Friday Update #1 (Zoey Sprite Sketches and T.E.A.C.H.) (Patreon)

Hello, CaptainCaption here with another Friday Update (okay, so it's technically Saturday, but I was celebrating my big sister's birthday yesterday, so I couldn't push this out in time).

Anyways, I've got two big things to cover in this update:

1. Zoey Sprites

As usual, TiltSHIFT has been knocking the Zoey sketches out of the park. Patrons in our Discord server have seen these before, but it's been a few weeks since I've posted a proper update on the sprites to this page.

These images are:

• A cleaned sketch of Zoey with her "default" women's underwear.
• Zoey, immediately after her transformation (notice the juicy rips in her pants from her new thighs bursting through!)
• Zoey dressed in a white undershirt and unbuckled male jeans.
• Zoey in the same outfit, though her jeans are now buckled properly (is that why her face looks so sour?)
• Zoey in a Men's XL hoodie and track pants (borrowed from Keisuke).
• Zoey's first full outfit intended for a woman (she purchased this in the mall scene shown in the 0.3.6 release).
• Zoey trying desperately to hide her body with a single towel after bathing with Keisuke.
• "Zach" in a new male school uniform that better fits her female body (she's wearing a chest binder and has tightly wrapped her chest with sports tape).
• Zoey in a female school uniform (look how happy she looks!)
• Zoey in a female tracksuit.
• Zoey in a one-piece women's swimsuit.
• Zoey's "lazing around" wear, a white turtleneck sweater and stretchy women's jeans (note that her panties underneath would peek through the bottom hem if she were to happen to not put on pants).

While these sketches are of sprites that are still being worked on, the results are very promising. While I can't give a timetable for their full completion (TS is a busy artist with other commissions), I'm excited for the day they'll be added to the game!

2. T.E.A.C.H.

For those that don't know, T.E.A.C.H. is a sort of customization system for Zach that "flavors" certain parts of the story. It's name for the 5 variables it deals with (Trans, Emotion, Aloofness, Control, and Horny). Until now, this system has been dynamic, meaning that it could change over time by choices Zach makes (or rather, choices you make for Zach).

While this is a very neat concept on paper, the complexity of tracking all of these changes has become exponentially more complex as the game has gotten longer, and working with it has made me write new content at a slower pace because I'm constantly having to keep track of these variables and how they've changed. Also, even with access to a route flowchart, many readers aren't even finding the flavored passages provided by the system. These are both issues that stem from the needlessly complex dynamic system.

Moving forwards, T.E.A.C.H. is going to be worked into a static system determined from the start of the game at Zach's re:Dreamer character creation. You can take a short personality quiz that chooses how strongly Zach corresponds to each variable (essentially a Likert scale), or you can simply choose to leave these variables to Zach's discretion, which provides "default" developer-suggested settings for the system. Patrons at the $20 Sustainer tier can also directly choose these settings or modify them in-game whenever.

The content in this coming update was decided in an informal Discord poll. Both patrons and the public wanted a cleanup/reworking of Keisuke Day 2's shopping mall ending scene, and new story content with Zach going to his first day of college classes in his new body on Monday. This is a going to be a major hurdle for Zach. He's the sort of person who is comfortable being under the radar (partly from his own proclivities, and partly as a learned response to being bullied as a kid in school); however, he's in for a rough time with disguising his very voluptuous female body and the newfound attention he's bringing to himself in doing so.