Status update (October)! (Patreon)

A number of you have expressed some anxiety about how much longer the Tech Update will be in development, and specifically that the progress bar on our website has not been providing much reassurance, along with questions about why it appears to be "stuck" at times.  

This is because progress bar is task-based, and not all tasks are created equal. In a normal story-centric update tasks and the work they entail are fairly well understood: write scene X, draw new arms for character Y, etc. The Tech Update has been a very different beast. While we did our best to accurately come up with a task list for rebuilding an entire game, the result was a lot of fairly high-level tasks. As a recent example "Rewire Jenny" was a single task that closed recently; internally that meant rewriting the game logic for her entire route, repeatable events, and pregnancy. With over 550 tasks to date, when it closed it contributed less than 0.2% to the progress bar despite the weeks of work that went into it. A task can encapsulate work spanning anywhere from hours to months, but they all count for the same percentage. Often tasks also require input from other departments, so while art tasks are mostly complete, there's still a daily influx of work from code and posing to fix, adjust, and update things so their work can continue.  

So on to what we plan to do about it. We will meet this coming week to try and find a better way to represent the remaining tasks specifically with a view to keeping the progress bar more representative going forward. As we will very likely be splitting large tasks into smaller pieces you should be aware that the total % of the progress may drop significantly but to not be alarmed.  

tl;dr: The progress bar will drop this week as we reorganise remaining tasks to provide better visibility leading up to the release of Tech Update.

That being said, here's the status update for this past month!

Art:

• School cafeteria buttons are now fixed and have no crowds in them on weekends.
• Coach Bridget office button remade to match her new art (hair style) and missing back leg.
• Checking out books from the library now has a new look and closeup at the front desk.
• Small adjustments to library location buttons.
• The player now has a library card in their inventory.
• Improved bike fixing minigame (old background was a bit rough).
• Jenny handjob animation scene now converted to widescreen (old background didn't match).
• Continued assisting the Code/Posing devs with optimizing art and fixing inconsistencies. Such as unused art assets , missing shadows, missing character button variants and so on.
• Debbie's bedroom floor shadows fixed and split from the basket casting.
• Swimming pool location splitting of assets from the background and small improvements (lifeguard button for example).
• Serum minigame adjustments
• Assets for future content in Judith's story created (used as a wallpaper earlier this month).
• Created Judith's bedroom location and started work on all other room's in her home.
• Created a washroom location at the biker bar which is accessible from the main bar lobby.
• Assets for future content in Annie's story created ( of Mr's Smith, used as a wallpaper earlier this month).
• Assets for future content in Rhonda's story created (of her Mom, used as a wallpaper earlier this month).
• Additional rooms are being worked on for the Bar and Missy's house.
• More work has begun on extra location for the bar.
• Small edit to the arcade location background (shout out to PinkPluto!)
• Small addition to Rhonda's bedroom (stripes).

Code:

• Wired up story routes, repeatable events, and hints for Miss Bissette.
• Added Judith's existing events - her full story will be in a future update.
• Created basics for Bridget, Dexter, Erik, Judith, June, Mia, Roxxy, and Viv.
• Ported some mini games to new codebase:
•   French quiz, Mia's tattoo choice, Okita's keypad, Okita's serum brewing,
•   Grace's bike repair, Liu's deposit box search, and Melonia's hot tub purge.
• Expanded shop logic to support multiple carts/baskets backed by new tech.
• Wired up library to shop system complete with a custom cart.
• Added progress tracking to todo list and report card in Anon's locker.
• Installed passive logic for library and school; locks, keys, membership etc.
• Allowed for chaining steps outside flows, simplifying parallel event chains.
• Implemented logic for the homework document on Anon's PC.
• Optimized the hint screen on phone.
• Restored overlooked variant of the Pink stock room scene in Jenny's route.
• Added support for weekday based tagging, i.e. swap assets for weekend.
• Reduced asset count by generating some more night time assets in code.
• Fixed issue with button states in the ATM interface.
• Installed Missy's house.
• Added best-effort TTS support to some mini games.
• Resolve being able to leave a shop while still technically in buy mode.
• Improved art analysis as it pertains to mini game assets.
• Stopped unusable images being defined for tech props.
• Factored out dynamic type generation into reusable class.
• Simplified and optimised inventory tech.
• Substantially optimised view system tagging for timeless layers.
• Improved inventory item close up transitions.
• Refactored some view mutators/assemblers to aid readability and performance.
• Various metadata updates and management.
• Updated third-party assets.
• Fixed some issues with poser tooling that lead to confusion.
• Added menu to quickly access mini games for QA.

Posing:

• Listed all missing art in routes that need finishing touches.
• Added the finishing touches to Main Story (part 2 - Fully complete) .
• Fixed missing art references in Main Story (part 3).
• Posed Liu's h-scene.
• Added some tweaks and missing art to labels in Jenny's route.
• Added some backgrounds/missing art to labels in Okita's Route. 
• Created a list of missing lock_check labels across the game. 
• Made note of missing labels in other routes. 
• Started splitting lock_check labels up into separate callable labels. 
• Created new labels for lock_checks. (Still in progress.)
• Collected and reviewed art problems reported.
• Updated labels to match changes and revision in the wiring logic.
• Minor changes and fixes to linked dialogues in Debbie and Jenny's route.
• Finalized posing work on Roxxy and Mia.

Writing:

• Assisted code with wiring up story routes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for all your support and feedback!

-DC