Thaks ErzuzB. Always informative and unbiased. In the vanilla version most of the under-14 characters will be there but there will be no sex, no reference to sex and will play a role in the plot. Totally innocent. The imaginative person may see where the story abruptly switches away from them. Do you see any issue with that at F.95? In your opinion.
Could work, but the best way is that players wouldn't notice any "hints" that there is something going on/missing. I mean, how will you handle the Love Interests acting in front of the MC in normal situations? Normally, they would behave in a more intimate manner or generally show a slight change in their behavior after they did it with the MC or accepted romantically feelings for him. Non-taboo-players will notice there is something going on. And the sudden cut-away before something "taboo" happends... this will be very annoying and noticable, especially when the chracters behave differently afterwards or the dialouge was building up to something.
To create a properly working and credible content patch/versions, one need to change more than lables (like mom -> landlady) or cutting out stuff. This is obviously more work to do this right and basically no dev does this, I've only seen a handfull that care to change parts of the story or dialouges depending if one uses the incest patch.
So the best way is not only to cut out the Rule 7 stuff, but to adapt the dialogue accordingly. Dialouge leading up to something need to be changed, the typical "family-dinner-scene" needs to play out differently. The smols should not feel like love interests in their dialogues and imagery and their existence in the non-taboo-game needs to be justified. You could for example introduce a wholesome taboo-free sub-plot revolving exclusively around the smols in the game, so they have some reason to be there. For this you don't even need to render much more content, just having it as a changed dialouge could work. That way those would be truly different versions, not just because one of them is missing content.
When I build the distro all I do is delete two files. My logic is if I release it as just a patch people will then try to patch the version at F.95 therefore breaking the rule. What I might do is just delete all the hooks in the F.95 version so even if they do download the patch it wont work. So, make one for A.T.F. and LC and another just for F.95.
Yes, having no traces would be the best and safest way to prevent mix ups, not only for the players, but also for you as the dev. That's why two actually different versions is the better way, though it is more time-consuming and labor-intensive, especially if you decide to have basically 2 dialouges and maybe even 2 different images for some scenes, depending on which version it is.
There was a now abandoned game called "Daddy Daugher Love" about a photographer dad with 3 daugthers, it was nothing special, but the dev created it as an smols game. The first versions had a Rule7 breaking youngest daughter and because of this, the game was only for a brief time on F.95.zone. So the dev aged them all up visually (size and face change, much bigger boobs). People weren't very fond of that, after all the smols daughter was the only thing that made the game worthwhile, so he made two versions, one in wich they where all older looking and one where they where all smols, even the oldest daugther who suddenly wasn't matching her personality with the looks anymore, I think she even drove a car? He had not only to render each image twice, but also position and arange each scene differently because of the size differences.
After a while he stopped the smols version and a bit later the game was abandoned.
It seems that the game in neither version is here on LC, while the adult one is still on F.95.zone.
Heck, who knows. Maybe Everyone will hate it and I won't have to do anything lol. It's coming alone VERY slowly as I'm learning at the same time. Even with a 4080 Super it's still pretty slow.
Smols games are always in demant, especially now that so many western devs stopped making them and the update circle is so slow.
But as you don't do it for the money, this will already be a project only motivated by your own desire to make and share a game. So chances are good this will dwindle. Just be prepared for all the work and maybe not much response on F.95.zone, without the content that makes the game more different from all the others over there.