Game Update #19 (Patreon)

Hello, all! If you celebrate, I hope your Halloween was as fun and sexy as the one the guys had in last month's galleries!

November has arrived, so it's time for the latest update on the game's status. In the last update, I noted that I had an overly ambitious plan to get the frat party release completely done before October ended, but that I expected reality would dash those ambitions. Which is of course what happened—unfortunately, it turns out I need to actually sleep sometimes 😒

The good news is I still made a significant amount of progress over the past few weeks and am anticipating having the full frat party release finally done in a week or so's time! 

Let's go over what's left to do and then look ahead to what's coming next.

Script

The last part of the script, the two hookups scenes, are written. Writing the script for the frat party itself and the hookups was an all-consuming part of making this update for several months straight, so it's a relief to be able to set my virtual pen aside for a bit. But that doesn't mean I've let my brain slack off too much. I'll talk a bit about starting the writing process for the club update below.

Art

This is where the majority of the work is still ongoing. The frat party release will end with two hookup opportunities, and with those comes a ton of CGs. Originally, my planned CG count for these sequences was 37 images in total. But while making the CGs, I decided to expand a bit further to add some transition pieces. That led to the current CG count being 49 instead. 

With how much I nitpick each CG before being satisfied, the additional 12 CGs definitely increased the timeframe for the finished release, and I may still yet add a few more. But one CG set in particular is for a first encounter with a romanceable character, and it just felt right to pace out your first time with him with additional images. There's a certain unexpected sensuality to it that I think made the extra effort worth it.

Most of the hookup scenes' CGs are done, and there are still some sprites left to render for side characters. But I'm managing to turn images out at a good pace as we're nearing release. With a year's practice under my belt, including making the Patreon galleries, I'm getting ever more adept at quickly making high quality images. 

Coding

I've been doing some testing of the current build while waiting on images to render, but haven't really begun coding the remaining content in earnest just yet. But I expect this part to go pretty smoothly because these sections are so CG heavy. What that means is I can skip all the parts of the code where I have to add in changing expressions. That basically means I just have to put quotes around a bunch of dialogue lines. Pretty easy stuff, which is a relief in light of the complicated coding for the party itself!

Looking Ahead

As production for the frat party release nears its end, I've been increasingly looking ahead to the club release... and beyond. As much fun as it's been creating stories for the guys at the frat party, it's exciting to be able to switch some focus to Alex, Asher, Griffin, Isaiah, and the Skinema boys!

Plotting

It's the return of the flowcharts! Here's what I have for the club release so far:

The top portion covers the immediate aftermath of telling the guys you're going to the club with them, and then below is the various ways in which you can enter the club hangout. 

At the bottom is the beginning of the hangouts proper. The big multi-colored boxes are bullet points laying out the sequence of events as well as lists of new characters involved in each guy's storyline. These notes will soon be translated into actual charts to better track the flow of the evening.

Much like the frat party, you'll be able to follow different storylines throughout the night with a few spots where you can swap to a different guy (or go solo) if you so desire. But if you've seen the frat party flowcharts in prior updates, you can already see this is simplified. This is due in part to there being only 4 storylines plus a solo path versus 6 storylines and a solo path for the frat party. But I'm also consciously limiting just how much I intertwine and branch things this time. My aim is to present just as much story for these guys as those at the frat party but without overcomplicating things. This should cut way back on development time for this update.

Character Creation

Just as the frat party has many new characters to help the party come alive, so too will the club. More, in fact. Currently I'm planning around 17 new characters. Some are very, very minor—think a Neon Fries fan boy running up to Alex—while others will be more significantly involved in ongoing storylines. 

I spent way too much time making the 14 new character models for the frat party, so I'm making an effort to not be so precious with these new ones—especially not the glorified extras! To aid with that, I'll be leaning a little heavier on out-of-the-box figure model assets for some of these characters. For most characters I do a lot of customization to their base model, but that's truly not necessary for someone like Groupie #1. I don't think there'll be any noticeable quality difference, but this is a time saving measure that should again lead to a quicker production time. 

Don't worry, though—I'll still give extra attention to the more prominent new guys to make sure they're hot. In fact, I just created someone's brother and I get a feeling he'll be a fave for some of you 😉 I'll be sharing a sneak peek of some of these characters with Juniors, Seniors, & Graduates in the coming days.

Asset Acquisition

Speaking of character models, I've also been doing a lot of asset searches. This is in part me going through everything I already own to see what I can use to create unique character models—everything from the base figure itself to hair, clothes, and makeup. Whatever gaps I have, I'm scouring sales to find appropriate assets. I'm even getting ahead of the game by finding clothes for all the main guys once we finally get past Day 2. This'll save me so much time later on.

One type of asset I've considered getting for the club update is music. I'm a little iffy on this one, in part because figuring out licensing for the sources I've found is tricky. These sources mention being used for indie games, but it seems the majority of their focus is on YouTube videos, so I don't really know how game use works. Although I do have a few songs picked out (including for the main menu), I'll probably have to hold out on this and ambient noise/sound effects for awhile yet. Plus it might be kind of strange to have a completely silent game until a musical sequence three hours in!

Additional Content

Lastly, I've been thinking for awhile about how to add additional game content between bigger content drops once we move past these Day 2 evening hangouts. If you've played Coming Out on Top, you may remember the Brofinder dates. (And if you like Freshmen but haven't played Coming Out on Top, drop everything and play it immediately—it was a big inspiration for this project!) They added hookups outside of the main storyline accessed from the main menu.

Inspired by the Brofinder feature, I was thinking—what if I did some side hookups for this game as well? Just something relatively small for you to play while waiting for continuation of the main storylines, a main menu option where you can choose to go on Grindm hookups with guys you've met in-game. Meaning you'd be able to hook up with some of these hot side characters I keep making 😉 I'm curious if that sounds like something you guys would like!

Back To Work!

Okay, this update has gone on long enough! I'm getting right back to work on wrapping up this frat party release at long last. We're so close, you guys! I'm so excited for everyone to finally get to play!

And Seniors & Graduates, don't forget—the early dev build including the full frat party is already available. You can find it in this post if you haven't played it yet. 

Until next time!

- Danny