might as well tell you that I wasn't disappointed with the result. I found the reaction of Chat (deprived of his toy), very credible and quite amusing; yep, a real satisfaction for my vigorous Selene. Plus, the fact that we were rewarded with an Insight point following this somewhat crazy maneuver, no really, it was very good!!! In fact, with your game, it's simple: I can't get over that I always find myself pleasantly surprised by this scenes that I hadn't yet explored... Well, now, I finally come to my questions: your explanations about the hidden sex counter were very interesting, nonetheless, when you said that the sexual relationships with Iolenta didn't count, it made me think about something. In deed: if we choose that Selene follows a strictly lesbian path, this famous counter should remain forever stuck on the value 0, isn't it? And which also means, that in the next updates, the "lesbian" Selene should be aligned with the dialogue lines of the "virgin" Selene, right?+? By elsewhere, concerning the purely virgin Selene (Sargon's favorite but Cadonis' nemesis {🤣}); I truly hope that with the MANY Insight points that escaped her during the lewd scenes, there will be a point in the game where she receives a GREAT reward to compensate for this significant loss "of experience”?+?+? [^-🤔-^]
Defiant Explorer
Yeah, in two of the main sequences, virginity is provided. As for Vagrant specifically, she even has a series of her branded lines in one of those sequences. The basic lines there are more “innocent” and better suited for Heiress, in my opinion. But still, who says Vagrant has to be a rudie all the times? So, that's up to you to decide.
Zapp169
Always nice to get an update. Even if it is announcing a delay. Plus it looks like my virgin vagrant Selene has something to look forward to. Though she didn't take the tax man's gold, but these soldiers might be able to offer a better price.
Defiant Explorer
Oh, don't remind me... Every time I've tried to tailor a release to some big holiday, I've screwed up miserably. So I don't even try that anymore :)
Vrico
Aaaahh I'm gonna cry I was going to celebrate the new year with a splash..yeah.. *uh...bad pun, sorry* but it's okay, I'm excited nonetheless! The upcoming contents are certainly promising : D
Defiant Explorer
UPD. Damn, I just realized I messed up with the formula. It meant the value of that very hidden sex counter of new men, not all sex scenes in general. Corrected the post.
Defiant Explorer
Okay, okay, I'll shut up and take the compliment completely. Thank you :)
Chien_perdu
Oh, I insist that you accept it completely :) I think sometimes it makes sense that declining sex doesn't lead to alternative content. Like if you refuse to have sex with Barnabas it is fine that Selene is back in the same situation she was in before. Maybe it's a combination of things that make for a great game: choices which give you an alternative (e.g. riding with Cadonis instead of Iolanta), choices which decide if something happens or not and choices that are just for flavour and that don't change anything. Of course choices that open up alternatives feel cooler to the player, especially when you replay the game, but they're more complicated to implement and are more work to do so they cannot be used all the time. And the meaningless choices are extremely important because they make it still feel like you're the acting protagonist. Does it matter if Selene approaches timidly or confidently? No, she will still arrive at the next scene and no one will comment on her approach. But it makes it feel so much more like you're in control. So yeah, it's the combination of all these three that make it good, and having two alternative branches with the option of noping out sounds very good. Very excited to see it!
Defiant Explorer
Thanks! Although I can't accept your praise completely. After all, I also have enough situations where avoiding a sex scene leads to a lack of alternatives. It's just hard to think of them, you know, like in the Barnabas possible scene and the like, there's either yes or no in general, but of course, with different roleplay lines. Yes, in the next update, I decided to give a bigger opportunity and a bigger alternative, but even there, the player is free to refuse both. But also the cost of that... I mean, this update is still a work in progress. That's the price of working through the big alternatives, I guess.
Chien_perdu
Wow, that sounds amazing! Even now the game has tons of replay value, great that you are expanding on it! I hate that in lots of lewd games the choices are basically if you say no to sex and then miss out on content or you say yes on sex and then you see the content, but it doesn't feel like you're the protagonist. And please don't work yourself into a burn out, good things take time!
Defiant Explorer
Not necessarily. And he won't say directly. It's going to take some brain work on the part of the player. Like matching some things with others and coming to the right conclusion. Or the wrong one.
EasyCasGaming English
Finally we will know the secret of Yuturna.
Defiant Explorer
I'll do my best. But still, I can't worry about myself too much. None of my updates have ever come out with such a delay before.
Shane
Finally a deadline but please watch your health, we can wait no need to rush. I love this game and I'm super exited for the Yuturna part (he's my favourite)
Defiant Explorer
Thank you. It really makes me happy to see such reactions from people to my work. That's really motivating.
HarleyQueen
The way you write is so so good. At first I was just looking for a new fem protagonist Porn game but this is so much more. Most Porn game authors don't understand how to write awesome stuff like you. athe story itself is also very interesting and not so typical. The little dino creatures were also very creepy (but also cute!!!). You are my favorite "porn" game author! 😍🥰
Defiant Explorer
Cancel? Haha, not a chance. At least as I'm breathing and able to work.
HarleyQueen
I love you always. Please never cancel this awesome game! I would be super heartbroken! If there is any way I can help you - always ask! This story is so dear to me. I love all choices and how quirky Selene can be. I can't wait for the update!
