Game Update #24

Hey there, folks! The middle of the month has arrived, so I'm checking in with the latest status of the game.

After what felt like an unproductive December, I'm happy to say the past few weeks have seen a lot of great progress—to the point where I feel safe in saying I'll be sharing an early dev build with Seniors & Graduates very soon!

Today I'm also going to open up the first of two polls for our Graduates to decide which side character will get the first Grind'm hookup. The details on that are below.

Let's get into it!

Script

After seeing the responses to the last game update, I decided to focus in on two characters for the upcoming dev build: Alex and Griffin.

Alex already had the most writing done, so it seemed natural to feature him. Griffin already had a few scenes written in full as well, so adding him felt like a no-brainer.

To that end, I've been focusing on writing & polishing the script for these two so I can get their stories in-game and ready to share. There is some content for them I won't be including initially, primarily some hookup content and additional Griffin scenes that will appear in other storylines. But the majority of each story will be ready to play through.

Asher and Isaiah haven't been forgotten in the least, but I'm saving the bulk of their work for what I anticipate to be a second early dev build that'll come before the final release.

Coding

A number of scenes have been fully coded and are in a playable state. It's really exciting to actually be able to see these scenes as they're meant to be seen! And so far I've not experienced any coding complications. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

Something I'd like to add to the game if Ren'py (the program I use to make the game) will let me is special lighting effects. So much of Atelier 54 is lit in neon, and I thought it might be more immersive to have the lighting you see in the background affect the sprites. I don't really know how to do this outside of manually making multiple sprites for each character, so if anyone familiar with Ren'py knows how, I'd love to be pointed in the right direction to learn!

On a non-story note, a quality of life feature I'd like to add in the next release is the ability to name your save files. It's not a guarantee that it will be in, but I'm actively researching how to do it. I want to be able to name my saves, too! 🙂

Art

Even with a slow December, I never stopped working on the art, and the same has been true for January. I'm primarily focusing on making what I need for the scenes I'm currently coding, whether that be sprites, backgrounds, or CGs. 

For Alex and Griffin, I actually re-rendered all of their sprites in addition to creating some new ones. I recently standardized the "photo booth" I use for sprites so the lighting and camera position are the same for every character. The new lighting set up also removes what are called "fireflies" from the renders—basically little white pixels around the edges of the figure. I actually had to manually fix that pixel by pixel for all of the sprites made before the club update, so this change is saving me a lot of time.

You won't really see much difference between the new sprites and the old outside of slightly different lighting. I did make one minor change for Alex, though—I moved the position of his right leg. I didn't like how he looked wearing underwear (or less...) with the old pose, but I think now his pose looks more natural.

One snag I have right now is needing some assets that I don't have the funds to buy at full price. Frustratingly, two such assets were on sale the other day... but I didn't see until after the sale had ended. As a result, in the dev build there will be a few placeholder backgrounds, but it's not too distracting.

With the script, coding, and art covered, I'm gonna share two screenshots of the final product to tease what's coming up. I'll have more Sneak Peek previews for Juniors, Seniors, & Graduates soon as well!

Additional Content: The First Grind'm Poll

In anticipation of putting out the final club release in a month or so, I want to start planning out which Grind'm hookup I'll be creating first, since it'll be the content to follow.

As a refresher, the Grind'm feature will be similar to the Brofinder dates in Coming Out On Top. It's a feature accessible from the main menu that will let you play out non-canon hookup scenarios with some of the many hot men in the game who aren't otherwise getting sex scenes.

If a Grind'm hookup is available for a character, it'll unlock after the first time you meet him while playing the game. The hookups will be story light with the writing more focused on the sensory details, but there will of course be many, many CGs. I'm also going to let you pick what position you want to do during the scenario, whether that be top, bottom, side, or verse.

The aim of this feature is to offer smaller content drops while we wait for the bigger story updates to be finished. It's something I can write, make the art for, and code while doing pre-production on the bigger update to follow.

With all that said, it's time to start voting for which side character will be the first Grind'm option! Since this is an in-game feature, voting for this is going to be exclusively for Graduate patrons.

There will be two polls. The first poll will be to cull down the big list of options by letting the Graduates pick which characters they're most interested in. Those characters will then be part of the final poll where the winner will be determined.

I'm going to leave each poll up for two weeks so that all patrons who join or upgrade to the Graduate tier over the next four weeks will have a chance to participate.

If you're a Graduate, click here to be taken to the first poll. I'm really excited to see how this shakes out!

Additional Ways to Support

Lastly, it's been suggested to me to offer another way to support the game. I've been asked about doing commissions, that being creating custom renders of Freshmen characters for those who wish to buy one. I'm definitely open to this.

The images would be something I'd render in 4k resolution with the content to your specifications. Due to the time investment, the price will be at least $100 per piece depending on how extensive the work will be. Something like a pin-up of a single character requires less time and will cost less than a multi-image sex scenario, for instance.

If you're interested in something like that, feel free to message me with your budget and we'll discuss!

That's all I've got for now! I'm going full steam ahead towards the first dev build for the club update. I'm excited to share that with Seniors & Graduates in the coming weeks!