Writing Progress & How Sexually Graphic Should This Game Be?

I think I'm about 40% complete on the script, minus all the coding extras I want to eventually put in there.

Stats:


The game contains 886 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 7,897 words,
for an average of 8.9 words per screen.
The game contains 32 menus.

I'm not sure how detailed I want to get with anything having to do with sex.  Light and innocent?  Or pretty graphic?  I was thinking it might be fun to do a completely G version, and R-rated version, and then an x-rated version.  I think this was the case for some Infocom game I played long ago...was it Leather Goddesses of Phobos?  The G version was utterly hilarious, worth playing just for the humor.

Geez, I didn't get all the writing I wanted to do this weekend.  Tomorrow I have a pretty busy day since the two big errands I needed to do are now on my todo list.  I also have work.

A la Susan's technique I think I need to give myself some kind of deadline to actually finish this thing.  The game is starting to suffer from "feature creep" which I believe means I'm getting all kinds of ideas about what to add in, and making the game will take forever.

WARNING: EXTREMELY DULL AND GRATING DEVELOPER SELF-TALK AHEAD

So, I dunno, the rest of April for writing?  I seem to write at a very meandering pace of 500-1000 words a day.  I'm a fairly slow writer.  If my game "feels" about 40% through, I still have 19700 words, which is another 23 days.

So, May 8th for the "Rated R" version should be a reasonable deadline.

I think I want to take a full week or two too, of just learning GIMP and more art techniques.  There are times when stupid, basic WTF moments occur, like not being able to deselect a channel.  I feel like I should really know what the heck I'm doing before I start making more sprites.  So I should jump into the program for 2 weeks and just do a crap load of tutorials and art experiments, maybe draw characters for the lemmasoft board.  That would be until May 22nd?

Sprites will probably take me the rate of 1 sprite a day, probably 2-3 days for sprites and their different outfits.  I have no idea how to code expression yet but I've seen some examples I'll probably just use to copy and paste.  There are a total of 6 characters, 2 of which are minor.  The majors need the full range of expression and at least 2 or 3 sets of clothing each.  I guess I can give myself 2 weeks for sprites.  (Yep, putting in a lot of cushion because I'm learning as I go along...hopefully this will be enough time.)

So that will be June 6th for my sprite deadline?

Then all those pesky backgrounds.  I'm just going to filter royalty-free photos.  HA!  June 13th would be my deadline, giving me a week.

Music, additional coding and testing I'll give myself the rest of the month of June.

So my first, polished full game should be ready July 1st.  Geez, that's a ways away.

I feel like it's a long time to make one VN, but it incorporates my learning curve of learning RenPy, GIMP, doing computer graphics, and music all at once.

Well, in any case it's all about the process and whether I'm having fun, after all.

I guess I'll go post this schedule to the boards.