Status Update #77

Hey, all! April's first status update is here.

The cover image for today's update is a new version of a fantasy Connor can have after orientation. I was never a big fan of the old CG, in part due to how awkward Matt's face looked, so I'd been wanting to revise it for awhile.

I found a good excuse when I saw Matt and Leo trending to win the vote for March's Bonus Gallery. I was able to test out some changes to the models ahead of making the gallery and replace the old CG. Win-win for me!

Now, onto the next game update. Between needing to handle some important, non-game-related matters and adding in a new content preferences option (detailed below), I didn't make as much progress as I wanted.

New Feature: Content Preferences

I'm sure you're aware that a lot of US-based adult content creators are a little spooked due to what could be a crack down on our work sooner than later. Even creators outside the country should be worried since some platforms like Patreon are in the US and subject to its laws—they've already been actively revising their content guidelines.

This being a gay project and thus under a certain level of extra scrutiny, I want to be able to swiftly lock out the most "objectionable" content should I need to so I don't get kicked off this platform. Since I was adding flags for that anyway, I figured I could make it something you as players control. I know I've played a VN or two where something I wasn't comfortable with was suddenly front and center, so I thought this could be useful to make playing this game as positive an experience as possible.

The first and biggest adjustment I made is add a toggle for "Age Gap" content—that being suggestions of college students getting with professors or other much older guys. The first step was to figure out how exactly to make this a toggle, followed by combing through the entire game to find spots where I could hide content when that toggle is... well, toggled.

I also learned how to do floating tooltips so you can get an explanation of what each toggle does. This is what the Options page looks like with the new addition:

And when you hover over "Age Gap," you see this:

It ultimately wasn't super hard to figure out, just very time consuming and still ongoing. I am being very thorough about what is hidden when this is toggled off. Will and Tomas don't get main character title cards upon being introduced. If Matt is at orientation, there's no discussion about him finding Tomas hot. Scenes like walking in on Tomas cleaning his clothes are skipped entirely, and so on.

You also won't see Will or Tomas's galleries, and any other character's gallery that features a much older guy (like Bastien and Isaiah dancing) has the related CG removed whenever the content is toggled off. I knew it'd drive completionists crazy seeing those locked CGs, and I don't want anyone to feel compelled to go through content they don't want to see just to fill out their gallery pages.

There is at least one other content option I'll be adding, which unlike Age Gap, will actually be disabled by default. I considered just cutting the related content entirely, but I already did a lot of work the includes it and plan to do more in the future, so this seemed a fine middle ground for now. And I may add more options as I go, though really, this game is relatively tame as far as explicit scenarios go.

Not a super fun or entertaining task, but you know, just covering my bases.

Art

Since doing this game solo is a ton of work—leading to it taking a fair bit of time for each update to come out—I've been thinking of ways to ease my workload. Primarily that was hoping to one day hire help for things like programming or testing, since of course I have to do the writing.

Until recently, I also thought I'd need to be the only one working on art. I have a lot of CGs in the next Grind'm scenario that use the same setup for more than one image—same lighting & framing plus more or less the same poses—which I can dissolve into each other as a form of animation.

I have a tendency to get really caught up in making one image at a time, so I shifted my method to instead do the broad blocking of a scene so as to quickly move on to the next one, and then coming back later to do the fine details. It makes it easier to avoid getting stuck on one CG for an entire day.

I've been thinking that that first CG creation step—setting up the base poses, camera angle, and lighting—is something I could have other folks do before I come in and do all the fine adjustments. I'd need to find someone who can basically mimic my style, plus figure out a fair price to pay per CG. But if things come together, that'd ease my workload in a big way.

That's nothing I'm actively pursuing at the moment, and I would probably still do the brunt of the CG work myself, but it's on my mind. Maybe I'll have an update on that down the line.

As for art actively being created—I mentioned above I was testing some adjustments to Matt's character model when remaking the fantasy CG. I already adjusted his body awhile ago to fix proportions, and now I was able to update his existing textures to better match the realism of newer characters.

Along with that, I recreated all his sprites. This was to put him under the same lighting and camera conditions as all the other new sprites, as well as to adjust his pose to be more flattering when he has no clothes on. Here are a few views of the old sprites vs. the new:

A few notes:

• I made adjustments to Matt's body, but he's on the "do not fuck with his face!" list, so his head shape is exactly the same with the same textures. The differences you see are down to being rendered in a higher resolution, having textures update to interact with light better, a new pose, and a straight on camera angle vs. the old one that made his head look big.

• I learned a lot about posing for simulated underwear shots like this, so he "hangs" more naturally. I also discovered I can put elastic on the leg holes, which actually does make a huge difference!

• Now that he's rendered using the standardized camera angle all the other new sprites use, you can really see how tall he is. He towers over almost everyone.

Along with this, I also converted all the code for how his sprites are displayed, which I will eventually do for everyone. Basically, I originally had unique names for every single sprite and had to remember all of them each time I wanted to show a different expression.

I since learned a much easier way to do it which allows me to set an outfit once and then use standardized expression names instead. So where I once would have had to type "mt day 2 shirtless drunk smiling" I can now type that's the outfit he's using, then display it using just "mt smiling."

It's a lot of code to change and test, but I need to make all the older content work correctly with the new system. Unfortunately this has the side effect of you most likely needing to start a new game then run through to where you left off, otherwise the outfits will be messed up or you'll get errors. I try to avoid forcing players to do that with each new update, but sometimes it's the only way the game will be playable after changes are made.

Now, on to the to-do list. Like I mentioned above, most of my time was spent on the content stuff, so nothing is really marked off. I'll be back to wrapping up the fun stuff soon enough, though.

Items marked with an asterisk (*) are what's been updated or added since the last game update:

Completed Components

🟢 GENERAL 🟢

Revised Models

• Alex, full revision

• David, full revision

• * Evan, tweaks

• Isaiah, revision

• Marco, tweaks

• * Matt, tweaks

• NC17, tweaks

• * Owen, tweaks

• Trevor, tweaks

New Models

• Henri (Matt's former roommate)

• Patrick (music teacher)

Revised CGs

• Dominic/Isaiah Day 2 showers

• Isaiah intro

• Isaiah Day 1 tease

• Isaiah Day 2 tease

• Isaiah shower teases (4 of 4 completed)

• * Matt & Leo Day 1 tease

Revised Sprites 

• Connor's Grind'm clothes for Jordi's scenario (8 of 8 completed)

• David Day 2 (8 of 8 completed)

• Isaiah Day 1, Day 2 afternoon, Day 2 evening, underwear, & towel (41 of 41 completed)

• Jordi's Grind'm clothes (5 of 5 completed)

• Jordi naked erect (5 of 5 completed)

• * Matt Day 1, Day 2, Day 2 shirtless, Day 2 drunk, underwear, underwear semi, underwear erect, naked erect (103 of 103 complete)

Writing

• Isaiah Morning After Update pre-shower scene

• Evan Morning After Update pondering scene

• Evan Getting to Know You Update, Part 3 scene

• Will Getting to Know You Update, Part 3 scene

Coding

• * Content preference menu toggles

• * Content adjustments in-game to account for toggles (mostly done)

• Jordi's Grind'm scenario CG unlocks

• * Matt's sprite display code update

• Bug fixes (ongoing)

🟢 TREVOR GRIND'M UPDATE 🟢

Art - Menu

• Revised Grind'm menu screen

• Trevor profile pics (4 of 4 completed)

• Trevor profile text (2 of 2 completed)

•  Grind'm gallery screens (4 of 4 completed)

• Jordi's Grind'm gallery thumbnails (39 of 39 completed)

• Trevor's Grind'm gallery thumbnails (71 of 74 completed)

Art - Sprites

• Cell phone (10 of 10 completed)

• Connor Grind'm clothes (24 of 24 completed)

• Trevor Grind'm clothes (5 of 5 completed)

• Trevor naked erect (8 of 8 completed / 3 more added)

• Additional character(s) (5 of ? completed)

• Unlock pop-up notification sprite

Art - CGs

• Scenario intro CGs (2 of 2 completed)

• Scenario foreplay CGs (28 of 28 completed)

• Scenario side CGs (28 of 28 completed)

• Scenario bottom CGs (29 of 29 completed)

• Scenario top CGs (27 of 27 completed)

• Scenario versatile CGs (3 of 3 completed)

• Scenario cumming CGs (40 of 69 completed)

• Scenario afterglow CGs (4 of 4 completed)

• Scenario ending CGs (2 of 2 completed)

• Scenario end screen CGs (3 of 3 completed)

Art - Backgrounds

• City (1 of 1 completed)

• Hotel (7 of 7 completed)

Art - Character Models

• Hotel Clerk

• Valet

Writing

• Trevor profile text (2 of 2 variations completed)

• Scenario introduction

• Scenario foreplay

• Scenario side/oral, part 1

• Scenario side/oral, part 2 (3 of 3 variations completed)

• Scenario bottom, part 1

• Scenario bottom, part 2 (3 of 3 variations completed)

• Scenario top, part 1

• Scenario top, part 2 (3 of 3 variations completed)

• Scenario versatile

• Scenario cumming (10 of 10 variations completed)

• Scenario afterglow (2 of 2 variations completed)

• Scenario ending (2 of 2 variations completed)

• Scenario end screen (3 of 3 variations completed)

Coding

• Trevor scenario unlocks

• Revised Grind'm menu screen

• Grind'm gallery screens (2 of 2 completed)

• Scenario introduction

• Scenario foreplay (5 of 5 segments completed)

• Scenario side/oral, part 1 (4 of 4 segments completed)

• Scenario bottom, part 1 (4 of 4 segments completed)

• Scenario top, part 1 (4 of 4 segments completed)

• * Scenario versatile 

• * Scenario end screens

Needed Components

🟡 TREVOR GRIND'M UPDATE 🟡

Art - Menu

• Trevor's Grind'm gallery thumbnails (3 of 74 needed)

Art - Sprites

• Additional character(s) (total unknown)

Art - CGs

• Scenario cumming CGs (29 of 69 needed)

Coding

• Scenario afterglow

• Scenario ending

• * Content adjustments in-game to account for toggles (mostly done)

That's about it for now! Those of you at Junior patron level or above can look forward to the Matt and Leo Bonus Gallery very soon. I hope it'll tide us over a little until we can play out full scenes featuring those two in the game itself!