Game Update #26

It's status update time, and I'm leading with big news:

The first dev build for the Club Update is coming tomorrow!

That's right, after many long months, I'm finally reaching the point where I can share new content with Senior & Graduate patrons via an early in-development build. This dev build will follow the storylines of Alex and new character Griffin as you spend a wild evening at the club. In addition, there are 18 new CGs to unlock that feature Alex, Griffin, and... Matt? Yes, Matt, who won't be at the club but will still have his presence felt...

I intended to coincide the release of this build with this update post, but I'm going to do one final day of testing to make sure I eliminate as many errors as possible. Once the release post goes live, I'll do another game update announcement to confirm with all patrons that this milestone has officially been released.

Below I'm gonna discuss some of the challenges of this update, plus I have the results of the Grind'm semifinal polls. Let's get to it!

Script

Most everyone has been has been very kind about the game's progress, but every now and again I'll see someone say that while the game seems cool, it's lacking content.

Cue me looking at my 982 page script and going 😐

But I get it. What I've learned creating this is that with so many divergent story paths, a lot of content is hidden behind which choices you make. And since I chose to include many, many, many choices, this means there are a lot of scenes that some players will never see, especially if they don't do multiple playthroughs.

I'm mentioning this now because that's been one of the big challenges of Alex's story in particular and is what led to many of the delays I've faced. Because Alex has a lot of choices.

As an example, the club sequence is divided into: arrival - greeting - a point that all stories connect to - character hangout 1 - another connection point - character hangout 2 - character hangout 3. (With the potential for branching out into hookups mixed in).

For Alex's Hangout 2, here are all the considerations I needed to make:

Did you come to the club with Alex after spending the afternoon together? If so, did you proposition him during the afternoon? If so, did you then take a shower alongside him?

If yes to the above, did you do Alex's Hangout 1, or did you go hang with someone else before reconnecting with Alex?

If you didn't come to the club with Alex, did you greet him after arriving at the club? If not, did you talk to him during the afternoon? If not, did you take an interest in him at orientation? If no to all of those, that means you had the bare minimum interaction with Alex prior to this hangout. And if I'm accounting for all those variations, what dialogue makes sense for each level of familiarity you have with Alex?

At this point in the club sequence, did you drink at all yet? Have you met certain characters yet? At any point did you take flirtation to a proposition, a proposition to a kiss, a kiss to something more?

And at any point did you call out Alex for his ego? Because hey, depending on if and when you did, you get different scenes and dialogue!

I think you get the idea. Even with many, many flowcharts, I often find points when I'm testing/coding where story needs to be adjusted or added to account for a certain combination of choices I didn't foresee. And then the script gets even longer...

Now, I didn't need to do all of this. I could have done something like a Bioware game: give you a red choice and a blue choice, and then alter a few lines of dialogue depending on which you picked.

But I did decide to do it this way, and even though it's a whole lot to keep organized in my brain, I think the reactivity is ultimately worth it. It just means that scripting seems to never, ever end.

In another status update I talked about how I'm going to set relationship statuses between the Club Update and the Morning After update. I am absolutely following through with that - it's a way to consolidate all these many choice flags into something easier to handle. The creation of the Club Update is still operating on assumptions I made over a year ago when I started this project; I'm looking forward to moving into a new phase that accounts for all I've learned since then.

But first: completing the script for Asher, Isaiah, and the hookup scenes!

Art

I picked up a wonderful plug-in for my 3D render program that lets me queue up images and then let them render without me thinking about it. What this means is I can have images rendering 24/7 without having to babysit - a huge timesaver.

As such, I've been setting up big batches of sprites and letting them render while I move my focus to writing and coding. Every time I add sprites into the game, everything bursts with new life when seeing previously static characters emoting. Streamlining the creation of these so I can get them added sooner is so helpful.

Once I move past this first dev build, I'll jump from sprites back to creating CGs for Asher, Isaiah, and other key moments. One such moment is Skinema's performance at the club.

I wanted to use music to make the scene come alive... but as talked about in prior game status updates, that isn't happening. So instead I'm thinking about how I can creatively use scene transitions and graphic elements to make the whole thing stylish and evocative enough to compensate for no sound.

I have a clear idea of what I want this to look like... but it remains to be seen if I can do it. Regardless, I'm excited to to try broadening my artistic horizons.

Coding

See above re: variables. SO MANY variables. Ifs and elses nested into each as far as the eye can see.

It's not super complicated to code this, it's just a) time-consuming and b) prone to errors if I make a single typo.

Which is why I'm doing so much testing before this release. Every scene variation is a point where things can go wrong. The wrong scene could trigger, an image might not load correctly, or something breaks entirely. I made it extra complicated by having characters wear or not wear a shirt in the same scene depending on earlier choices - and if I forget to add "shirtless" to the image tag, then suddenly you've got Alex popping in and out of his clothes at inopportune times.

I talked before about how this - both coding and testing - is something I'll happily offload if I can ever afford to. Which is not now. This step is a lot of repetitive work, but it's also work that brings all the elements together into something worth seeing. And I'm excited for you to see it.

Looking Ahead

So with the first Club Update dev build coming tomorrow, what's next?

Between losing all of December, February being a short month, and each step of creation taking longer than expected due to complexity, it's unlikely I'll have the second dev build before the end of the month.

I've been working non-stop on tomorrow's build, and I plan to continue doing so for the next one. But I'll admit it can be exhausting, and I keep needing to make myself relearn the obvious - its so much easier to be creative if I actually take the time to rest. But I can assure you guys - resting doesn't mean I'm not working!

I'm eying early March for the next dev build (Asher and Isaiah's stories), then mid-March-ish for the final build with everything polished and some very hot hookup scenes implemented.

I wanted this Club Update to be done by this point, but as mentioned above, December was lost due to holidays and illness. I'm making up ground for sure, though, and once the Club Update drops, we'll have the new Grind'm feature to increase the regularity of game releases.

Speaking of...

Grind'm - Semifinals Results

Grind'm is a new game feature that'll unlock a hookup scenario with a side character once you meet them in-game. I'm going to drop one of these scenarios between bigger story updates, and the guy being featured in each one is decided by Graduate patrons.

For this first Grind'm scenario, we began with 19 guys and narrowed it down to 8. Now after two weeks of polling, we're down to the two finalists: frat party favorite Parker and newcomer Jordi.

This is a fun matchup - both guys have big, enthusiastic personalities. Whoever wins, it'll make for an entertaining hookup to play through!

The final Grind'm poll post is up and ready for the Graduates to make their final choice. For any Graduate on the fence about who to vote for, I included details on the guys' physical stats and personalities, as well as potential hookup scenarios and walkthroughs on how to interact with them in the game. All so you can make a fully informed decision.

And don't forget that this month's Bonus Gallery will feature a threesome with Jordi, Parker, and the Bonus Gallery poll winner! If you're still undecided after reading through the Grind'm poll post, perhaps seeing them in action will solidify who you most want to see win that hookup...

That's all I've got today! I've got a lot of testing to do over the next 24 hours. I'll be back soon to announce the dev build's official release!