DevLog Update (Patreon)

Hey all,

So I wanted to check in regarding the next update and bring everybody up to speed after the holidays. I've been a little quiet trying to organize things on this update so let's jump straight into where things are at.

Writing and the Focus

So I've never avoided discussing setbacks and problems that I've had. That's part of the process and it's also part of being an amateur at this. Organizing this particular update has been frustrating. I'm still trying to iron out the early repeating sections of the game and this update was loaded with those so I ran into a few issues on how to give the illusion of time passing, still keep a lot of those dumb events from the original, but not make it completely boring and feel repetitious. So here's kinda what my plan is:

1). This update may be a bit shorter than previous ones. Basically, I'm using this update as setup for the doctor office. I'm excited to get to the doctor's office mostly because it'll be an organizational break for me. It's linear and there's a lot of room for awkwardness and teasing and i think both of those are things that I'm good at. I could include the doctor office in this update but I'd honestly like to take my time with that scene. It's long and if I try and cram it into this update it's going to delay this one and I'm going to feel self-imposed pressure to rush through it. So I've decided to just focus this update on getting the wrestling singlet and getting it to Braden.

2). There's a few branches and options in this update and this is mostly to explore things. When you get out of bed, you'll have a few options on what you want to do. This can quickly move you through the update or it can give you some more background or even meet other characters or see events. Some of them are stupid things but hopefully, it'll give you more time with the characters and just get to see other students on campus to make the world a bit bigger. It's not a huge addition but there's some options at least. This includes bathroom, shower, and the pool for the most part. 

CGs

So pics are coming along but there's honestly not a ton to really show off this time around. These early updates are a lot of conversations and just dorm room time. Good news is that I can reuse old shots and a lot of the new shots are just new facial expressions or clothing changes. However, I am trying to add some new camera angles in addition to what we've already seen in the revamp. I have 114 pics done right now and there's a few more scenes I'm gonna have to do from scratch so we'll probably be around 200 or so for the update. The original game also had a lot of early cat and mouse scenes that were pretty teasing. Something different we'll see this time around is using depth of field to help tease those same situations. This allows me to have that freedom of the situation where I am technically show anything that I want on camera but it may be blurry because of the depth, which still leaves a lot to the early imagination during the first few chapters and that's always been an important part of the early game tension.

The teaser shot above is just a stupid picture that I did and showcases Braden being a goofball in the room to harass Zack while they're talking. So much like the first few updates for the revamp, expect more Braden facial expressions and stuff. So stay tuned. I'm hoping to have this update out early next month but we'll see how it goes. It's such a hard update to forecast because there really is a lot of opportunity to reused previous shots but then I find myself getting ambitious for no reason and writing a whole new sequence that takes a week to do. So bear with me. Ugh... I can't wait for the linear doctor office sequence.

I appreciate you all and thank you for all the continued support on this thing <3

-Aaryn