Syrup Preview! (Patreon)

My favorite part of syrup town is where you yell "it's syrup time" and then you syrup all over everyone.

So! Here's where we're at, it's time to celebrate everything I did this month! 

- New Designs

First off and most important is I switched from the cartoony Fluffyrock to the model Easyfluff. There are way too many differences to count but the main things are that it's more consistent with characters, poses, and a lot of actions, and I think it looks better overall.

It's very pretty. Though many characters have some additional quirks and there are areas I'm not totally sold on. I made a lot of posts as I went but I think the pros outweight the cons:

A think it's a big quality jump overall, even with my least favorite character design-wise. Plus the model can do humans, I did a whole bundle of human shortstacks I'll probably eventually use for Argent!

I posted a few hundred of these on discord, I was testing out argent concepts, then shortstack 40k demons, random ideas, anything that came to my mind.

After I reworked the cast for the new model, I tried out lots and lots of designs. Here are some that didn't make it as core cast members:

- Core Cast Update

And here are two that did! I've replaced the purple cat and white rabbit from the game's core cast with two new characters bearing schmeat. These are Riley and Deity (name's still up in the air on that second one):

I like these designs a lot better, although more than a few peeps really wanted the Hyena and the Giraffe too, so I'll definitely find a place for them at some point.

Naturally as new cast members they have full sets of expressions, speaking of which...

- Full expression sets

On the scale from 1 to 9, how are you feeling today?

I'm number one! Because 12 characters, 12 expressions, that's 144 images! But wait, there's more! Every character who wears clothes needs a nude version, that's 11 more sets of 12! Every character with a womb has a pregnant version! Angelica, Bluebell, and Cayenne all need male versions, both nude and clothed! Looking at my explorer I have 496 images just for having the characters emote!

- Intro sequence

I also did the images for the intro sequence! As the game starts you're on a train ride into town, and this chatty catty asks you a few questions, working the options like carnivore/vegetarian mode toggles into the story. Since I don't know what the player's preferred menu is, he needs to wear pants. It's a truly heavy sacrifice...

- Player Customization

Now we're at the meat of what took up most of my February time. Usually it's CSS that eats me up, but no, I decided to add full on character customization into the game!

The story I have in mind is designed for male characters, but I went maybe a little too nuts with customization options...

And yeah, you can be bald.

I plan on doing a darker skintone model later, maybe it'll be done by the time v1 is ready?

- Dialogue CSS

I redid the dialogue CSS, you probably saw it earlier, but it looks so snazzy I just had to show it twice! I tried to work hard to make sure it'd really work with the game's atmosphere while also avoiding making it take longer for the player to read, really tried to minimize empty space while not overwhelming you. This style really makes the expressions shine! Although at smaller sizes, maybe I should exaggerate the faces more, hrm...

- Other visual styles improved

The university, persona, vaporwave, and lobotomy schemes all had to be totally rebuilt to work with the transparent full bodies, they extend just like the syrup style! I do think Lobotomy suffers from the very bright colors these characters use though. Luckily if you dislike it:

The game has a dedicated settings menu where you can toggle between styles! Unfortunately changes only take place after you talk to someone new, the buttons don't affect the current scene at all!

- Logbook

University's new logbook was designed with transparent profile shots in mind, so it's no wonder it looks so good here!

Dunno what I'll actually put in here though. Mostly these are just for recapping basic histories and personality traits.

... And memes too, maybe.

- Trophies

Gorgeous cards that I hope will make completion rewarding. I made a new frame and the shimmer effect is so pretty! These will serve the exact same purpose they do in HU.

- Inventory

Using the skeleton of the ghost game from HU, and help from MercurialTC, I've added pickups that'll make up a chunk of the base gameplay loop. Collect regular items like fruit, bugs, and fish as you move between areas, and to spice things up you can collect special pickups like lost tarot cards and magazines with lots of lewd stuff inside!

After that, you can bring your things to the store, which now allows you to sell items for money! No more paperwork here!

- And more!

Music! Sound effects! Randomly chosen (with weights) events! The ability to make your own characters via modding, and they can add things to the shops and the world! There's so much!

And on top of all of that, so. Much. Porn!

I've been posting daily in the Syrup Town channel, going over progress on the game, or on the latest and best outputs of my PC! 

I'm really excited about how much I've managed to do. Like I mentioned in yesterday's post I plan on a March release. I'm hoping to be able to do a non-furry version as well, but since this'll boost my workload, I don't plan on doing updates for the furry and non-furry version at the same time. 

So non-furry players may end up waiting a bit between releases, otherwise I'd probably die from overwork, and ghosts can't code.

Thank you to everyone who's been so patient with me, I hope I'll blow you all away! Now, I gotta get that HU update done! Talk to you all later!