The Making Of 'Tale of the Succubus Hunter'

In this article, I will tell you about how the 'Tale of the Succubus Hunter' came to life. This will include my workflow during development, what I've learned since then and maybe a few tips for any aspiring tease creator!

Important: This is a public post. Patreon doesn't like NSFW content in public posts, so I try my best to make it safe for work.

Content:

1. Preparations
1.1 Choosing the right models
1.2 Putting the picture sets in order
1.3 Making notes
1.4 Planning the storyline(s)

2. Technical EOS Stuff
2.1 Setting up EOS
2.2 Init Script
2.3 Save & Load - System
2.4 Sound tricks
2.5 More tips / What I've learned

3. "Writing"
3.1 Metronome
3.2 Timing
3.3 Less is more
3.4 Perks / Role Play

1. Preparations

This is everything I do before even touching the EOS - Editor. For Succubus Hunter, preparation included almost half of the total work.

1.1 Choosing the right models

First of all - after getting a vague idea of what the tease will be about -, I am looking for fitting models. Here is my criteria:

• Type of model : For a tease like this, I want a wide variety. So I pick models with different hair colors, body types and ages.
• Picture set variety : There are a lot of models with 1 or 2 nice sets. But that's not enough for the main girls of the tease. So they get seperated into "main girls" and "side girls".
• Finisher : Not every model has picture sets that would fit into the ending of the tease. This is a pretty big thing. You want at least a few that make for a nice ending. 
• Appearance : Very subjective, but I like to sort the models by rating them before I actually make my final picks for that tease.

Message me if you want to know which picture sites I use.

After collecting a variety of options, I pick the girls I actually want in this tease. There are always quite a few models with good sets that just don't fit into the theme. So I save them for later.

1.2 Putting the picture sets in order

But this is only the beginning. Now I choose the picture sets of the models I want to use and decide the order in which you will encounter them during the tease. This is also where the creation of the story really begins. There is no point in writing a nice story for the tease without knowing the material you will be working with.

Here you can see how I ended up sorting them. (Link) 40 folders for 40 scenes, including 1316 pictures. (of course I have made a few changes over time, cut some content and added some endings and branching paths)

1.3 Making notes

My 'main girls' also receive a few quirks. For example, I make notes on nicknames they use and special things they are in to.

These are rough notes I made during the preperation phase. As you can see, Kelly hasn't actually become one of the 'main girls' and I haven't decided what to do with Johanna at that point.

1.4 Planning the storyline(s)

After sorting all of the picture sets out and making rough notes, I begin the writing process by giving the picture sets a storyline and planning out details:

I do this in an excel sheet. For big teases with RPG features it's very important to have an overview of what the player can get with different choices. Otherwise you will end up with an unbalanced chaos.

Additionally: As a final step before starting the editor, I bring the pictures inside of the picture sets in order, add additional graphics and edit some of them for special effects. (with photoshop, etc.) This can be a big part of tease creation but is not neccessary.

2. Technical EOS Stuff

So, now I have a concrete plan and "just" have to actually write the tease. Before I do that, I want to setup EOS and get to know the more hidden tools of the editor. It's pretty straight forward.

2.1 Setting up EOS

You really want to activate Audio, Storage and Notification. All of these settings are important for bigger teases and are explained in detail within EOS. (Under 'Help')

2.2 Init Script

Another useful tool is the Init Script. Here you can create functions to use in your tease.

I like to use the top of the Init Script to document all of the functions I've created. Putting text behind '//' turns it into comments, displayed by green color. Use that to make notes within the code.

2.3 Save & Load - System

Functions are super useful. For example, I use them for the save/load system of 'Tale of the Succubus Hunter':
(click on the links to see a picture of each function, all written inside of Init Script)

function loadnew()
When you start a new game, I use this function to set all of the important variables to their default values. (usually 0) These variables are not persistent if the player closes the tease - until you actually save them into teaseStorage with the next function...

function save1()
This saves the current values of the variables into teaseStorage. That way you can load them again at a later point.

function load1()
Finally, this function loads the saved values from teaseStorage.

Once I've created these functions in the Init Script, I can call them within the tease like this:

Plus, I can read the saved values from the different savegames. It makes for a very nice looking main menu:

Simply add eval tags (The '<>'-Icon) inside of the Say action. This is the eval code I use to display the name from file 1:
teaseStorage.getItem("name1") || "<empty>"

2.4 Sound tricks

As you might have noticed, you can toggle SFX inside of the main menu of my tease. At the time of writing, EOS doesn't have the feature to do that by itself. Instead, I am using a little trick.

As you can see, this function stops any running sound with the Identifier 'sfx' if 'teaseStorage.getItem("sfx")' is set to 0.

Over the course of the tease it's a bit of extra work, but I call this function after every 'Audio: Play' action (except for metronome):

Now the sound won't play if the player has sfx disabled. There are other ways to achieve this, but this is the easiest and fastest one I know.

You can use a similar code to stop a looping metronome from playing:

2.5 More tips / What I've learned

• Make lots of backups. I would have lost 100 hours of work at some point if I didn't do that. You can even edit your backups with Notepad++ in various ways. It's also satisfying to see how your code gets bigger and bigger over time.
• The save & load system can be optimized. This is how the function looks in my next tease. Instead of loadnew(), load1() and load2() I am using loadgame(file) (file=0 loads a new game) and even return a fitting text if I use this function inside of a 'Say' action.
• Ternerary Operators are fun. I have used it a lot to create different texts for different "d*** sizes". They look like this:
  size > 0 ? "The size is bigger than 0" : size < 0 ? "The size is smaller than 0" : "The size is neither bigger nor smaller than 0"
  (Let me know if you want to know more about that. It's one of the most useful things to use in EOS)

3. "Writing"

Simply writing the scenes is fun, but also a lot of work.

3.1 Metronome

How to create and use a metronome files has been explained on milovana quite a few times, so I won't go into detail. Here are some tips, though:

• Explain exactly how to stroke. Is it a full stroke (up + down) or just up, down, up, down, ...?
• You should use at least 5 different metronome speeds. Example: very slow, slow, normal, fast, very fast. Test them out before putting them in.
• Sound files can be updated later if one of the metronome files doesn't have the right speed.
• Try not to jump around too much. going from 30 bpm to 200 bpm without any transition doesn't always feel right. Advanced tip: Create transitional metronome files. It can save you a lot of time in the long run.

I am currently using 23 different metronome files. 8 of them are static and the rest are either loops (medium<->fast, etc.) or longer transitions. (for example: a buildup that starts very slow and gets faster every 15 seconds)

3.2 Timing

Timers and tasks are really difficult to figure out.

Every person has a different reading speed and needs a different amount of time to process new pictures. Also, some of us have more "stamina" than others or are more sensitive.

So, you can't really make it right for everyone. But it's important to test parts of your tease early in order to see if the player has enough time or maybe even too much time.

Generally, I try to balance a normal task around 20-40 seconds. It's usually enough to read the text and not too much to get bored. The more interesting the task, the more time you can add.

3.3 Less is more

When it comes to actually writing the dialogues and texts, I start with making notes for every picture. It's important so I don't forget to get the important information across while not repeating myself too much.

In my earlier teases (and probably in my current ones as well) I tend to describe too much. Do I really need to explain what the model is doing when you can see it on the picture? No, not really.

Respect the intelligence of the player. Only describe things he can't see on the picture and concentrate on the dialogues instead.

3.4 Perks / Role Play

Finally, one of the big things in Succubus Hunter is the ⭐perk system. I can't overstate how important it is to document everything when it comes to this.

Here is a sheet I've created to keep track of the perks I'm using: Contains Spoilers!

The idea was to build the tease a little bit like a Pen & Paper, except that it is a set adventure of course.

That's also why I've decided to include that many endings and optional scenes. A normal player won't see much more than 50% of the scenes during one playthrough. A lot of extra work, but - considering all the positive feedback - I'm more than happy with the results.

Final Notes / Off-Topic:

Thank you for all your support over the last months. You truly helped me out during some hard times and I'm grateful for everyone of you.

This article is a "little bit" late, since we've already passed the last goal months ago. Sorry about that! 😅

My work on 'Triple X-COM' will continue in 1-2 weeks. I'm a little bit anxious about dragging the release out for so long and I will certainly set my time-goals more conservatively in the future. Anyways, don't hesitate to send me your feedback. I've already gathered quite a bit and try to include as much as possible in the next update. (seems like there will probably one final demo version)

Thanks for reading! Stay healthy and remember to have a good day. ❤️