Dev Log #77 - Brushing up on the finer details!

Hi all! Welcome back to another dev log! In this slightly lengthy edition, I will be switching things up by starting with the progress update, then touching on some new things I will be trying with the upcoming polls, and finally, what I've been trying out on the side to help improve my scene-building skills, and finishing things off with an invitation for role-playing!

Let's get into it!

Progress update
I have mainly been busy with the custom renders of this month, as I'm looking to have them all done up in 3-4 days from now! There may be slight delays in the actual post itself, but it won't be delayed longer than it usually does in the months before!

Concurrently, I have also been building the core of the opening sections of Episode 3, which already feature many returning characters aside from Cara, with past player choices already coming into play! It is currently slow-going but I do intend to pick up the pace over the coming week!

------------------------------------------- E3 PROGRESS BREAKDOWN -------------------------------
Story: 35% done. I have mainly been finalizing scenes in the opening sections of the episode, with renders being completed and the scenes available being set in stone. Up 5% from last week.

Renders: 3.5% done. The current render count is 302, which is 81 more renders than last week. Up 1% from last week.

Dialogue: 0% done. Will be a bigger focus once the renders come out as expected.

Game Playability: 0% done. Same as "Dialogue".

--------------------------------------------- END OF BREAKDOWN ---------------------------------------------

A tuned-up way of polling
Polls have been a part of my weekly updates and they usually appear once I'm starting to get my feet wet in development. Episode 3 is no different, as polls will soon be underway, but this time, I'll be making some small adjustments to the polls in terms of their frequency, their duration (i.e. how long they last), and the content of the polls, which I plan to expand to include more than just outfits and the traditional creature-vore multi-week poll (the previous winners being Cow/Unbirth and Tiger/Oral Vore from Episode 2 and Episode 1, respectively).

-- What's changing?
To list out the more to-the-point changes, I will no longer restrict myself to running one poll per week. This means that during any given week, there may be concurrent polls running that may ask everyone to poll on which all have different results (these polls are independent of one another).

The reason I'm doing this is that there have been times in the past when I made the mistake of holding an outfit poll a week too late, resulting in me having to wait one week before beginning to create the scene with the winning outfit on that character. This is not desired as a week's worth of renders on any scene needing that outfit poll's results go down the drain just because I scheduled a poll a week late.

With this change, I can easily ask everyone's opinion on their favorite scene from E2:E, while also holding another that asks everyone to vote on a character's outfit. It's a win-win!

Future polls will also have their polling duration reduced by two days, from the usual one week of voting to five days of voting. To leverage the previously mentioned point above, reducing the poll duration will help me to gather the results quicker and also prepare for what comes next after the poll's results in terms of renders or scene preparation. With each Episode getting bigger in scale, this two-day reduction may seem small on paper but will have positive long-term results.

In terms of what's in the polls, the usual outfit polls and multi-week creature vore polls will remain. I do have plans to add a new type of poll into the mix, however, I do think it would be premature to fully describe it as I have yet to work out how this poll type will be executed without complication. I do intend to share more during June once I iron out those details!

Doing some self-fine-tuning and an open invitation!
On the side, I have felt I had a noticeable writing slump in certain areas of the newer content. I'm no expert storyteller but I feel that despite that, the dialogue and content within the previously released content has ranged from 'sub-par' to 'exactly how I want it' kind of levels. As I work my way into more complex episodes, I have recently felt the need to push the envelope, to be more descriptive with the new scenes coming in Episode 3. In a way, 'sub-par' story-writing just won't cut it anymore, and it's not something I should let myself get away with as much as possible.

In that same vein, I've been brushing up on my role-playing skills by starting with AI chatbots that do role-play. It's an "offline" way of doing things that lets me pace myself (without the stresses of social interaction) and understand the basics. While my views on AI-generated images and AI as a whole are neutral at best, I did find the experience to be refreshing and it did help me with ideas for executing the upcoming scenes and the best way to build them (by myself, of course!).

Moving from using these AI chatbots, I want to improve my role-playing skills with an actual person; to play out scenes naturally and organically instead of the AI chatbot repeating its prompt despite me indicating that it should not do so.

With that said, I want to extend an invitation to everyone who is supporting Cara in Creekmaw to join me in the role-playing text channels on Discord starting 1st June, where I will be more active in driving role-playing sessions for those who are interested!

Although I'm still very new to role-playing with other people (as well as on how to 'organize' these sessions), I am interested in understanding more about it and to improve on my skills as a role-player, as I have no doubt it would help me long-term when developing Cara in Creekmaw! In addition, I feel this is a good way to interact with all of you who have been supporting Cara in Creekmaw's development! 

Of course, the fun doesn't have to start and stop with me, as I hope this initiative helps to bring our community together!

That's all for this dev log! I'll see you all next week! Stay safe and healthy... and what do we have here? A small preview?

Alright, that's all from me, for real this time!