Game Status Update #66

Hey everyone! I hope your week has been off to a good start. We're nearing the end of October, so I figured I should probably post the second status update of the month 😉

First, let's talk cover boy! I'll go into this more below, but this is a CG that I was considering using in the Morning After Update but have held back for now. I still wanted to share it with you all, so consider it a Patreon exclusive!

This CG is part of a fantasy sequence where Connor can imagine any number of guys. If you're a Junior or above, you can check out Riley's version of this CG plus some other Riley details in this Sneak Peek post.

Let's start off this update by checking out my to-do checklist, and then I'll elaborate on each aspect. I've put an asterisk at the start of each newly added or updated task.

Writing Checklist

Completed:

• Dorm to Showers - 11 variants

• Showers - 2 primary variants, several smaller ones

• * Mid-shower sequence - 34 small variants (now cut from the update)

• Unlocked Character Scene - 2 variants

• * Dorm to Class - 1 variant

• * Tomas's Class - 2 variants

• * Will's Class - 1 variant

Still to do:

• Dorm to Class - 4 variants

• Will's Class - 1 variant

Coding Checklist

Completed:

• Bug fixes to what was already released

• * Coding & testing the completed scenes from above

• * Several of the more involved final pass checks

Still to do:

• Code the remaining new scenes once written

• Re-insert scenes that were removed from the recent dev build

• Final testing

Art Checklist

Completed CGs:

• Revised Leo tease day 1-1

• Trevor Grind'm profile pic 1

• Shower entrance group scene

• 6 shower tease CGs

• * 5 shower fantasy CGs (now cut from the update)

• * 3 Leo CGs

• 3 Riley CGs

• 1 Tomas CG

• * 11 Will CGs

Completed sprites:

• 118 Connor sprites (shirtless, day 1 outfit, day 2 outfit, week 1a outfit)

• * 13 Evan sprites (week 1a outfit)

• 21 Riley sprites (towel)

• * 10 Will sprites (naked, week 1a outfit)

• 7 Antonio sprites (week 1a outfit)

• 6 Blaze sprites (naked)

• * 6 Cherish sprites (week 1a outfit)

• 6 Jordi sprites (naked)

• 3 Quinn sprites (underwear)

• 4 Wes sprites (jock strap)

• 6 Xavier sprites (underwear)

Completed backgrounds:

• Shower hall

• Riley's dorm room

• Tomas's class with new lesson plan

Still to do:

• 2 Tomas CGs

• 3 Will CGs (2 may be cut)

• New Sprites - Week 1 clothing and/or various states of undress for Kaleb & Tomas.

• Existing dorm and frat house backgrounds denoised and color corrected

Now, let's break it down.

Writing

This has been a very fun few weeks because I finally got to write some scenes that I—and many of you!—have been highly anticipating. Namely, the long promised Will encounter.

Up above you'll see I wrote one version of the scene, and that is the "horny" version. And I am really, really happy with how it turned out, especially in how some details of the art made it a whole lot more explicit than I had already planned. I'll talk about that below in the art recap.

The other main sections were Tomas's class, which also has a "horny" version, and some text convos, which is what comprises the Dorm to Class segment. While all of this is more straightforward than what came before, a lot of choices affect what can be discussed in those texts, so it's a little bit bigger of a task than I originally thought.

The first variant text convo I wrote was the one where you make amends with Matt if you blew him off on Day 2. You can choose not to talk to him if you want, but if you do, you'll find it's not too difficult to make up with him. Part of this convo includes bringing up Griffin's threesome idea if that's something you unlocked, but whether that's a good thing to bring up or not, you'll have to wait to see. (It'll probably be a good thing!)

What's left to write is the non-horny version of Will's scene for those who aren't interested in that, as well as different versions of the Matt convo plus a few other text convos. Nothing terribly strenuous, but there are a number of choices to account for that I want to make sure I don't miss.

You may have noticed I removed the 34 variant fantasy sequence. I'll touch on that in the art section.

Coding

I'm continuing through my final pass checklist, which consists of all the tasks I noted I should go back and do before I release this next game version. Much of that list involves the code.

One major goal of this update was to fix a lot of the coding up to this point, in part by condensing choice variables into a format that makes sense in addition to creating variables that cover multiple situations instead of each having its own.

The way I've coded the new content has changed a lot as I figured out how to best streamline my process. By now I have a clear format for how I want things done, but along the way I added a lot of redundant variables into the code that I'm going back to remove.

One of these variables are the "hookup potential" flags I assigned to certain characters, which ultimately was too vague for what I needed. I talked in Game Status Update #61 about how I'm introducing a hookup level system, which is now implemented and replaces that old flag. Seeing it in practice, I'm very pleased. It makes it easy to determine what kind of scenes you can see without having to reference a bunch of different events individually.

It also helps when planning out scenarios that involve multiple characters. For instance, in an upcoming story update you'll have certain scenes you'll only see if both Matt and Leo are above a certain hookup level each. This system is proving to be successful enough that I want to create romance and friendship versions, too, though those aren't relevant to this update and can wait.

There's also the mood system that I added midway through development of this update and now need to make sure is added into what came before. That starts with carefully scanning the content to make sure a mood or mood shift is noted every time it should.

But I'm aware I may still miss points where a mood should be added. Unfortunately for me, this was a bigger problem than it may seem. A lot of mood-based dialogue or image changes were formatted as "if high mood, then this; otherwise this." Which means if I didn't assign Connor a mood, you'd always see the downcast variants. This presentation heavily changes the feel of the story, so to be safe, I went through and reformatted all those instances to "if low mood, this; otherwise this." There ended up being hundreds of instances of this.

And there is even more cleanup being done, but I won't continue boring you with specifics. I typically do all this while I wait for Daz Studio to render CG previews so as to best utilize my time.

Speaking of CGs...

Art

I had some fun times the past few weeks working on Will's many new CGs. Those who saw Sneak Peek #31 may recall a CG involving Will that I assured you is a situation that can actually happen. If you did see that post, you may remember that Connor and Will in that CG were (mostly) wearing clothes.

Lately I've been making content edits based on the question, "Will this be annoying to make?" If the answer is yes, I then decide if it's worth doing anyway, worth doing with some changes, or something that doesn't actually need to be there. (I err on the side of not shortchanging you.)

In Will's case, working with clothing would have been not just annoying but time consuming. None of these outfit assets were made with partial undressing in mind, so I have to do a lot of finicky work to make it happen, and it doesn't always look good. As a result, when making the art for Will's scene, I went, "This is annoying, so fuck it—they're gonna be naked!"

And boy are they. This scene has some of my favorite art I've made for the game. I'm sharing the new version of the CG from Sneak Peek #31 in this new Sneak Peek post so that those who can see the posts (Juniors, Seniors, & Graduates) can get a feel for how the scene ultimately shaped up!

Next, let's get back to the 34 variant fantasies that I had already considered optional. I was curious to see if I could still get them in this update. It was potentially doable considering the setup of each CG is the same, just with different characters depicted.

In practice, I was spending way more time than I had available on individual CGs. For the Matt CG in particular, I was getting annoyed with his body shape seeming off—he has always had odd proportions that I've obfuscated with poses, lighting, and image edits, but it was especially apparent here. That led to me working on rebuilding his body (making sure he still has his big ol' titties, of course!), and then after making a revision, rendering a new version of the fantasy CG to see how it looked.

Perfectionist that I am, I foresaw myself doing similar for a whole lot more characters, and I do not need that distraction as I rush to finish. This section of fantasies was already previously cut, so I went ahead and cut it again. But I will absolutely be adding them back in once I have time because I think they're a lot of fun and allow me to add new CGs of characters who may not otherwise be well-represented in the update.

Here's another look at Matt's model revision. Outside of his body shape, everything is the same, but I adjusted the pose because the old one made his abs look weird. I also upped the HD resolution. I'm not going to redo all his sprites yet, but I thought some of you might like to see what's coming later:

I do all my sprite pose tests with the guys naked and erect so I can know they'll look good when they eventually end up that way in the game. We'll actually be seeing Matt's naked sprites a lot sooner than I'd originally planned...

On the topic of sprites, they're actually a little more complicated to make than it may seem. For the newest ones, I'm adjusting character poses to account for the new camera angle while also fixing up some expressions that weren't quite working for me. But beyond that I also have clothes to deal with since, sadly, sometimes these guys have to be dressed.

Sourcing clothing assets for male characters can be a pain since most 3D artists selling products for Daz Studio focus on female characters. That leads to me scrounging for what assets I can find that can be edited to get a look that matches each character's personal style.

An example is Evan. I decided after making his Day 2 images that his style would be retro and '70s-inspired, and there is very little out there in that style. I could have changed course, but being me, once I get stuck on a certain idea, I have to achieve it as best I can.

It took a while, but ultimately I combined all of these to dress him up:

 The full body image is one of the few '70s outfits I could find. I originally tried working with the top, but it just straight up didn't look good. I instead found the shirt on the right, which had a similar vibe. The images above and below the shirt represent shaders I used to retexture the body, trim, and collar. I then opened the pants texture in GIMP and messed around with the colors to get a shade that was complimentary to the top.

Neither outfit piece could be draped via simulation, so I used Fit Control to add morphs to them and then manually adjusted the fit. Before I could do that, I needed to experiment with poses for Evan to find a new one that evoked the original. The final product:

I've been trying to make outfits more bold when appropriate to the character since I was feeling like a lot of characters were dressing way too conservatively for a bunch of art students. Evan seemed perfect for a colorful look. I settled on this shirt color and pattern to tie into his name color, since I try to add an aspect of that in everyone's outfit so you can more easily tell who's speaking.

With the full pose and outfit done, I then had to make all his other expressions. That in itself was a challenge since even when reusing the original expression, I had to get them to look good with the new camera angle and lighting. Good thing I have all that code to fix while I wait for image previews to render!

All that to say—even the seemingly easy tasks can be incredibly time consuming. Right now I'm balancing my perfectionism with deadlines, and I think I'm doing okay, but there are times where I end up spending half a day on one CG because I tinker with it until it's just right. I do think the end result is worth it, but I continue to work on streamlining all I need to do for each update.

What's Next

I have the remaining tasks noted on the list above, and while it's possible I could have the most productive 16 hour days of my life and get this done by Thursday, it is incredibly unlikely to happen.

In addition, and I'm not gonna dwell on this, I live in the US, and it's currently a very stressful time to be a member of the LGBT+ community. It is often a struggle to emotionally get past the gloom each day and work, but I'm doing all I can to keep on task. This game is a nice fantasy to escape to not just for me as a creator but for many of you as players, so I want to make sure it's in your hands soon.

Despite everything, I have made so much progress this month, and we're right on the cusp of release. I absolutely have my nose to the grindstone because, frankly, I find it unacceptable that it's taken this long to finish—and it's even more unacceptable to not finish until we're over a year since the last release. That one year mark is less than a month away.

That's a hard deadline, but it's one I definitely have my eye on meeting or beating. Thanks as always for your support, and I'll have more for you soon!