Game Update #17 (Patreon)

Hello, everyone! October has arrived, and with it comes the latest update on the game.

I've spent the past two months working very hard, and I'm happy to say I'm finally nearing the dev build milestone. I'm anticipating releasing it to Seniors and Graduates by the end of this upcoming week. Which also means we're that much closer to the full early access release!

I've got the details below, as well as some discussion about what I've learned making this portion of the game. Let's get into it!

Script

The script for the party is entirely complete, and it is a pretty massive amount of text. There are 7 different story paths here (Dominic, Marco, Owen, Riley, Evan, Julian, and going at it solo) with many alternate scenes and different/additional dialogue to account for your choices.

The writing for this portion was even more extensive than I expected, and I was already expecting a lot! But it's been a main design goal from the beginning to make player choices actually change the story, sometimes significantly so, and to offer up a number of different storylines to make the final product eminently replayable. 

Putting that goal into action as a solo dev has been a challenge for sure, but now that the actual scripting work for the next release is done, I'm pretty proud of how it shaped up. It's got a lot of fun stuff, including scenes I added after seeing the response some of the new characters received 😉 

Next is finishing writing the two hookup scenes that you can choose from (or not choose at all) at the end of this part of the story. A good amount of these scenes are written, but since the scenes aren't included in the dev build, the writing has been temporarily set aside so I can wrap up coding.

Art

All of the CGs that were planned for the dev build are done, as are all the essential backgrounds. Some new backgrounds will have variants that will be created before the final release—similarly to orientation, I want to have alternate backgrounds for when Connor is alone on screen that show other people, and then have the people fade out when you're speaking with someone. Otherwise it'd feel like a really empty party!

Beyond that are all the new sprites being added. For an in-development build, I generally only plan to have one basic sprite to use as a placeholder for new expressions, just to save time. Currently with the other pressing art done, I've been able to create additional sprites for the main guys for this early build and may have time to start adding in the expressions for the new side characters as well.

Once the dev build is complete, I'll be jumping straight into CG creation for the hookup scenes. This is the majority of the work left before the final release, and I have every intention to maintain the same level of quality that was displayed in the two version of the Leo hookup scene.

Speaking of new CGs, in planning for them I realized it might be a good time to start making revisions to older character models and, by extension, their sprites. I've developed so much over the past year when it comes to using Daz 3D, and some of the first guys I made could use some touchups. 

For this update, it's Marco getting a refresh. Since Marco is going to be featured in a lot of the CGs in this upcoming release, I needed his rough edges sanded off to have him looking his best. What I changed:

• The gloss on his skin has been turned way, way down. Under some lighting conditions, he had a weirdly slick look to him that was due to some technical stuff I didn't know about when he was first created. 
• His fingernails have been adjusted so they don't appear painted white.
• His neck has been adjusted to have more realistic proportions and to give him an Adam's apple.
• His pecs have been decreased in size. When I made him initially, I used shaping morphs to dial those suckers up to the max they would go—which ended up making weird folds appear when trying to pose his arms, among other issues.
• Blasphemously, I also shrank his ass. But don't panic! I'm an ass aficionado and would never let any of my more bountiful boys lose their bubble butts. Like with Marco's pecs, I originally went crazy with the butt dial, and it basically made him look like he had ass implants when viewed from certain angles. He now has a butt that better fits his frame while still being nice and peachy.

These are changes that seem minor and subtle, but together they add to a greater whole. Below are some pics that show the before and after.

First, I have recreated his Day Two sprites, including making a new default pose. The original default sprite has been bugging me for awhile—he's standing up way too rigid, for one, and also staring straight ahead into the camera.

For Marco's new sprites, his poses have been adjusted to give him a more natural posture, and I've also adjusted the lighting so his features aren't as washed out. Going forward I'm also going to use the same camera height for all character sprites, using 6'2" / 188 cm Matt to set the top edge. With the camera set at the same height for everyone, you will get a much clearer idea of their physicality when they're next to each other on screen.

This means some guys are going to appear shorter than before, like Marco below. But it's really just a shift in camera angle and posture correction. Here's the before and after for Marco's default sprite:

When I have time, I also plan to go back and adjust some of the more problematic CGs—some have lighting that's too bright, others have unnatural posing, and some have weird details like depth of field being off. I did a very quick test for a remake of Marco's first intro CG to show the potential improvement:

The intention for this image was to have it appear as if Marco was caught in the middle of leaning over to pull his pants up, stood up quickly, and glanced over at Connor. And as is plainly obvious, I also wanted to show off his bubble butt. (See above, re: ass aficionado.)

The new pose is more natural and less rigid, plus you can see the difference changing the neck, pecs, and ass made. You can also see the colors are different. Rather than the more bronze-y look of the original CG, for the potential new one I'd cool down the image and bring up the blues.

Anyway, this is a lot of words to say more art revision will come down the pipeline. With a year of practice under my belt, I think I've grown quite a bit as an artist, and I'm looking forward to enhancing some of the earlier work as I have time. 

Coding

Ah, code. This is where I'm at right now for the dev build—turning thousands upon thousands of words into something playable. Mostly this has been going smoothly with the exception of some of the choice menus.

See, along with the whole "choices matter" thing comes accounting for many, many variables like: who did you come with, if anyone? who have you spoken to so far? if you spoke to them before, what do they say if you come back? if you agreed to hang out with another person, how do they respond to you turning down their hangout invite? And so on.

This section's "greet everyone" menu is the same type of looping menu I did for orientation and after Will's class, just times ten. With this many variations of how you can go through choices, it also means it takes hours upon hours to test to search for bugs (and I'm sure I've missed many).

I did this to myself, so I can't be too mad. 😅 I'll just say I'm so glad to have that part of the update done. The other coding going on is much simpler, and I will do everything I can to avoid such a crazily complex menu in the future!

Were I to ever have enough funds to hire another dev, it would absolutely be for coding. As much as I like controlling every detail of the game to my exact specifications, I think I could convince myself to let this job go!

Looking Ahead

As it has been for the past two months, my immediate future is frat party, frat party, and more frat party. With only the coding left for the dev build, I should finally have that milestone done. That leaves just the final two hookup scenes to create, meaning we're so, so close to having a release everyone can play! I hope you're as eager to play it as I am to share it, and thank you so much for your patience while I create this hefty chunk of content.

In the future, I don't really want to go so long between releases. I also don't want to kill myself with stress by trying to get a lot done in a short timeframe while keeping up the quality. With that in mind, I've been planning out the individual updates for the next stretch of the game, adjusting as I go to account for what I've learned making the game thus far.

After the first two days (orientation day and the first day of class), I'm going to start going into a week-by-week format, as was always planned. Each week has a specific theme and goal in mind that I apply to every storyline. This is a visual novel, after all, and so pacing is pretty important.

The stretch after Day Two is Week One, taking you through the weekend. The themes of this section are The Morning After and Getting to Know You. (Later on we have weeks like "Defining the Relationship" and "Complications, Part 1," among others!) I've now taken the general overview of the week and outlined its specifics. In doing so, I chunked the week into what content will be in its individual releases, which you can see here (text intentionally obscured):

The biggest adjustment I recently made was to the two sections that have magenta squares underneath them. Much like the end of Day Two, these portions split off from the linear narrative and branch out into multiple different storylines.

While originally these two sections were going to be one update each, after working on the frat party I realized it would be much more feasible to divide both sections into three updates apiece. The large pink box tracks the featured characters throughout several key points in the section, and then the three boxes below are where I planned out whose stories are in each update.

Hooray for learning from experience!

Discord?

Lastly, I'm looking for some feedback on potentially making a Discord server for the game, possibly with benefits for Patreon patrons. I've looked at some servers for other games to get a sense of what I should include, but I'm curious to know what you would like to see (or if you guys are even interested in a server!). If you have any comments on this, please leave them below, or feel free to DM me.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and end this incredibly lengthy post. As always, thank you for your support! The time your patronage has granted me to work on this project has been invaluable 🙂

- Danny