Game Update #50 (Patreon)

February's bimonthly game status update is a little late due to the big news of the past few weeks—the first dev build for the Morning After Update is complete! I won't rehash what you've probably already seen, but if you missed the other posts, click here for the announcement I shared with everyone, and click here if you're a Senior or Graduate looking for the download links.

This build was a long time coming, but there's still much left to do before the full Morning After Update goes into early access. Let's check out what I'm working on now:

Writing

I just came off playing and replaying and replaying the storylines for Matt, Evan, Owen, & Julian, so it'll be both a challenge and a relief to turn my attention to every other storyline left to do. If you've read past game status updates, you know that all of this is already flowcharted out, so that part is done. Now I just need to do the actual scripting!

I'm first focusing on the Griffin story, since it's pretty straightforward, then moving on to all the many variations of how you end up sleeping in your dorm room. 

I talked a little in the past about "layering" choices on top of what I would consider an "ideal" path through the game. For instance, I first wrote out what would happen if you focused just on Matt and then later adding dialogue addressing stuff like propositioning Will, how you handled your afternoon hangout, what specific choices you made with Matt & Leo the night before, etc.

I'm going to work on a more concrete plan for addressing and testing these choice-based additions and adjustments since it became kind of mind-bending trying to keep the flow of each scene feeling natural while doing my best not to forget specific choices. Rethinking how I handle this is another thing I'll be working on the next few weeks.

Coding

Consolidating all the choice flags into easier to remember variables has gone pretty well. Being able to go from "if this and this and this and this, then that" to "if this then that" has really smoothed out the coding process. Reorganizing the script into several smaller scripts each focused on a specific character has also been a big help—now if I want to adjust a Julian scene, I don't have to search through a mile-long script to find it. I just open the Julian script file.

The actual consolidation is still a little challenging. It involves looking at every choice you can make for each character and then figuring out the right order to set each new variable so that your relationship status ends up in the correct state. There's also the matter of ensuring that if a status changes based on new choices, I remove the prior relationship status.

Organizing both this and the writing is a little like untying an increasingly tighter knot. It's all feeling more organized now than it did a year ago, but there's still some work to do in the coming weeks to smooth the process even further so as to avoid long delays between releases.

Art

I've talked before about how transitioning from Day 2 to this new in-game week is giving me an opportunity to take a good, long look at every character model and fix anything that has been problematic when it comes to creating the game's art.

I'll be going in-depth about the character revision process in this month's Behind the Scenes post, and you can see some more info in Game Update #49. But this latest dev build added a bunch of revised sprites, and I want to show them side by side with the original versions so we can see how much of a difference this is making.

Faculty

Up first we have Will, Madame Zeal, and Tomas:

Lighting makes a huge difference, and in the game's infancy I really hadn't figured it out. Pretty much all the characters looked washed out. During the making of the Club Update I created a static "photo booth" so every character would have the same new, more flattering lighting setup.

In making new sprites, I'm adjusting the poses using the naked versions of the characters to make sure their body and dick will look its best in future nude sprites. So here, Will is in the same pose as before but rotated slightly. His body was also changed a bit to fix some issues. But the guiding goal for model updates is just to enhance the character in often subtle ways rather than do anything as jarring as the swap from Connor version 1 to the new Connor.

You can't really see the changes to Will here, although he looks a little narrower due to being rotated. Don't worry, he's just as beefy as before. A more prominent change was how I angled his face and manipulate the neck joints, both to improve facial expressions and to make shifts in head position a little more natural.

Madame Zeal got herself a glow-up 'cause I really did her dirty originally. I went with bolder makeup and some earrings to better accessorize her outfit. She also got new hair—in the first version, the hair on the sides of her head looks awful. This new 'do has the same vibe but is a much better made asset.

As an aside, if you for some reason decide not to jack off after orientation, you'll get to see a whole new side of Madame Zeal...

Tomas got more changes than either Will or Madame Zeal, although the model itself is the exact same. I wasn't a fan of the textures of his original clothes, so I swapped to a different outfit with similar vibes. I had Connor describe Tomas as "rugged", so I went with a western-style shirt to better match my vision of him.

And of course his pose changed completely. The original with the arm behind his back was just kind of awkward. I also shifted how he holds himself—he has very broad shoulders and a narrow waist, and I wanted to highlight that while avoiding the width difference looking too extreme. The new hip/leg positioning is also at a much better angle for his eventual nude sprite.

Lastly, I angled the left side of his head face towards the camera. Seeing the hair part and the scarring on his left eyebrow makes his face a little more memorable.

Skinema

All of the band members got adjusted, not just Mafia and NC17 like we saw in Game Update #49.

In addition to the updated lighting, the sprite "photo booth" has the camera in a fixed position so that everyone's height is accurately represented. Asher is the tallest guy in the game at 6'5"/196 cm, so I wanted his head basically scraping the top of the screen.

I also changed up his clothes—the original outfit was too bulky and had cartoon-y textures that I didn't like. I chose new clothing that better frames his body, particularly to show off his neck/chest tattoo.

This is a good example of just how much space the original NC17 took up on the screen. I repositioned his pose to have a similar vibe while being a bit more contained. I also opted to change the material on his shorts to latex, since that seemed more in keeping with who he is.

Mafia had some adjustments to fix his pec shape, and I figured he'd want to show it off! I also changed the materials of his clothes since, like Asher, I didn't like the original textures.

And here we come to the largest change this side of new Connor.

Original Noir had a flat, cartoon look to her. She also had an indistinct face and was just a way worse model than female characters that came later like Cherish, Jasmine, and Brooke.

I tossed the model in the trash and scouted out a newer, more detailed model with more memorable features. I also got some quality makeup assets so I can swap her look from a more bold stage look to a more minimal look for other times.

I'm not sure if anyone was, like, super into the original Noir, especially since this is a game focused on guys. But I personally think this is a massive upgrade that makes the band as a whole look a lot more polished.

Some CGs have been updated to accommodate the adjustments, like a new intro CG for Tomas and new fantasy CGs for the band boys. There will be some other CG changes as well, but they aren't yet implemented since I needed to focus on finishing the dev build. More of this work will be going on as I reintroduce each new guy and take a critical look at their base model and their sprites/CGs.

Looking Ahead

I pretty much covered what all I'm focusing on up above—writing the content for the next dev build and working on further streamlining the coding process. There are also around 28 new CGs to create, plus a bunch of new sprites.

I won't venture to guess now how long it'll be until the next dev build is done. Probably not super soon. I'll have a better idea once we hit March!

There's also Patreon content coming to round out February! You'll soon have a Guy Gallery and Bonus Gallery, plus the Behind the Scenes post I mentioned above. You can expect those over the next week and a half.

That's all I've got today! I'm gonna give myself a day to take a breath now that the dev build is released, but then it's right back to work. There are a lot more morning afters to be made!