Bullwhip
Launch at Last
It's been a long and winding road.
The day I stumbled upon the furry visual novel niche, I was instantly entranced. There were so many good projects out there, so many creators who had lovingly poured their heart and soul into plots and characters and romance and excitement, and marinated in beautiful art and music. I wanted to contribute, and figured "Hey, these are just text, and I can write! This might be my medium! I can make something cool too!".
Whew, was I naive.
But I did start on my own visual novel. Something like seven years later, I'm publishing the first chapter of it.
It's a bit embarrassing. So much has happened during these years of life simply happening. I've changed jobs and positions and received more responsibility at work. I've had a few partners during these years, and last I year even got married. My niece was born, a little, baby-faced boss lady. And though I can't brag about working tirelessly every day on my visual novel project, I can say that in total, I have worked a lot on it.
I wrote the first chapter. I commissioned art and music (heck, that takes more time than you think). Made the first UI. Remade it. Remade it again. Added a townmap and a (terribly inefficiently coded) building blueprint. Decided that I needed a splash of cinematics, so learned to use transformations to pseudo-animate a few scenes. Spent a lot of time on making and maintaining a website which I recently just scrapped because working with it was a pain and not worth it at all. I decided that the project needed sound, and one thing led to another, and now there's a boatload of them in there. I figured I needed to add some accessibility so I added the Open Dyslexic font and stronger contrast options. Then, I decided I should have an Android version, and that's given me a few grey hairs, but heck, if your phone is your console, now you can play too.
During the years I've gotten to know some excellent artists, and some I've worked a ton with by now. Kartos has made most of the character art and helped with art direction. He's amazing. BitterStrawberries has made every single background. She's awesome. LapinSpaceMarine made support characters. Tenshio Luma and AudioCreatures have created music for it. Kopten has edited it. They're great. Many others have also been part of the process, many enough that I have to leave it to the game's credits page to list them all. Do have a look at it, their contributions have all been important to me and I appreciate them very much.
Anyway. We're finally here. Pushing the "publish" button feels surreal. I'm not surprised people have thought my project is dead, because the labor's been long. Perhaps I'll see about finding some experienced writers to help out with the story so that the next chapter doesn't take quite as long to make as the first.
Oh, well.
Here you go. One leg of wrestling themed boy meets boy furry visual novel from me to you. It's cooked a long time, hope it's nice and tender. Say hi to the husbandos for me, and remember that you never know someone completely the first time you meet them.
Enjoy!
Comments
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Really great vn! I havent started it **yet** but i been following evetything since the start really excited to finally be able to play it also happy late mirage! Congrats!
Thank you for following my project - even as it's taken so long! I hope you'll like it when you give it a spin! :)
no way i remember seeing the website for this a year ago and thinking "weird, why would he make a website for this?"
Can't wait to finally play it lol.
Yeah, making that website turned out a waste of time and resources, even though I felt it looked cool. Was a nightmare to work with, though. In any case, I'm happy to finally put chapter 1 out there. Hope you like it! :)
Damn, you can only try to imagine my dissapointment when I realized IT stud Kai isnt a wrestler X_X
Not to mention his funny as fuck map descriptions
But the VN is amazing tho, keep at it โฅ๏ธ
You are NOT the first one who tells me should be romanceable, haha. Glad you enjoy his banter and IT antics, we'll see what more comes of that :)
Thats a relief bro. If possible, make it happen
Congrats on releasing the first part of this fantastic VN! I'm still currently reading through it but I gotta say, the art style is absolutely a 10 outa 10. It feels more interactive than most VN's I've seen recently and the characters are amazing. The work you've put into this project is evident. This feels like a VN that I would have no problem paying full price for a completed version. Seriously well done and I look forward to seeing what more you do with it. :)
Hey! Thank you for the kind words and generous praise, I appreciate it a lot :) The art is all Kartos' and BitterStrawberries credit, they have done a wonderful job with it. The character art even shaped the personalities of the characters a bit because they came so alive when they got their art. Kartos is simply very good at what he does :)
I'm thrilled that Bullwhip is finally released! I remember when it was just an idea years ago at the beginning. Already in love with it, and the start was fantastic! You can tell there was a lot of work put into making this visual novel. Best wishes for the development! <3
Heh, I'm almost a bit surprised when people say they "remember" the start, because it's starting to be seriously long ago now :'P I'm glad you liked chapter one, and that it shows that I've polished the edges until I wanted to throw it out the window... :)
Hello. I really liked your novel. I'm a translator from Russia, and I'm participating in TranslationVN project, we translate short stories for Russian mortals, and I'd really like to translate your short story into Russian, will it be possible to do? How can I get in touch with you? Can I use discord?
Hi! Thanks for the interest and the offer to help! Right now, it's too early to localize the project in other languages. There's just one chapter after all, and there could be changes which require localization changes too! If localization becomes a priority later, I would be happy for help, though.
Can you then allow a translation of your draft version for the time being? Since the output has no schedule, we will translate for now, and if something changes, we will make changes, well, and for now we can not do the translation in your novel, and make separately all.
Thank you! I will put off localization for now. I'm grateful that you are offering, but I feel like it'll be better to do this at a later point. I also don't have a system set up for monitoring localization. To do this, it's very important that changes I make become visible to people who translate it. Right now, that's missing, and it's not my first priority to fix it.
Being honest, I dig it. I liked the characters, the world abd the characters got me hooked up, hope that in the game we can improve not only Bullwhip Arena but also the city and the life of others. Also I don't think the game was supposed to become a crashed black screen right after Maxton and Coach leave the car on the start of the day two I think its a bug lol. The only thing I didn't like was Bale. Fuck him. The sooner we can give him a much needed wake up call, or just fucking make ill towards him the better, fuck this guy Jesus Christ! Also if there'll be NSFW scenes I hope we can have Maxton only top without the need of ever bottoming lmao
Bale was my fav, I choose the 3rd choice to his question. match his boldness, their pride for wrestling.
but agreed, hope Maxton is a top too. would love to see all these studs get dicked down honestly.
That is one of my favorite parts - what happens if you step up to Bale. Opposition makes him come alive, this is one of the things he wants from life. He is above all a very competitive husbando :)
And regarding intimacy preferences, see my answer to FloweringWorld.
Didn't liked him 'cause he was an asshole, plain and simple, so if I can make so that he's hit rock bottom then its a good ending in my book
I think the fun part of VNs is discovering what lays beneath the surface of characters. Bale requires a bit of thick skin to tolerate, but might be worth it - at least to some :)
Hehe, I tried to warn people in my devlog at launch. People are not always what they appear at first. Or at least, they aren't *just* that. So... give him a chance... or whoop his ass at the first opportunity, because you'll definitely get to face him in the ring at some point if you don't choose to tag team with him :D
As for intimacy preferences, there will be variety, there has to be. In a perfect world, I'd let you choose every time, but realistically, I simply don't think I can afford to invest in double the scene art for these moments :/
And crashing... please see if it happens again, and if you get an error message or something, post it in the discussion forum under "bug reports"? Did you not get further?
Still a lot of times the first impression stick so for now I wish nothing but ill towards Bale. Like, the way this world is it would be easy for him to disappear with no leads to the cause...
That's unfortunate because I hate how 99% of FVN's are way too bottom leaning and you seem to never have the opportunity to top wich is such bullshit
No messages, not your typical Ren' Py gray screen with the blue text talking about the error that occurred, nothing, just a black screen with the music playing on the background and no way to get out of it outside of forcing the app to close (got this error on the android version btw)
Well, I already told you why I can't accomodate just one preference. There has to be variance, and it's a free game - I can't afford to make double scenes of intimacy unless someone lunatic decides to sponsor them. Even then I have to balance the scope with my time, because too much work can result in no work being done. So that's it.
Hmm, weird. It worked for me as intended on PC, but I'll check on my Android device too.
Its a shame really, but as they say: "It is what it is"
Then maybe its an android version bug?
Congrat's on your release ! I've been working on my own VN for a few years too. I damn well know how time consuming and energy taxing it is. I've yet to experience it but I can imagin how good and how scary it felt to finaly press the publish button.
I've personaly took a slightly different path than you by choosing to work on it on my own cause I realised working alongside others on my project probably wasn't my thing. (I'm not very social ^^').
I know working with other peoples doesn't really make it easier.
Though I'd be lying if I said it wasn't taxing for me to be learning code, digital painting, music production,... as well as world building, character's designs cheets and all the rest. ^^'
But I dont plan on surrendering and letting my project die. I want to put my soul into my stories. I'll make it happen at some point.
I Can only hope it'l happen sooner than later. ^^' XD
I wont rush it. I want people to live thoses stories to the fullest !
I'll fight for it ! Let's both fight for our project !
(Edit : blurgh ! All this sappy nonsense I just spit is making me puke rainbows. XD)
Well, you've taken an even bigger load on your shoulder than I have, then. It's really hard to do everything on your own. For me, learning art and music was not an option, it would have set me back even more years. So, the art and music had to come from somewhere, and I'm happy that the artists I've commissioned have been so nice to work with. And sometimes you need to reach out for help with details, like code you just can't get right. The Ren'Py forum is an absolute treasure for that, as well as friendly furry visual novel developers on Discord. Make use of the sources of help you have, you won't regret it!
Good luck with the project! If somethin is lovingly put together, people will notice, regardless of how long it takes to make it :)
Are NSFW scenes planned? If yes how many and are casual encounters in the mix? Is it an exclusive one partner romance story?
I'd like to include intimate moments with all the husbandos, and yes, you wouldn't want to experience them at work. How many and exactly what they will be like I'll need to decide later - it depends on my capacity and what funds I can spare for the art. For the same reason I don't plan - at least not now - to add casual encounters with other people than the husbandos. Not because I don't want to - it would have been lovely - but simply because the increased scope of the game might get overwhelming.
Yaaaay! I really love Emerson. Its been too long time since the last time I was made aware of this wonderful VN. I'm so happy to see the progress over years, and will be playing this soon!
Enjoy it when you do, and remember that Emerson has some ideas about what his future will look like, and that it might be up to you to change them :)
Really enjoyed seeing even the first build of this after so long! And I'd just like to say... it's very nice to be tall in a visual novel for once. And I'm glad we don't just have to choose to be awkward or mild mannered. You can have a healthy mix! Can't wait to see what's in-store next!
Yes, that's the idea - I want you to be able to be a more assertive, confident and funny if that's more your cup of tea. There's plenty of the timid main characters, I don't feel like I have to add another one.
7 years of waiting....
i remember watching this when was a early idea sigh
*waves the cobwebs away from the skeleton in the chair* Sorry for making you wait, good sir!
Maybe i am a skeleton right now but you are welcome X3
*pinches cheek like a grandma* We'll fatten you up again in no time, good sir! I promise not to make you wait seven more years for chapter 2... now have some pudding! *mercilessly scoops into your bowl*
Thanks, pour me more of thoses bara men in my bowl *impatient stare"
Eat your heart out! :D
Thank you so much for releasing this great and amazing game I love it
Glad you like my little chapter 1. I'll not spend 7 years making chapter 2, I promise!