VN Ren'Py Beyond The Veil [Development Thread]

[GatewayGames]

Episode 1 is Now Available For Free:

You must be registered to see the links

, Currently a patch is being developed with an expected release date around November 15th.



Hello everyone and thank you for checking out the development thread for my first ever game 'Beyond The Veil',

Information and Stats:
I'm currently deep in the process of development for Episode 1 and now feel confident enough that release is on the horizon to begin this thread. I'm hopeful it will only be a couple more weeks before it releases (Somewhere in the window of October 1st - October 10th, but can't guarantee quite yet). It will include over 500 renders (exact number soon), many animations (exact number soon), ~15+ Songs, ~8 Sound Effects, and feature a functional codex and gallery for unlocked scenes (4 in Episode 1) and rewards (18 in Episode 1), as well as stats for the MC and love interests. The first episode will also have about ~20 choices depending on your path that vary in importance, however some decisions act as a baseline for your character's personality that will take a bigger role starting in Episode 2 or set up impacts for future episodes. This is just to avoid being overly punishing or rewarding when you haven't had a real chance to develop your personality. Although it’s the most linear episode due to being the initial release, the first episode will have replay value as it features many stat increases and some mutually exclusive scenes. Despite having some hiccups during development, I believe it's a decent size even considering it's the shortest episode I have planned. Now that I have some experience with rendering and coding, I'm confident I can develop at a much faster rate. Below is more information about the story and characters and I'll be sharing more as the release date approaches.

My Goal For Episode 1:
I'd like for episode 1 to be an introduction in all aspects. You'll get the chance to meet most (not all) characters and will get your first glimpse into the main plot for the first season. You'll also get a chance to accumulate stats for more implementation in the future, check out the codex, see what some of the NSFW scenes will be like, and just get an overall feel for the game. I also hope to receive a lot of feedback on what's good and what's maybe not so good. This is my first shot at development, so I'm sure there will be aspects that I think are good in concept but don't carry over very well. I'll be able to make changes to UI, the codex, variables, and everything else so that moving forward with episode 2, which is where the story really picks up, things will work well. Once I get past the second episode, it'll be really tough to make changes so episode 1 is my real chance to take what I have as an idea, put it out there, then receive feedback and make it the best possible version.

Synopsis:
Coming off a turbulent Summer for you and your family, you arrive on campus hopeful for a fresh start. Unfortunately, things quickly fall back into their old routine, dispelling the little fortune you seemed to finally be getting. However, a moment of curiosity turns your life upside down as your dragged into the center of a dangerous, secretive government research experiment. Now you and the people around you will have to evade a twisted corporation who seeks to capitalize on your misfortune, all while an even greater threat is looming in the darkness pulling it’s own set of strings. Will you hide the truth from those around you or implore them for help, even if it risks putting them in the crosshairs?

Tags:
Tags that will be included in Episode 1: 3DCG, Male Protagonist, Animated, Anal Sex, Vaginal Sex, Oral Sex, Cheating, Male Domination (Optional, Very Light For Now), Female Domination (Optional, Very Light For Now), Teasing, Exhibitionism, Handjob, Dating Sim, Romance
Future Tags Planned: More of the Above, Corruption, Creampie, Masturbation, Titfuck, Group Sex (Threeways), Milf, Multiple Endings, Stripping, Cosplay, Spanking and Possibly More That I Can't Think Of

The plan is for everything to be optional.

Gameplay:
The game is built as a choice-driven visual novel. The goal for me is to make your relationships and different aspects of the story driven by your decisions and character's stats. Through your interactions with characters, you'll be able to gain or lose Relationship Points and in the future be able to enter casual or formal relationships. As a player, your character will have 3 stats that shape your personality in Episode 1. These are charisma, loyalty, and lust. Certain choices will allow you to gain different points which will become important for the characters your pursuing. The love interests will have preferences of their own and your stats, mixed with the relationship points you've gained, will decide how successful or unsuccessful certain decisions go in the future. There will also be 3 additional plot-related stats for the character beginning in episode 2 but I don't want to spoil anything just yet. With each release, theoretically the game will become significantly more replayable to see different scenes and have more success with different characters. It's tough to completely summarize these mechanics in one paragraph so feel free to leave any questions you may have.


Codex:
The codex will house information about the characters, locations, and organizations within the World. It will be accessible at all times and automatically update as you learn new information and make decisions.


Characters:
The game features a variety of main love interests as well as numerous side characters. Here are the first few I'll share, with more to come as the release nears:

Lilith
is someone I consider the true main character in the story. Of course, you take control of a male protagonist, but much of the story centers around her for many reasons which you'll uncover in the first few episodes. She's a mysterious girl who is hesitant to open herself to those around her after tragedy struck her years ago. She's spent the last couple of years being treated like a science experiment and feels responsible to help prevent the same for the MC. There's a lot to uncover about Lilith and her backstory that she's buried deep down. Her greatest fear is feeling responsible for any more loss and feels a duty to protect anyone around her. She doesn't want anyone getting close to her due to the risk it may put them in.


Olivia
was never very kind to you or your friends in High School. Before she entered a relationship with Damon, she really just ignored you and went about her business. However, she was quick to join in with Damon during the later years. As you arrive on campus, it seems like nothing's changed, Damon and Olivia are still awful people. But when she gets a look at the changes that have happened from your moment of curiosity, her attitude shifts. The question is whether her sudden newfound interest is purely due to your new physical appearance, or is there an ulterior motive to her advances. And why should you even have any interest in a girl who treated you the way she did in the past?


Mia
is a kind and altruistic soul who has been a friend of the MC for a few years now. She always matched your humor and quickly became one third of your High School trio. The friendship that blossomed between the two of you was always tension filled, but nothing ever came of it. In her final year of High School, she began a relationship with another student that prevented you from making any advances. However, when the pair of you reunite on campus you discover she's newly single again. Perhaps now is the right time for something to happen, or would you prefer to keep things platonic while you look elsewhere?


Cassie
is Mia's new roommate. You get the impression she's a very confident girl who goes after what she wants and is used to getting it. Unlike Mia, she doesn't seem very invested in her studies, instead acting as more of a social butterfly. Cassie is noncommittal and doesn't view sex as a big deal, preferring to use her study time at the University to play the field. It seems obvious from the moment your paths cross that you've caught her eye. She acts open and flirtatious around you, so don't be surprised if she chases the first opportunity she gets to pursue a casual relationship.

I'll share more characters soon but to finish this first announcement, here are just a couple of additional shots from the game to give a better feel of the desired aesthetic I'm trying for. Any criticism is welcomed and appreciated. If you managed to read and look through all this, I give you my thanks and appreciation. I hope to update this thread very soon with good news about the fast approaching release date. A Please leave any feedback you have and let me know if you have any questions about the game!

​

 

[Saint Blackmoor]

Very well presented. Looks and sounds very interesting.
Welcome to The F95.

 

[| Vee |]

Looking forward to it!
GOLDLUCK! GatewayGames

 

[Remarc]

Good luck.

 

[GatewayGames]

Hello again and thank you to those who have replied or viewed the thread:

I hope you're all doing well and have had a good week. Here's some more information about the game and what I'm finishing up for the release. The last few days have been spent posing and completing my last batch of renders before I CR them/clean them up and put them into the game. A more accurate render count for Episode 1 is about ~539 renders not including the 18 rewards or animations (this number also excludes the recap and anything in the codex/other UI, it's ~539 renders within the story itself), subject to a slight change in case I add or remove a couple on the final play-through test, which I'm sure I will. I have a small problem where I'll be satisfied with a render one moment but the next time I look I'll hate it and want to redo it. Especially since I know there's still a lot for me to learn and improve at.

The things that remain to be done are some animations, a couple of rerenders from some early shots when I couldn't compose a scene as well, a final edit of the script, and a tiny cleanup of the UI screens/code (My coding skills are still quite terrible but I'm slowly learning some stuff). Also, I know 90% of the script works right but I need to do one last exhaustive play-through so I don't miss any strange variable combinations or something dumb like a mistyped label. Hopefully I can have a bug/error-free release. As much as I feel I have gotten better at rendering/writing/coding from when I began, I still have a lot to learn and am already pretty eager to see how future episodes will shape up compared to this one. The only big issue I'm still having is the unavoidable difficulty with how long animations take to render and how intensive they are on my PC. I currently work remotely so I need to have my PC ready to go at just about any moment, meaning I can't afford to leave it rendering animations as often as I'd like. Due to this I can't yet give an exact number on how many animations are going to make the final cut, but probably not as many as I originally wanted (but still some). I should hopefully be able to give an update on that number in about a week or so. I also would like to give an estimated word count for the episode around that same time after I do my final read through edit, just to provide as much information as I can.

The last thing I'll talk about tonight is how the rewards work. I'm just testing if they're even worth keeping in the game for now, so they're very easy to unlock. Essentially by just playing the game and making decisions or going down certain paths, you'll unlock the rewards. You won't unlock every one on a single play-through, but more than likely you'll get a fairly large portion. I'll decide in the future if I want to keep them the way they are, make them harder to get, or just remove them altogether. I'm also toying with the idea that I'll add mini-games in future episodes, but for the moment I'm just too bad at coding and I'd rather focus on improving other aspects of the game.

So to finish, I've attached some more renders. I'm leaning towards keeping the sex scenes renders hidden for now since it gives away which characters have scenes in the first episode but I also could understand why people might want to see what they're gonna get before playing. I'll almost certainly post a couple in the thumbnails for the release but I'm not sure about here yet. Also there's a look at the textbox and UI when you're actually playing as well as what the MC looks like. The mouse is hovered over where you access the codex. I might make minor tweaks to the textbox before release just as a note. Marcus is the default name of the MC but you're able to change it at the beginning of the game. The gallery can be accessed through the quick menu, pause menu, or main menu.

Anyway, I wrote more than I planned already and this is way too much to make anyone read so that's all for this post. Sorry about that. Thanks again if you're reading all this/watching progress and I should post a couple more times as progress reports leading up to the release. I'm hopeful life and work will stay calm enough that the release date remains unchanged, but future posts will tell. Have a fun weekend everyone!​

 

[MissFortune]

This is like the fifth new game I've seen with model being used for the MC.

Other than that, looks good.

 

[GatewayGames]

This is like the fifth new game I've seen with model being used for the MC.

Other than that, looks good.

Damn didn't know that, I'd make some changes now that I know how but it's much too late for that.

By the way I played Move The Chains a little while back and the first release is really great. Thanks for checking out the thread.

 

[GatewayGames]

Hi all,

I've been focused on rendering mostly since my last post, not much to update on other than that animations and the final renders are killing my GPU.

On that note I finally caved after what would have been 6 years with my 1080 in December and ordered a 4070. There was temptation to go for a 4080/90 but I couldn’t bring myself to shell out double or more the price of a 4070. I was holding out with my trusty 1080 for as long as possible but I figured it's about time. This won't have an impact on Episode 1 of course, but it will certainly speed things up significantly for future episodes and hopefully a pretty substantial quality increase will come along with that. Plus it'll be nice to run some newer AAA games at higher frame rates.

I've landed at about 10 animations in the first episode spread over the 4 sex scenes. The quality definitely isn't amazing but they'll be there nonetheless. Episode 2 will have much nicer ones I hope since I won’t be so limited on the length and quality. They’re currently a bit robotic and I’ve found solutions to that through extending the animation, speeding it up, creating some changes in each loop, etc. But all of that’s a no go since my GPU can’t currently handle any increase in length/fps/amount of iterations.

I’m also aware I haven't given an exact release date yet, that's because of how the animations and renders are taking such a big chunk of time. I will say that everything besides the remaining animations and final renders are done and ready for release. The scripts been completed and is now completely edited, the code's done and fingers crossed bug-free, I added all the music and UI images and everything else. I could pretty much drop the first episode right now and there would just be a collection of missing renders and a few animations. So my GPU is just sweating the final pieces and then I'll release.

Since there's not going to be much to write about, I'll probably just post here again a day or two prior to the release, or if I’m able to predict a release day earlier than that. I was going to give a prediction date but I’m worried that I wouldn’t be able to reach it and I’d be rushing to put out subpar renders. The release is close I promise that, but I just have no ability to predict how my GPU will perform on any given day. If you are interested in the game and reading these, I thank you for being patient as I work out the kinks of developing a project. Hopefully I'll be back soon with the release.

 

[GatewayGames]

Alright, one last post before release:

The final, official date is October 21st for episode 1's release, quite a bit later than I planned unfortunately. I'll make a post here again when I upload it in game requests but I hope you'll give the first episode a shot and provide feedback so I can keep making improvements.

Now I'm gonna write some random unimportant thoughts about my plans for episode 2 and beyond as well as my new GPU, if you're curious read on:

So I got the 4070 all set up a couple days ago and the difference is night and day, a lot more so than I expected. Based on what I've been testing the last couple days, renders are getting completed anywhere from 5-15x faster than what my 1080 was doing. The 1080 regularly struggled to do just one iteration per second whereas the 4070 can do at a bare minimum 4-5 per second in the more intensive renders. All of episode 1 is rendered at 1920x1080, but with the speed increase I really want to up episode 2 to at least 1440p, possibly 2160p but I have to test it out some more. Regardless, I can produce future episodes way faster than what I originally planned and at a better quality. I feel good about the opportunity of making a pretty big jump in the quality and quantity right away for episode 2 compared to 1. Especially with animations, which really really struggled with the 1080 and forced a low quality.

Besides the renders, there's a lot more I want to improve upon for episode 2. The episode will be longer in two ways, one because the 4070 allows for more renders and the other because episode one is so much more linear. Now that the stats will be accumulated to some degree and the story will truly begin, I can build out scenes and dialogue based around your RP scores, certain important decisions, and the character's stats. I want to have a lot of small changes in dialogue and interactions, as well as larger ones where different playthrough's receive entirely exclusive scenes. Also, characters will begin reacting more heavily to your stats and you'll have to decide how you want to proceed to keep the options open that you want the most. I'm not going to be removing any LI's from the player this early on but I'll begin setting some variables to accumulate that will be important farther down the line. And I'd like for the story to begin branching in small ways that will lead to larger ones down the line, though I need to be careful not to make a mess. Also since the main plot really gets set off by the event at the ending of episode 1, two variables/stats for the MC will be added for episode 2 that can start to have an impact right away.

In all honesty I'm ready and eager to be done with the first episode and move onto developing episode 2. Taking what I learned through developing so far plus the plans I have set and the 4070, I hope to make the game better in every way pretty much. When I first began concepting the game I started with the story and fleshed it out to a pretty high degree. The first 'season' (It's too early to know if I'll stick with the idea of multiple seasons or move on to something new after season 1) is built out over 7 episodes, with the major moments of each episode already decided, as well as the ending (But around episode 5 I'll have to decide if there will be a season 2 or not otherwise the ending doesn't make sense). If I end up only doing one season based on feedback, it'll probably be ~9 episodes instead. There's an episode list in the main menu that gives the title for each. I also fleshed out the character arcs, so the writing won't take too long for each episode. Essentially there's no real need for me to come up with ideas but rather flesh the dialogue and scenes out for the ideas that are already there, as well as maybe add a few things that come to me as I'm writing. My goal was to have the answer and explanation for any question that could be come up with by a player so no moment in the story felt 'convenient', but I probably missed a few. I think I'll have a lot of fun writing the story from now on, as episode 1 was so focused on introducing everyone that a lot of the main plot didn't get a chance to develop very heavily or even at all in certain aspects. Episode 2 will let me put it as the focal point that drives everything that's going on and have the characters settle more comfortably into the roles they'll have regarding the main plot. The art is also gonna jump up due to hardware and improvements I've made in DAZ and CR since I started using them. And as I wrote the coding will start to play a bigger role now.

So all in all I hope episode one is enjoyable to experience and I'm excited to make improvements for episode 2. Thanks for following along thus far and hopefully you'll like the game.

 

[GatewayGames]

I just uploaded the game request thread here, if you'd like to try out the first episode.

I also want to give this note that I'm copying from the other thread:
"About a week ago I upgraded my GPU from a 1080 to a 4070. Due to this, many renders are out of place (in terms of quality) in this first release and the animations are a much lower quality. They also don't present properly as they should. I will be releasing a patch soon that fixes the animations and upgrades a large portion of the renders, however I'm still putting out this initial release because I set a deadline for myself and wanted to gain some feedback as I start developing Episode 2. Thank you for understanding."

Thanks for following along as I got out the first episode. Now, I'm gonna begin episode 2's development as well as finishing up that patch so that the render situation is fixed. Some of those things are real ugly or out of place, so now that I have the 4070 and can render a lot quicker, I want get that patch up pretty fast.

Have a good week, I'll be back again soon.

 

[GatewayGames]

Hey again, I hope everyone had a fun weekend. I spent it losing it as the Jets won the worst game I've ever watched.

So it's been about a week since the release. I haven't really been on here since then cause I wasn't exactly satisfied with the release I put out, so I guess I kinda just stayed away for a bit. Maybe not the best idea but I wanted to just not think about it for a little as I worked.

Regardless, now that it's behind me I've been working on a patch for the episode as well as writing Episode 2's script. If you want more details and frequent posts you can check my

You must be registered to see the links

where the vast majority of posts will be visible for free. But if not, I'm still planning on posting here almost as often.

The Episode 1 patch is going to:

• Replace the 8 animations (6 updated versions at higher quality, 2 same with higher quality)
• Add the missing 2 animations to Cassie's scene
• Fix how the animations display
• Replace a large portion of the renders with 1440p versions with new lighting and utilizing the 4070's capabilities
• Make improvements to portions of the UI
• Rewrite a small portion of dialogue to better reflect the characters and upcoming plot.
• Fix all bugs that I'm aware of

Here are a handful of replacement renders as I keep learning DAZ and use the 4070 (these are not finalized with post work, note Mia's hair clipping):


If anyone can leave feedback on the brightness of these, please let me know. I've come to learn that monitors drastically change how a render looks. These seem OK on my monitor settings but I have a feeling they're way too bright for a lot of people, so I can tone down the exposure substantially in post to make them better. To note, these are pretty bright to use as a reference point for me to make changes. Thank you.

Feel as though these are a pretty decent quality improvement, but I keep learning things about DAZ and post and know I can continue making better ones.

There are a lot of aspects I hope to improve for Episode 2 (the script of which is proving to be much funner to write after the tedious Episode 1 and coming together quite quickly). The renders for E2 will likely be a hybrid of the 1440p seen above for complex/dark/very populated scenes and 2160p for 1-on-1 scenes or ones with simpler environments. Think that's a healthy balance of speed and quality, so long as I avoid inconsistencies this time around.

I plan on releasing the patch for Episode 1 (for free) in early-mid November, I'll have a window of a few days announced sometime later this week/coming weekend. In terms of Episode 2, my plan is to not have incessant waits for new episodes so I'll keep you all updated with the pace of development once the patch is out.

Thank you to everyone who tried the rough release of Episode 1 and noted some issues, I hope to get a lot better at this as time goes on. That starts with this patch and hopefully carries into a substantially better Episode 2 now that I'm actually enjoying the writing process and have the initial release behind me.

Hope you all have a good week.

 

[| Vee |]

Hey again, I hope everyone had a fun weekend. I spent it losing it as the Jets won the worst game I've ever watched.

So it's been about a week since the release. I haven't really been on here since then cause I wasn't exactly satisfied with the release I put out, so I guess I kinda just stayed away for a bit. Maybe not the best idea but I wanted to just not think about it for a little as I worked.

Regardless, now that it's behind me I've been working on a patch for the episode as well as writing Episode 2's script. If you want more details and frequent posts you can check my

You must be registered to see the links

where the vast majority of posts will be visible for free. But if not, I'm still planning on posting here almost as often.

The Episode 1 patch is going to:

• Replace the 8 animations (6 updated versions at higher quality, 2 same with higher quality)
• Add the missing 2 animations to Cassie's scene
• Fix how the animations display
• Replace a large portion of the renders with 1440p versions with new lighting and utilizing the 4070's capabilities
• Make improvements to portions of the UI
• Rewrite a small portion of dialogue to better reflect the characters and upcoming plot.
• Fix all bugs that I'm aware of

Here are a handful of replacement renders as I keep learning DAZ and use the 4070 (these are not finalized with post work, note Mia's hair clipping):
View attachment 3045306 View attachment 3045307 View attachment 3045308 View attachment 3045309 View attachment 3045310 View attachment 3045311

If anyone can leave feedback on the brightness of these, please let me know. I've come to learn that monitors drastically change how a render looks. These seem OK on my monitor settings but I have a feeling they're way too bright for a lot of people, so I can tone down the exposure substantially in post to make them better. To note, these are pretty bright to use as a reference point for me to make changes. Thank you.

Feel as though these are a pretty decent quality improvement, but I keep learning things about DAZ and post and know I can continue making better ones.

There are a lot of aspects I hope to improve for Episode 2 (the script of which is proving to be much funner to write after the tedious Episode 1 and coming together quite quickly). The renders for E2 will likely be a hybrid of the 1440p seen above for complex/dark/very populated scenes and 2160p for 1-on-1 scenes or ones with simpler environments. Think that's a healthy balance of speed and quality, so long as I avoid inconsistencies this time around.

I plan on releasing the patch for Episode 1 (for free) in early-mid November, I'll have a window of a few days announced sometime later this week/coming weekend. In terms of Episode 2, my plan is to not have incessant waits for new episodes so I'll keep you all updated with the pace of development once the patch is out.

Thank you to everyone who tried the rough release of Episode 1 and noted some issues, I hope to get a lot better at this as time goes on. That starts with this patch and hopefully carries into a substantially better Episode 2 now that I'm actually enjoying the writing process and have the initial release behind me.

Hope you all have a good week.

Your posing and lighting has improved MUCH since first release! Loved the new renders! Greatly improved from previous one.

Looking forward to CH2!

 

[GatewayGames]

Very short status update news on the patch and Episode 2:

Hope everyone had a good weekend, the patch and E2 are coming along nicely. I'm planning to upload the patch on November 15th (give or take a couple days). A full tentative change log can be seen in

You must be registered to see the links

A lot of focus is on bug fixing, replacing a ton of renders, and making some small improvements throughout the Episode. It also lays a groundwork for final touches to come alongside E2's release.

I think E2 has some interesting scenes and allows the plot to take a larger role, however character development and forging relationships remain my focal point for the game. While E1 had 4 scenes, E2 will have a minimum of 6 and possibly more. E2 status updates will be given at least weekly once the patch is up. The episode will also introduce a new LI you may have noticed missing from the gallery, so I hope she's well-received as her role in the plot is fairly large.

Have a good week.

​