Ep5 update 23/06/2024 (Patreon)

Hello friends! Happy Sunday!

This week I am excited to show off some new plans for the game.

In chapter 5, you will get a bit of a timeskip to the end of October, where you get a brief dating montage with your girlfriend of choice. If you don't have a girlfriend, then the main character will instead focus on self improvement giving you a +5 boost in all stats and some bonus cash.

The narrator will visit you in a dream to give you a bit of a rundown of your choices so far.

 He will also have different things to say about your stats.

After the timeskip you will meet the 3 girls in the courtyard as seen in the header image. The three main girls got a fresh set of Autumn clothing sprites. They will make plans to go to a halloween party, since it's october 31st.

You will join the party and if your girlfriend is not one of the three, you will tell them about who you are dating, and ask if it's okay to bring your girlfriend along.

So this scene allows the three original girls to react to your choices a bit. The only exception is Hino, if you're dating Hino then the player will stay silent about it.

I also added a scene into ep3 where you have a bit of a 'let's move on and be friends' discussion with your ex girlfriend, be it Manami, Yuka or Saya.

I also plan on adding a way to bypass dating Manami, Yuka and Saya into the game. This will require me to add in some new scenes to ep1. Not sure how much work is involved yet but I believe it will be worth it.

--- Some technical stuff about the technologies I am using ---

In other news, I started experimenting with some new AI technology. Including video animations. No I will probably not add animations into the game, but I will have it as supplementary content outside of the game. I already posted on deviantart a low res Yuka growth animation. I've managed to optimize my GPU to make some higher res animations.

I've also experimented with SDXL which allows for more unique poses and prompting - trying out ways to implement it into my current workflow but here is an example image

SDXL allows for a few things

1. Better looking feet and hands - this will improve the art greatly if I manage to implement it into the game.

2. More aesthetic full body poses.

3. Greater posing in general, so it will be less time consuming to make images of the girls interacting with objects and such.

My main challenge with it is to have style consistency. But I believe it's a matter of practice and using some added refining steps.

I share my findings in the discord for those of you who want to follow along.

anyway that's it for this Sunday! Thank you for supporting the project and looking forward to sharing more.

-Jon