Game Status Update #59 (Patreon)

Hey there, folks! I figured it's about time to do July's first game status update considering I usually do the second at this point of a month. I've been working nonstop, and the days go by fast when I'm in focus mode.

First, gotta talk about this update's cover boy. This is a Patreon-only version of an Instagram promo pic I made featuring Isaiah, who is joining Trevor in getting a summery thirst trap. Isaiah had to wear swim briefs on Insta, but on here I get to take them off 🥵

Anyway, to the game. The dev build is still not done. I'm going to go into a lot of detail below about why it's taking so long, but essentially there was just more left to do than I thought. I also spent far longer on last month's Guy Gallery than normal because of how detailed I wanted to be. I'm proud of the results, but I'm gonna have to scale back a tad on this month's gallery.

 This post is long since I'm going much more in-depth than I did the past several updates, but hopefully it'll give a better idea of the scope of what I've been trying to manage. Feel free to skip past these huge sections to get to the tl'dr parts—I'll mark them for you!

I'm gonna start with the biggest obstacle—coding.

Coding - The Long Version

I've come to the conclusion that my biggest issue when it comes to making the game is unnecessary overcomplication. I've been working a lot to figure out how to make writing & coding the game more manageable by scaling back on how granular I get while keeping a consistent level of reactivity.

An example of what I mean by granularity is the newly added flags to account for Connor's mood. It's not super difficult to write a line of new dialogue or change a sprite, but whenever I adjusted what you see based on mood, I found myself doing this:

This led me to realize I was spending time hunting through the long list of variables whenever I did a mood adjustment when multiple flags could instead be consolidated into a single easily referenced tag.

Not needing to switch tabs to find and copy several different variables already saves me time, but additionally, every part of the code in this screenshot has been assigned a shortkey, which means I can use just a few keystrokes to populate this. (Think court stenographer.)

Having a shortkey for every variable would be impossible to remember, but a general one like this isn't. I also still have those other flags if I ever want to write/show something specific to that mood, so nothing is being lost.

Consolidating choice flags was always the plan for this update, which is why as you move from Day 2 to Week 1 I'm setting flags for each character like "good friend potential" or "awkward" that determines the type of interactions you get without needing to individually reference a bunch of different events.

Doing this type of organization requires sorting through a few thousand choice flags to assign the right relationship for each guy. It's a lot of work—but much less work than trying to write specific dialogue for every single choice variant when a more general piece of dialogue works just as well in many cases. Getting super specific with reactivity ultimately provided no real benefit, instead only leading to more writing and more coding, and in turn, longer development time.

I've talked in prior status updates about how much cleanup like this is going on behind the scenes. Not just to consolidate multiple choices into one variable that can be used in many different situations, but also standardizing similar types of choices. Choice flags of the same type now use the same naming convention and are placed in the same section of my variables script so I don't have to search through literally thousands of variables to find what I need each time I need it.

As an example, there are a lot of places where I note that another character has learned something from Connor, like if Connor tells Matt about propositioning someone. Problem was, I used different naming formats for each one, and they were often placed under different headings. Matt, for instance, had separate sections for long-term knowledge, like knowing he has a tattoo, then another section for flags from Day 1, another for Day 2, and yet another for Matt's evening hangout. Other characters were divided up similarly.

Now stuff like that is being redefined and sorted more intelligently. What was once "griffin_knows_alex_skinema_hookup_discovered" was turned into "hu_griffin_knows_alex_skinema_d2" and every other instance of someone's awareness of who's boning who now follows the same format. I'm also leaving many comments to remind myself of what certain flags mean. It makes it much, much easier to find a variable if I want to reference it.

This cleanup also includes scouring through the earlier scripts to find points that were never flagged or were not flagged correctly. I keep finding things like "$ variable" when it should be "$ variable = True." Without the "= True" part, if I ever reference that choice, nothing will happen.

I tried to do most of this cleanup in a newly added transition script the game scans through as you go from what you already played to the new content, which I hope goes a long way to preventing broken saves. That file looks like this at its most basic, but has more involved variable adjustments and additions as it goes down the list:

Unfortunately, some earlier choices have no way to be flagged during this transition and have to be added to the older scenes. At best that means a choice you made won't be reflected unless you replay that portion; at worst, you'll get an error that won't let you progress with that save. In fact, much of this work is in service of that—doing what I can to avoid breaking future saves as the game continues to develop.

This all takes a lot of time, but I feel it's absolutely necessary. I need to standardize and fix all of this now before the choices continue to compound.

Beyond this, the absolute biggest time-consumer is coding Connor's considerations of how he feels about each relevant guy. This involves accounting for how all character interactions intersect, how you think about those interactions, how smooth the transitions are between your thoughts, making sure you see everything you should, and making sure you don't see things you shouldn't.

I'm in no way a pro coder, I've never trained in it, so wrapping my head around the best ways to do this is often a struggle and takes a lot of trial and error. This is further complicated by what I talked about above—being too granular by accounting for too many specific choices.

This was the little flowchart wheel I made to keep track of all the guys I wanted Connor to ponder:

When I added this to the larger flowchart for the Morning After Update, it seemed easy enough. But in practice, it became anything but.

Here's an example of how choices could interact during this pondering sequence:

• You wake up the morning after hooking up with Marco. You're either in his bed or your own, and if you're in his bed, there are a couple choices available that will affect how he sees you.

• You move on to be by yourself in the bathroom, during which you need to decide how you feel. One of those options is to feel amazing about having had sex for the first time, and I have Connor think "I can't wait to do it again with..." You are then presented with a bunch of guys to choose from.

• That guy is noted as potentially being Connor's next conquest, but you still need to choose how you feel about Marco: Can't wait to hook up again? Leave it as a one time thing? Got a romantic crush?

• Let's say you choose that you want to get with Riley next and you also ended your night at the party by making out with him. The hookup with Marco was the most momentous event of the night and thus is the first thing Connor thinks about. His next thoughts will be about the second most impactful event, which is the kiss. That means I need to move you to a sequence in which you ponder your feelings for Riley.

• Had you not reached anything as momentous as the kiss with Riley prior to picking you want to get with him, you immediately get a brief section to establish how you see him (hookup, romantic crush, or both) and he's removed from a list of options to think about later on. If you're instead supposed to move on to the bigger pondering section, I skip that brief scene in favor of a longer one that encompasses more of your interactions with Riley.

• Now we're in Riley's pondering section, the "major" version that includes the bigger choices. Since you already said you want to hook up with Riley, I have to move you past a chunk of those thoughts; if you didn't pick him as your next conquest, you see other writing, including a different opening phrase to make the transition between thoughts smoother.

• Once that's all done, I have the game check for certain events and relationship statuses, then assign a "major events" pondering scene, a "minor events" scene, or no scene at all if your character had little to no interaction with someone. In the last case you get auto-assigned how you feel about them—either "friendly" if you spoke with them at some point after Will's class, or "neutral" if you basically ignored them.

• Now we're back to following up on guys aside from Marco and Riley. I first check how many guys are left to ponder as determined by the prior bullet point. No one else? Then you get a transition to the next part of the story, which is going to the showers. Two or more additional guys need some pondering? Then I pop you to a menu of options that shows you relevant guys. Only one remaining guy? Then I jump you straight to him with a different transition line.

• The bigger menu is then organized by who has a major events section and who has a minor, with the more important guys listed first.

• Let's say in the afternoon you propositioned Alex before going to the party and kissing Riley. That means in the list of guys you think about next, you are slated to get the "major" pondering section for him. But let's also say earlier you chose him as your "I wanna fuck him next!" guy. That menu option is now removed since you already defined how you feel about him.

• If you didn't pick Alex as your next conquest, you instead see him as a menu option and can go to his full pondering sequence, which has been arranged to only reference events relevant to your playthrough. This sequence can be linked to from many different scenarios, so it contains variants based on how much time you spent with him, if you propositioned him, if he propositioned you, if he was your first kiss, or if he was your first hookup. It also references events like whether or not you saw him naked in the showers, whether or not Forte gave you his business card, whether or not you tried to get into the private party, and so on.

• You've now told the game how you feel about Alex. If there are any other guys slated to be thought about, you are sent back to the options menu. If not, you move forward with the story.

• We're done with the pondering menu, but if you had significant interactions with other dorm boys, you need additional scenes for what happens when you run into each other on the way to the showers. Those interaction are also divided into major ones for something like kissing Riley, minor ones for things like hanging out with Isaiah but not going to the club, and brief encounters for events like Alex seeing you get blackout drunk at the club while you otherwise having no relationship with each other. Within these encounters are more variations, primarily based on the awkwardness level with the character, which has been set by both old choices and new.

Now we're finally past all of this and onto the next section of the story, which is thankfully a whole lot more linear.

Looking at that list of sequential scenes, you can probably get an idea of just how many variations there have to be. What if you hung out with Alex at the club, later caught him having a threesome with Mafia & NC17, ended up losing your virginity to Marco after going home, decided you next want to hook up with NC17, and then when it's time to think about the threesome, you choose to think about Mafia & NC17 before thinking about Alex—shifting around what you see in Alex's major pondering scene when it comes to referencing the boys in the band?

Later, how will you react to Alex when you next see him considering he has no idea you walked in on him; alternatively, how will you interact if you watched the threesome? How does this encounter play out if you hung out with Alex all night vs. came to the club with him then parted ways vs. arrived at the club solo and just greeted him vs. not interacting at all?

Like this Alex/Mafia/NC17 thought process, each possible "pondering" scene takes into account other guys you thought about previously, potentially changing how you think about the guy currently being pondered. Further adjustments to Connor's inner monologue beyond mood can also be based on something like whether you indicated your Connor is a bottom, top, both, or neither.

All of this—and more that I haven't touched on—has proven to be a lot to wrap my head around, especially since I overdid it when trying to avoid clunky transitions between what Connor thinks about. It involved not just figuring out how to only show what you need to be shown, but also led me to realize there was a bunch of writing gaps to fill and also sections that needed its writing to be revised.

The best part (😒) is that I only realized at the the testing stage that you as a player only see a fraction of this writing. Great for the "how do I feel?" sequence not overstaying its welcome, but it also means there's a ton of work you won't know exists. When playing, it may make you wonder "what was he doing all this time?" I chose to include much more content in the update to compensate for how little play time this specific part has, even before knowing how long it would take me to create. That added even more work before the full release is done, but imagine if I put out an update after all this time that lasted all of 5 minutes!

On the topic of testing, testing this many variants requires playing countless different paths through the game. A single typo in a section I didn't go through can be game-breaking, so I'm going through the game again and again to make sure everything is working, although I'm aware I won't catch everything.

I am never, ever doing a section this complicated again. The inexperienced Danny of the past thought it'd be no big deal to create this, but inexperienced Danny is a bad Danny and I'm making him sit in the corner to think about what he's done. (To be fair to inexperienced Danny, he did not know of the health stuff coming up that would sap him of a bunch of energy, so I won't make him sit in that corner too long.)

That said, this doesn't mean I'm going to remove reactivity. I'm just streamlining it a bit by only referencing specifics when necessary. Additionally, whenever I do more of these "how do you feel?" points, it'll only include one or two guys, and it'll be placed closer to when you had an interaction instead of much later.

Making this game has been a massive learning experience, and as we all know, it often takes making mistakes to learn how to avoid them. That means a bunch of design choices from the past have been coming back to bite me. So when I talk about how this is (hopefully) the last big hurdle keeping updates from releasing more regularly, I mean it. I'm too deep into this part of the game to entirely apply those lessons, but I absolutely will for all future releases.

Coding - The Short Version

So tl'dr:

• I overcomplicated how I reference choices

• I overdid it when trying to make transitions between thoughts feel more natural

• In the past, I played too fast and loose when keeping track of choices.

• In the past, I failed to adequately check through my code to make sure it was actually coded correctly

How I plan to fix this going forward:

• Continue to consolidate several choices under catchall variables so I can write something applicable to all of them if no specificity is needed while still being able to reference something specific if it's actually meaningful

• Simplify how I plan out decision menus, as well as how the game navigates you after each choice is made

• Limit how many menus like this appear in the story, and when they do appear, they won't include more than two characters

• Standardize the choice flag names, reorganize them in the files for easier reference, and maintain that consistency going forward

• Be much more thorough by looking at each newly programmed scene as I code it to catch error-causing mistakes well before I get to testing

Writing - The Long Version

As I code and replay this part of the game, I've been doing additional writing—and revising existing writing—to accommodate events I forgot to include, and also adding alternate lines to account for how the game transitions between Connor's inner thoughts.

I've had to rethink how I write this game a number of times. I came into this project after writing many standard novels, which are of course completely linear. I outlined those books by plot beat and carried that process over to this project when what a choice-based game like this needs is to be planned out by how it'll become blocks of code.

I've more recently realized that I also keep writing portions of scenes that I don't need due to referencing more and more choices at once, resulting in inserting far more alternate lines of dialogue or full scenes than I need to. As the game progresses, even more variant scenes are gonna pop up, so I needed to create a way to keep the writing minimal while still keeping it reactive, ultimately cutting down the time it takes to write and code the game.

Enter a color coding system to help visualize what scenes are contained within each other. I've become even more purposeful when deciding what choices are the most relevant, and then arrange them in my Word document in the correct order for coding later on. This turns a section of writing into a sort of "fill in the blank" situation, saving me from constantly popping back and forth between the game files and the Word document whenever it occurs to me that I need to see what choices will create a variant scene.

This is a screenshot I took before filling in this scene for Asher, one of the simpler sequences. I put in shorthand notes to myself as a general refresher of what's involved in the choices being called back to.

The green labels with only one # symbol are denoting all-encompassing scenes that can contain variant scenes within them. Blue labels with ## are the next level in, carving out space based on what could happen before or after the primary scene. Purple labels with ### are choices that modify the variants even further, and then there's gray with #### to account for even more referenced choices.

In this case, the first green-labeled section covers what happens if you hang out with Asher at the club after Alex's presentation. The subsequent blue labels acknowledge different combinations of Asher scenes—first if you spent all night together, which is further divided by the purple labels to account for the afternoon as well; then a section that can be used for the afternoon/first part of night combo as well as a scenario where neither the afternoon hangout with Asher or the hangout after the Skinema show occurred.

We then reach another green primary label, which covers what happens if you didn't spend the middle part of the night together but did go speak to Asher after the Skinema show. Like the first section, I also check if you did or did not hang out in the afternoon.

Lastly we reach a section that only references the afternoon, indicating you may not have gone to the club at all.

These various combos determine what exactly you could have seen or done with Asher, like what you witnessed regarding Asher's relationship with NC17 and his brother. Although this was portioned out to accommodate how it must be coded, separating it like this also helps me keep track of what all has an effect on Connor's perception of events.

The gray-highlighted labels under the first green section is a little different because it's not nested within just the second purple line, which would have indicated you only see these variations if you didn't hang out in the afternoon. You see them regardless, so instead this part applies to both purple scenes but reminds me to account for how things might change based on how much time you were with Asher.

Those gray choices cover various states you can find yourself in at the end the night, most specifically whether or not you made things awkward with Asher via bad flirting. As we move down the list, the ending state changes based on other choices. If you made a choice that alleviated the awkwardness, you part on better terms. If there was successful flirting, you end in a state could lead to a romance, or you could have gone home after just being friendly.

The semi-hidden option to alleviate the awkwardness only appears if you were with Asher after the Skinema show. Since the following blue label doesn't include that part of the night, that section of writing only has alternates based on leaving on awkward terms after the Skinema show, leaving having flirted successfully, or leaving as friends.

You can see the pattern now, how the top levels encompass the most content while the further down you go the less needs to be written. The second green label covers skipping the middle part of the night, either hanging out in the afternoon as well as the end of the night or only hanging out after the Skinema show. There was no option to overtly flirt in either section, so there's no state of awkwardness or a spark of romance to reference.

With the night fully addressed, we reach the last green label, which follows up on your afternoon spent hanging out if that's the extent of your Asher time.

Early on this segment had an example of a redundancy I may not have caught were it not for this way of pre-planning. It looked like this:

Notice that this version showed I needed alternates for the combo of hanging out in the afternoon hangout plus the first part of the night, as well as alternate versions for just hanging out during the first part of the night.

And notice as well how the purple variants are the exact same beneath each. There's nothing all that relevant in either scenario that would require different versions of dialogue when thinking about those choices. Seeing that, I knew I could remove the redundancy by making it one section applicable to both scenarios.

This is the minor version of Asher's pondering sequence. The major version covers Asher catching you either spying on the Alex, Mafia, & NC17 threesome or if you had that threesome yourself. That obviously massively changes the relationship with Asher as well as Connor's morning reactions.

All of this pre-production is helping alleviate what I talked about at the very start of this novel-length post—addressing my tendency to make things far more complicated then necessary. This is an adjustment to my planning process I wish I'd thought of ages ago, but am now glad to have in place.

Something that may seem less impactful but is actually very helpful is including the actual choice flags/variables in the Word document. Previously I would have written something like "if night hang" or "if bad flirting," and then add the specific variable when coding. That led to tabbing back and forth between the files for the game script and the variable script to hunt down those flags each time I needed them.

The hashtags/# symbols also tell me how to space things in the code, since the color highlights do not transfer over. Now once I move on to the coding stage I don't need to spend much time formatting and labeling. Instead I can focus on telling the game what you should see on screen—the backgrounds, sprites, CGs, and dialogue.

Writing - The Short Version

So tl;dr:

• I had already made strides towards organizing my writing in a way that avoids redundant scenes, but had not gone far enough

• I was still writing as if I was creating a standard novel instead of a visual novel that needed to be translated into game code

Steps to fix this going forward:

• Breaking down each scene's variants prior to any writing to easily see what I actually need to write and what can be cut

• Inserting some of the final code at the writing stage to make coding the game easier and quicker

What's left?

Coding, testing, and to a much lesser extent, writing are what I'm working on, and have been working on nonstop. I want to add—I've said a lot in the past that the next dev build is "coming soon!" To be clear on that, I actually do think it's true when I say it, basing it on what I expect the remaining work to be. Then as I resume the work, I start to find additional necessary tasks to complete before I share anything. Everything then gets pushed back even further. I always feel guilty about that, as it must seem like I'm leading people on.

As of today I do feel I have pinpointed all that remains to finish. The time it takes to finish is always up in the air, though, because there are times I think I can bang out the code for a menu in an hour, then end up spending an entire day on just one portion as it starts to affect a bunch of other sequences.

After my last game status update, I wanted this dev build out at the end of the first week of July. Then it became the end of the second week, which is where we are now. I'm again aiming for a week to finish because I really, really want the full Morning After update in early access some time in August. I've continued to get better and better on the health front, and in turn more and more productive, so it feels possible. But I cannot say definitively.

Thankfully the the third part of the creation trio—the game's art—was finished for this dev build some time ago, so it's not a pressing concern. That's much of the reason I haven't had many sneak peek posts—I don't have much to share visually. Either I've shown it before, or more often, want to save CGs for when you play the game.

Although it's not a focus, there has still been some work done on the art side that I'll go over.

Art

Character adjustments

As many of you know, I've been updating character models to fix odd proportions, adjust skin materials, and just generally tweak them to make them easier to pose and render. I have a Behind the Scenes post that discusses it more fully.

I thought I was completely done with these revisions—but then I made the Patreon galleries last month. I discovered that many of the characters have the dick/hole asset rigged incorrectly. Not being rigged as they should, they sit on the body in an odd place and tend to deform when posed in different states of arousal.

I already talked about that in the Behind the Scenes post, but it turned out I didn't fix it as I should have.

I first realized there was a problem when I was posing Jordi for the final CG in the Pride Gone Wild gallery. Here's what he looked like (left) versus the final product (right):

I looked at that first version and thought, "Uh, his hole should not be sticking out like that." Then I noticed the dick didn't look positioned correctly, either.

Only then did I realize my mistake—I had changed the rigging of the dick asset after I had made adjustments to the shape when I should have done it before.

This is an example of what I mean. On the left is the dick asset attached to the figure it was actually made for. The bones/joints you see are how everything should connect to the body. On the right is Jordi before any adjustments were made. And, uh, nothing is where it should be.

This misalignment is most prominent on anyone shorter or taller than the first figure, but it was still an issue across the board. The creator of the asset clearly stated this issue in the documentation and added tools to fix it, but at the time I started using the asset, I didn't really know what the creator meant. I just attached the dick to a figure and went on my way.

Obviously this is something that needed to be addressed immediately as I have naked sprites to make, so I had to take the time to load up every single main character who uses this asset, then carefully adjust the undercarriage joints. The only main character who doesn't use this asset is the new Dominic, so that was a lot of guys that needed fixed. It took away time I wanted to spend elsewhere.

There are a fair number of side characters that also need fixed, but I only bothered with the ones who hadn't yet had their Pride CG rendered. All the remaining guys have been added to my to-do list, with the guys who won't be naked again anytime soon at the bottom.

Since I had each boy loaded up anyway, I also applied HD details to figures who didn't already have them. These add details to the figure itself—so not painted on a texture—that enhance the appearance. Doing this just involves moving a slider, so no extra time was needed. Some of the guys have skin materials/textures that aren't quite as well made as other characters, and this adjustment helps fix that a little bit.

There's that perfectionist part of me going, "Now you have to redo all the art because of broken dicks!" But I've learned at this point that I should ignore Perfectionist Danny more times than not. Especially in this case where I don't think it's even noticeable in the game's CGs. I'm only gonna re-render something if I already planned to.

Sprite adjustments

As the game developed, I made a lot of changes to the "photo booth" setup I use to make sprites. This included standardizing the camera position so height differences are apparent, and more importantly, fixing the lighting so it doesn't blow out the features of paler skinned characters or not strong enough to brighten up the features of darker skinned characters.

As I started making the newest sprites, I realized that the standardized camera angle had a flaw that affected taller characters the most. The camera was actually up and angled down a little bit instead of looking at a character straight on, and that meant taller characters had their head closer to the camera than the rest of their body.

This perspective led to someone very tall like Asher looking bobble-headed and visual weirdness like Matt's head appearing to grow if he tilted it down. Just look at these two sprites:

I've hated this ever since I first noticed it, which was actually quite awhile ago. It's even more obvious when you're playing and seeing the sprites swap between each other. When I first noticed, I had zero clue how to fix it. I think now I've actually figured out what caused it, so I've created a new camera preset and at some point will re-render all the sprites.

This has been added to the end of my to-do list because last thing any of us needs is more delays for something that won't necessarily be too impactful. Just a nitpicky visual issue that I'll pick at later on as time allows.

CG adjustments

Lastly, there are a few stray CGs that need to be updated due to swapping out some character models. Not many images, mostly just a few from the Skinema performance to add the new Noir and new NC17. There's also one CG for Dominic that I already remade but decided I hated, so it's got a "placeholder" label slapped on it for now.

I'm moving these down on the to-do list as well, but not quite as far as the sprites. They do need finished for the final release, but they won't be fixed in the next dev build. I think anyone who played the older dev builds has come to expect that, though, since it's labeled as unfinished.

So essentially, I've looked at what absolutely must be done now, and anything that doesn't fit the bill is on the backburner. Some art revisions I've taken off the list entirely—for instance, I thought about redoing all of Marco's CGs to use his revised body, but nah. I don't think the difference between his new sprites and his CGs are noticeable enough to make recreating them worth the time and effort.

All of this goes against my instinct to fix everything right now, but I'm learning to let go a little bit. Considering how the art in the game looked two years ago, I'm pretty sure you guys are willing to overlook some jankiness at times, especially from a solo semi-amateur developer like myself.

I think that's everything on the Morning After Update front. But a few notes on Patreon content.

Patreon Galleries

I'm always gonna deliver two galleries per month, but if you've been a patron for awhile, you probably noticed the galleries being pushed back later and later each month, with some of the Bonus Galleries coming after the start of the following month.

I hate moving them back since I don't want to rush those images or potentially have patrons who aren't able to see them at all. This has mostly happened due to me trying to finish the dev build before working on a gallery, then getting to a point where I realize I simply can't finish the build that month, meaning the galleries got pushed back for no reason.

I'm gonna endeavor to start those galleries earlier in the month so Seniors & Graduates have longer to vote for the Bonus Gallery guys and to make sure both galleries land before the month is over. I am gonna scale back the scope just a tad, though. The Guy Galleries are intended to have 6 images outside of special events where I want to feature everyone, like Pride or Halloween. I've had a few months where I've done more images (April's gallery had 12), which cut into game development time. I figured you all would be fine getting the minimum number of images in exchange for an actual finished game build.

I absolutely enjoy making the galleries and credit them for helping me improve my art by leaps and bounds from when I started; making nearly 500 CGs for Patreon plus all the ones in the game has given me a lot of practice. I think many of you enjoy the galleries, too, so I'm gonna work to find a balance that allows me to produce them on a better schedule without it being at the expense of the game.

Other Patreon Content

There's been a dearth of other content on here lately aside from galleries and these game status posts. I already mentioned above the reason for fewer sneak peeks—there just isn't much that's interesting to peek at unless you really wanna see pages of code. I also paused the Behind the Scenes posts for the time being due to how time-consuming they are to make.

I think many of you became patrons primarily to support the game rather than just to see extra content, so I hope the lack of those posts hasn't been too disappointing. I think I'll be able to return to those sooner than later.

Grind'm!

Finally, something a bit more fun—a new Grind'm guy vote is incoming! Somewhat to coincide with the Morning After Update going into early access (we'll see...), I'm gonna begin the first round of voting August 15th. The second round will begin September 1st to narrow the field down to two guys, and then the final two will go head to head during the back half of September.

During this time I should be working on Trevor's Grind'm scenario, which will definitely have images to share as a sneak peek!

I'm excited to see which guys end up on top. The first vote ended with Parker vs. Jordi, the second with Blaze vs. Trevor. Will either of the runner-ups end up at the top again? Or will some new guys pull ahead this time?

That's all I've got for today. Now I'm getting right back to coding the game. We are, in fact, getting closer despite how endless the wait can feel, and I'm excited to finally be able to preview all that's been added since the first dev build!