Developer Q&A

Hi everyone!

Today I'll be going over some questions from the Dev Q&A I put out earlier last week. I also released 11.6 earlier today, so please make sure to check it out after reading.

For reference, these questions will be about the world of Daybreak Nightbreak and me as the developer! I've got to a lot to write, so I'm holding back on any more of an introduction. Just remember that we still have the Public Commission Request and Character Q&A for later this week, so please fill those out at the bottom of the page if you have not already!

To start off the Q&A, I'll be looking at questions specifically about the world of Daybreak Nightbreak. Anything anonymous will be left without a name.

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Q: (Breadmaster 9000) What is the greatest dish in the Light World?
A: Pizza. I grew up in North Jersey, so the answer has to canonically be pizza for my own mental sanity.

Q: (HugeTacXD) Will Leslie ever return? Or was she a character that was added purely to be removed?
A: Leslie will definitely return in Chapter 2. I have plans for her, just gotta find the right spot to plug her in.

Q: (Sarvarbek) When are you going to finish this game and how many girls will be captivated?(It is really hard to wait the next update I already finished v11.5)
A: First of all, glad you're enjoying the game enough to where you can't wait for the next update!
But, in terms of when the game will be finished, that involves a lot of factors. I do currently work full time and in order to avoid burnout, I split my free time to be half for Daybreak Nightbreak and half for myself. At my current rate, I expect the game to be completely finished within the next 4 years or so, depending on how much I want to do with it overall. If by some miracle Daybreak Nightbreak gets enough traction to be my full time job, I'll be working on it 8 hours a day and the updates will be significantly larger! Here's hoping it does, because I'd love for this to be my full time job.
And for your second question, I would expect that nearly every female character will be a Captivation option at some point in the story. I know that different people have their tastes, and that actually works with where the end point of the story will be. Although, if you have anyone in particular you'd like to be Captivated soon, keep making noise about it! Haley & Jackie were earlier than I expected because I had so many people asking about them, and there's only one way for me to learn what you guys want!

Q: (Creed) Will there be any continuation to Delos? Such as maybe one of Naamah's generals could be there?
A: Yes, I actually have a lot of plans for Delos in the future. Although, having one of the generals in Delos is a very interesting idea... I'll keep that in mind.

Q: Will there be any more Fae/goblin scenes? Also will 95 get any scenes?
A: 100% to all three questions. The Fae are super relevant to the main story, so expect to see a lot of content with multiple Fae. I've got some great ideas for those goblins and we haven't even met the famed "Gobmother" yet. And for that last part, I've got some good news for you, because we're headed for stuff with 95 as we speak. Keep an eye out on the next few updates.

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That's it for questions I'll be answering about the world of Daybreak Nightbreak! This definitely helps me keep tabs on what people are interested in, so I really do appreciate it. I would expect all of these topics to be touched on in the future, so please keep an eye out if you even have a passing interest in anything mentioned above.

Now, on to questions about me. Anything anonymous will be left without a name.

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Q: (Breadmaster 9000) What gave you the idea of creating DbNb?
A: A lot, actually. So, for context, I've been playing games my whole life and my dream job is to work as a game developer. I actually initially went to college for Game Design, but shifted majors as I saw what kind of a hellscape the AAA games industry was turning toward. I see myself as a writer and game designer (definitely not an artist, as you can see by the UI) by passion, and I've always wanted to make a story of my own. Over 4 years ago, I looked into some options of what is feasible for solo game development and stumbled upon RenPy. Looking at some of the popular titles for the engine, I realized that a large portion of games made in the engine are Adult themed.
While I was initially hesitant to make an Adult game, I realized that I didn't really have a way to make solid art for the game/characters, which led me to finding out that people often used Koikatsu for their games in this genre. I followed suit and looked into many games of this genre. Just to shout-out some, I played through what was available from Corrupted Kingdoms, Champion of Realms, Harem Hotel, a House in the Rift, School of Love: Clubs, and My Tuition Academia (all of which I highly recommend), as well as more than I don't have off the top of my head currently. I used these games to help figure out what I liked mechanically in a visual novel and wrote out of list of what I would be looking for when making a VN.
I should also mention that any inspiration from those titles is purely from a game mechanic standpoint, rather than a narrative standpoint. As similar as some parts of my game may end up being to other titles, I actually haven't touched an AVN of my style in over 3 years in order to preserve the narrative I want to tell.
I started work on Daybreak Nightbreak 3 years ago to this day under the title "Demon Merchant," and was originally going to have the game a lot more focused on business management mechanics similar to Yakuza 7's management stuff. I realized that the completely inexperienced developer I was couldn't handle that kind of thing, which is why the management stuff is pretty bare-bones in the first chapter.
From that point, I've just been developing the game as my own thing, occasionally lifting ideas and concepts from more mainstream games I enjoy.

Q: (HugeTacXD) What's development of the game like? (how many hours do you spend on each update, where ideas come from, etc)
A: Development of the game is fun! Again, this is all a passion project for me, so I enjoy almost every second of it. In terms of time, I spend around an hour or two on the game every week day, primarily focusing on brainstorming and research. On any day I get off, however, I spend around 6-8 hours each day. The bulk of my current work is done on the weekend, which is why most updates tend to release at some point between Sunday-Tuesday. Each update is around 15-20 hours of actual coding, depending on the size and scope of the update. The update released today was probably only around 5 hours, but the update before was easily over 30 hours of actual coding.
A lot of my ideas come from games that I'm currently interested in or that have meant a lot to me in the past. While I do have "start" and "end" ideas for every character in game, I do take a lot of inspiration from other games to help fill in the journey from Point A to Point B.
Essentially, my workflow for designing a character is:
1. Create a situation for the player to be in.
2. Create a character/characters to be in that situation with the player.
3. Establish a connection between the player and that character.
4. Put that character in new/unfamiliar/uncomfortable situations that they don't quite fit into to figure out how they would react and help develop more nuanced aspects of their character.
5. Once they're established, move them to new situations based on what would work well to further reinforce their personality.
I could talk about this process for hours, but I'll leave it at that to save reading time.

Q: (Sarvarbek) Where are you from?
A: Born and raised in Northern New Jersey. Moved away during college and I still miss it :(

Q: (Creed) With the little attention your game gets, what keeps you going to push out updates for that past year. I personally love the story, I personally find the story extremely intriguing and thats what keeps me playing and excited for updates. Please go on with this game I would love to see the ending.
A: First of all, thank you so much for the kind words! I 100% will see this game through and I already know what the ending will be, so don't worry about me tapping out.
To answer your question about motivation, it's not necessarily about attention or money or anything like that for me. I actually worked on the game almost completely in private for the first two years of its development. The game is a pure passion project for me and it's something I want to share with others, hence why nothing in the game itself will ever be permanently paywalled. To me, as long as one single person really enjoys the game, it's enough for me :)
I'd certainly like to have this be a full time job for me, but I don't expect or need for it to be one.
Even if you're the only one here, you'll see the ending.
Q: What games do you play in your free time? 

A: Currently 10 levels from maxing on Old School Runescape. Besides that, a shameful amount of Overwatch and a lot of Left 4 Dead 2 versus. I've also been getting back into Fear & Hunger recently, which has been fantastic.

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That's it for the Q&A! Thank you for everyone who asked questions and sorry to anyone who didn't have their question answered! Tomorrow is the content polls, so please keep an eye out to get a good indication for some upcoming ideas on things I'd like to put into the game and make your voice heard! I have a lot of stock in feedback, so tell me what you like!

Character Q&A (closes Friday): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfLh8EP1PJsU0jermbdT2X1vd3KnvoXnOpzn6nNl-xwK_rdzQ/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=104978977760168986181
Public Commission Request (closes Thursday): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfZbVKFBOxw5nY0tyYuRB1iA1OOKAxQ8HS8AUwK...