Game Status Update #65 (Patreon)

Hey there, folks! Sorry about the late status update, but I'll get back to that in a moment.

First, we have our Grind'm winner. With 2/3 of the final votes, the guy who earned the third Grind'm hookup scenario is Parker! I suspect it was the combo of his endowment and the potential scenario I mentioned in this post that put him over the top 😉

Now, to the rest of the game! I had to deal with some personal emergencies at the end of last month, which along with adjusting to a new medication put me behind about a week on my schedule. But I'm still forging ahead with an eye to put the Morning After Update into early access in the coming weeks.

Let's take a look at my checklist to see what remains and what's been done as of today.

Writing Checklist

Completed:

• Dorm to Showers - 11 variants

• Showers - 2 primary variants, several smaller ones

• Mid-shower sequence - 34 small variants

• Unlocked Character Scene - 2 variants

• Still to do:

• Dorm to Class - 5 variants

• Tomas's Class - 2 variants

• Will's Class - 2 variants

Coding Checklist

Completed:

• Bug fixes to what was already released

• Coding & testing the completed scenes from above

• Several of the more involved final pass checks

Still to do:

• Code the remaining new scenes once written

• Re-insert scenes that were removed from the recent dev build

• Final testing

Art Checklist

Completed CGs:

• Revised Leo tease day 1-1

• Trevor Grind'm profile pic 1

• Shower entrance group scene

• 10 shower tease CGs (including 7 I originally cut and have now re-added)

• 3 Riley CGs

• 1 Tomas CG

• 1 Will CG

Completed sprites:

• 118 Connor sprites (shirtless, day 1 outfit, day 2 outfit, week 1a outfit)

• 21 Riley sprites (towel)

• 7 Antonio sprites (week 1a outfit)

• 6 Blaze sprites (naked)

• 6 Jordi sprites (naked)

• 3 Quinn sprites (underwear)

• 4 Wes sprites (jock strap)

• 6 Xavier sprites (underwear)

Completed backgrounds:

• Shower hall

• Riley's dorm room

• Tomas's class with new lesson plan

Partially completed:

• 1 Leo CG

Still to do:

• 15 new CGs

• 34 additional new CGs - Currently very optional

• 12 Revised CGs - Currently optional

• New Sprites - Week 1 clothing and/or various states of undress for Cherish, Evan, Kaleb, Will, & Tomas.

• Revised sprites for a number of characters - Currently optional

• Existing dorm and frat house backgrounds denoised and color corrected

I'll expand on a few of these, so read on if you're interested in some specifics.

Writing

The final two sections on the to-do list—Tomas's class and Will's class—mark the real return to straightforward scenes, so I only have one sort of complicated section left, which is what occurs after you leave the dorm and before Tomas's class. That section covers a number of different scenarios, particularly concerning Matt and Evan, but it's not as hefty as earlier variants I had to write. Like many of you, I'm particularly excited to get to the Will scenes at long last.

Art

This is where a lot of work has gone. I noted above that I re-added 7 CGs I originally cut from the game in order to save time. I decided to cut them because I figured I could just do dialogue and sprites for those scenes... but when I actually wrote the sequences, I realized it would be a crime to not give you a full visual. These CGs fall under the "tease" category, as would the 34 other CGs that I noted as very optional. Those 34 are more "like to have" and are maybe possible to make since they're all based on one scene setup. Realistically, I'll probably just leave the visual to your imagination for now, then potentially add them later.

You'll notice as well that I created 118 new Connor sprites—along with his new outfit, I remade all of his existing sprites except the few of him in a robe.

For all new sprites, I am using a new camera setup since the original camera was angled such that the taller the character, the closer their head was to the lens, which made their proportions look off.

Like every character, Connor's new sprites use this new setup. He had some tweaks to his model as well, so I went ahead and used the updated version of Connor when making the images. Once I saw how the new sprites turned out, I decided it would be worth the effort to remake all the others.

All his poses had minor adjustments so he was facing the camera in its new position, and two expressions were changed beyond that. It was a little bit of work, but once those pose changes were finished, it was trivial to just apply them to him in his different outfits, then set them to render overnight. It wasn't necessarily a fast process because of how slow Daz is to load, save, and apply a pose, but I used the time in between to comb through code to fix errors.

Here's a new Connor sprite next to the original:

 The most noticeable difference is, of course, his hair. For anyone familiar with Daz Studio, Connor's hair asset is strand based, which means it can use the new omni shader. I'd been experimenting and found shader settings that made his hair color very similar to the original while looking much better under lighting.

But as you can see, the colors aren't an exact match in these sprites. Under other lighting conditions, they're basically the same shade of brown. For some reason, under the sprite photo booth lighting the old shaders have a slight green-yellow tint that I don't like. I'm much happier with the new shaders.

I also finally figured out how to fix a long-standing issue, which is that the part in his hair left a massive bald spot that I often had to fill in when editing images. Here's an example of what I mean:

Turns out I was able to raise the part to fill that in. It changed Connor's silhouette a little, but I don't mind it. I think it's all an improvement, especially since I figured out how to change the texture under the hair from gray to brown, too.

The other model changes are very minor and probably won't really be noticeable except in closeup images. Connor seemed a little too "smooth" to me, which can make him appear a little younger than he is in some images. I decided to rough him up a little and change some proportions. Specifically:

• I ever so slightly narrowed the width of his head

• I added some HD details to add some more texture to his features like his lips and under his eyes

• I added vellus hairs to his face—the very pale "peach fuzz" many people have.

• I reshaped his lips using different morphs since from some camera angles his original lips looked like he had filler. Not a great look when he's supposed to have a natural pout.

All but two of his expressions are the same, although I had to angle his head to look at the new camera position, so there'll be some slight differences. The two expressions I changed beyond that were his shy one and his smile.

 His smile had been bugging me for a while, and I realized when comparing it to his cocky expression that it mostly had to do with the width of his lips and the smile not really touching his eyes. I looked at a lot of pictures of attractive guys smiling to try and figure out what might look natural, then made changes accordingly.

 His shy expression was one I started to see a lot  while making the new update, and I came to strongly dislike it. It's meant to serve as a transition between any combo of his blushing, nervous, and relieved expressions, but it just looked really weird and off to me. I took the opportunity provided by making new sprites to improve it by using a slight adjustment of his blushing expression. Here's how it fits in as a transitional sprite:

 For some other characters, I made full body pose changes since I was already having to adjust them for the new camera and lighting. Blaze is a good example—the left sprite is one I made awhile ago using his original pose, and the final sprite is on the right. The older sprite also shows the big head effect caused by the old camera angle.

Beyond changes made for the camera adjustments, I wanted his pose to be sexier now that he's completely naked. Fun fact for anyone who knows American TV from the '90s—this pose was inspired by Trent from Daria.

For both CGs and sprites I've been turning more and more to a program called Marvelous Designer. There's basic cloth simulation in Daz, but Marvelous Designer is specifically made for simulating fabric, so it's what I've long used to give guys the prominent VPL I personally love. The program also has a lot of ridiculously cheap and free clothing assets, which is great because there's not a lot of clothing options for male Daz figures.

As an example of the differences in simulation quality, here's the original Xavier sprite that was done using dForce in Daz to simulate his clothing. On the right is his final sprite, which had the clothing created in Marvelous Designer.

As I get better at using tools like Marvelous Designer to achieve the effects I want, I'm becoming even more confident in the art I make... which is part of what keeps tempting me to go back and redo older pieces. But I've been focusing on being smarter about when I do and do not do revisions, so while I just redid all of main character Connor's sprites, guys like Blaze and Xavier are still going to use their old sprites for their earlier appearances since they're serviceable for now.

All that said, one thing that's becoming more of a pain point as I work to wrap up this update is how long everything takes when it comes to creating and rendering all the images I need. I absolutely need a beefier computer soon, which I think I'll be able to get based on the support I already receive from all of you as well as what may come from new patrons who join once early access is out. For now, I'll just deal with long simulation times by getting other work done while I wait for it to finish!

The Next Few Weeks

My schedule is wildly out of whack due to what I mentioned at the start of this post, which is part of why I lost track of the days between the 1st and now. But I've got an eye on all I need to do to release this update at long last. I don't know when, exactly, because as a solo developer there's no one to fill in for me any time I need to take a sick day. But I should still have enough time to wrap up all I need to wrap up. I'll keep you posted!

That's what I've got for today! Right now I gotta get back to making all these dirty pictures and writing those erotic scenes you've all waited so patiently for 😉