Game Update #37 (Patreon)

Hey there, friends! A new month has arrived, which means a new game status update.

The biggest news of the past few weeks is, of course, the Club Update is now in early access! If you're at Sophomore tier or above, you can download and play right now by visiting this post.

For our Freshmen, the free public update is only a few weeks away. It'll drop on 21 August.

With the Club Update finally done, I can now move on to the next phase of the game. Let's talk about the New You Update.

Art

There are two halves to this update, and the first being worked on is the introduction of the new Connor model to the game. In addition to new sprites, all gallery images that show Connor need to be rerendered. In total there are 292 CGs that are being remade. Here's my CG checklist to make sure I don't miss any:

That is obviously a lot and seems pretty daunting. But this includes:

• Every image that has Connor blurry in the foreground or background
• Edited versions of the same images, like Connor's introductory title card or the four images making up Owen & Julian's introduction
• The most recently made CGs, which were already set up for the new model

Additionally, my tests showed that for most CGs I can just insert the new model, copy the original pose over, make a few minor edits, and render.

What'll take the most time is rendering the images again, though with the addition of a denoising post-processing step they can run for less time than the original images without affecting the quality of the final CG. There is also image editing, which may actually take more time than setting up the renders. I have several days dedicated solely to this task.

Some of the earlier images are going to be completely remade, and these will take the longest to revise. Here's a cropped example of a new image, which replaces the second CG in the fantasizing sequence early in the game:

The full CG plus the CG it'll be replacing can be seen in the attached gallery.

The difference between the first CGs I made for the game and the new revised ones is pretty insane. I've learned a lot about making renders and doing post-processing in the past few years, and I'm excited that the opening of the game will better represent that.

So this is a big job, but with the considerations listed above, I think it's something very doable in these first few weeks of August.

Art-wise, the second half of August will be dedicated to creating the CGs for the first Grind'm hookup scenario with Jordi. And speaking of Grind'm...

Writing

If you're unfamiliar, Grind'm is a new feature that's being introduced in the New You Update. As you play, you'll unlock a hookup scenario with one of the game's hot side characters upon first meeting them. The guys who get a scenario are chosen by Graduate patrons, and the first one will be with Jordi, one of your dormmates that can be met in the Club Update.

The scenario will play out like one would in-game, only with less introspection by Connor—it'll be assumed that Connor is more experienced so he can focus on the fun. You'll be able to choose the flow of the hookup by choosing your position, with options for bottom, top, side, or a combination.

Like the art for this scenario, the writing and coding will be done in the back half of the month. I'll have more info on this first Grind'm scenario in the mid-month status update.

The very end of the month includes a number of days dedicated solely to final planning of the story update that'll follow the New You Update. There are a lot of considerations that'll go into the writing of that section of the game, and in fact...

Help shape the story!

Connor's first day of classes ended with the events at Matt's place, the frat party, or the club. His journey there involved making many, many choices—choices which will be unique to each player.

I'd love to know more about your particular choices and specifically what questions you hope Connor asks himself the next morning. It's simple enough to plan out what happens if, for instance, you hang out with Riley in the afternoon, go to the party with him, and end the night making out. But what if your Connor hung out with Riley in the afternoon, then went to the club to hang out with Isaiah, and then went back home to find Marco having some solo fun? What do you think Connor's thought process might be when he wakes up?

I have all sorts of variants planned already, but I'm sure there are scenarios I haven't thought of. If you'd like to tell me more about your playthrough, what questions you want Connor to ask himself, and whatever else you'd like to see, head over to this post and leave a comment. As always, if you don't feel comfortable commenting,  you can definitely DM me instead.

Looking ahead

The introduction of Grind'm is so we can have smaller content drops to tide us over between bigger story updates. I'm planning to get the New You Update out before the end of August, but as we know from the Club Update, setting any sort of firm date is unwise. Regardless, that's the goal, and I'll be working hard to meet it.

I've got a whole lot of fun new content planned in the coming weeks and months. From hooking up with Jordi in the New You Update to finding out what happens in situations like waking up at Matt's place in the Morning After Update, I think there's a lot to look forward to.

Thank you for your ongoing patronage! The game as it is today would not exist without everyone's encouragement and support. I hope you have fun playing the Club Update, and I look forward to getting out more Freshmen to you soon!