Game Update #43

November has arrived, and it's time for a new game status update. (Does it feel like this year is flying by to anyone else?)

This update will be pretty brief. I'll begin with the most pressing info—the status of the New You Update that in the last update I promised before the end of October. 

Despite my best efforts, I was unable to meet my self-imposed deadline. I worked pretty much non-stop and completed a lot of the remaining work, but as the month neared its end, I realized there simply wasn't time to finish even if I ran myself ragged. I decided it was better to take a small break so as not to burn out.

I was very hesitant to do that since I knew there would be patrons whose Patreon access was ending but who would have had early access had I finished in October. Ultimately I decided to message those patrons offering to email download links when the update was ready, which eased the guilt enough that I could take a breather. If this same situation arises in the future, I'll be doing the same thing—I want to make sure I follow through for everyone since it's your support that keeps this project in development!

So where does the New You Update stand? At very long last, all of the revised art is done. Over 300 CGs and a ton of new sprites were added, with many of the CGs being recreated with better lighting, posing, and framing. A few had to be entirely remade just out of necessity since somehow the files got overwritten, like this Owen CG:

I'm sure I don't need to tell you how incredibly frustrating it is when you're trying to quickly finish something only to open a file and find all of your work gone. But on the plus side, I like this version of the posing/lighting better.

I also had to do a lot of extra optimization work on any scene set in the showers. With all of the reflective surfaces, renders were coming out too grainy since my graphics card was struggling. (Time for a new GPU upgrade if I can ever afford it). 

I now have a denoising post-processing step that smooths out the grain, but when an image has too much noise, the AI doing the denoising can make things look smeared. I think a good example of this is an early test I shared of Connor in the shower versus the final version:

The most immediate difference is the wall now being matte instead of reflective, but in the bigger version you can see the weird smoothness in the image on the left, like the way the shadows look on his torso. A lot of detail was removed by the AI denoiser leading to a sort of smeared, painted look. I don't mind some smoothness, but the shower scenes were going way too far in that direction.

So all that to say, snags like the above led to the delays, but they're all overcome now. It's such a relief to have this art overhaul off my plate. Remaking all the art turned out to be a huge undertaking, but between how good I think the new version of Connor looks and how polished all the images seem now, I'm glad I chose to do this.

So what's left? Just wrapping up the final Jordi Grind'm CGs and doing some testing to make sure the unlock pop-up is triggering properly. Which means this update is finally going into early access very soon, within the next week most likely. I think the Grind'm stuff is turning out to be such a fun diversion—sort of like the Bonus Galleries here on Patreon, but with many more CGs, interactivity in how the scenario plays out, and with actual dialogue!

I shared a bigger Sneak Peek at the Grind'm content last month, but for those who don't have access to those posts, here's another of the new CGs coming in this fantasy hookup scenario:

(Jordi is a big fan of Connor's balls!)

My immediate focus is finishing this up, but I've also begun writing for the game's Morning After Update while I wait for CGs to render—you can see some of the flowcharts for this section of the game in the last Game Update. Matt was first up, and man, I'm so excited to see the reaction to how things can play out. But I'll go more into that in the next game status update later this month.

That's all I've got today! I've taken a few days off but now I'm ready to get back to the work of completing the New You Update. Early access will be on the same day for Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors, & Graduates since all of those tiers were meant to have it by last week—a small change to the normal release schedule just in the interest of fairness.

I hope everyone has a good weekend!