Status Update #78

Hey everyone! I finally have a new status update for you.

The cover boy for this update is someone I introduced in a Sneak Peek post a little while back, so he'll be new to many of you. This is Henri, Matt's former roommate who was briefly mentioned in the Day 2 afternoon convo with Matt. I'll get back to him later in this status update.

First, huge apologies for missing the second April status report. I had a family emergency last week that took up all my attention. Everything turned out fine, thankfully. But combined with other non-game stuff I had to handle in April, making code adjustments for content settings, and remaking some art to go along with that, I didn't really make much progress on the next game update last month.

What I did make progress on during all this was actually for the game update following the one I'm working on now, which will be a story update that heavily features Matt.

Writing

Grind'm updates were originally intended to serve as smaller updates to tide us over between story updates—something I could easily crank out while simultaneously working on the story to follow.

That's still the intention, and I did actually make some decent headway on the continuation of Matt's story. That included beginning to map out the many different topics you can talk about if you didn't hang out with him, then deciding the importance of each one. For example, having your first time is a bit more pressing than getting invited to Evan's place (unless those end up being directly related...). The flowchart for that looks like this right now:

And these are most of the topics waiting to be slotted in:

If you did hang out, the conversation has a totally different flow, so that needed mapped out, too:

A lot of this can just be briefly touched on, if it needs to be touched on at all, but it's worth charting out so I don't forget anything. One important reason is because what you talk about can affect Matt's Hookup Level, which can radically change how your next hangout plays out.

It was in creating these charts that I got inspired for that part of the update in particular, which is why I haven't finished the charts yet—I went on a writing spree.

I already wrote a fair bit of Matt's scenes ages and ages ago, but this time I wrote what came before, added in variant scenes I previously skipped over, and got it ready to be programmed. All that's missing is the art.

There is a lot of good stuff in these scenes, and I can't wait for you to play through them. Which brings me to...

What's Next?

It's pretty clear I tend to let myself get pulled in too many directions at once. Whether that be addressing stuff I think was missing from the Morning After Update, creating the new guides for the game, updating character models, revising art, etc.—it's all distracting from the actual release of new content. Which in this case is Trevor's Grind'm scenario.

In writing more of Matt's scenes, I realized how much I want you guys to continue the story. So I'm putting on my project manager hat and making myself focus on what is immediately relevant to get the next release out so I can then turn my focus entirely on the story update.

That's the aim for the next few weeks—with the exception of a few things that are already almost done, I'm going to focus on nothing but this next game update and using downtime while waiting for images to render to work on the story update that'll follow. I'll have two more status reports this month to keep you all appraised of how it's going.

Questions for You!

Before I sign off, I have some queries for anyone who feels like answering!

Question 1 - This first question brings us back to new boy Henri. Looking at him, what do you think he might be studying at 21CA? Anything arts-related is up for grabs except maybe actor or writer, for story reasons. I need a major for him and am not sure what direction to go, so I'm open to ideas!

Question 2 - I haven't done many Sneak Peek posts lately because I usually reserve those for art, and I feel like I've already sneak peek-ed a lot of Trevor's Grind'm scenario. I'm curious if any of you would be interested in just reading a portion of the script. If you are, I'll happily share some of the Matt stuff I wrote...

That's it for now. I don't have an updated to-do list since it hasn't really moved, but I'll have a new one for you in the next status update.

I hope everyone has a good week!