Game Update #18

Hello, everyone! I'm back with a mid-month update. Let's get right to the biggest news of the past few weeks: The dev build milestone for the upcoming release has finally been reached!

It took a couple months of non-stop writing, art creation, and coding to get here. It's so gratifying to finally get to share it with the Seniors & Graduates. The build includes the entire party beginning to end, and although it still needs a little polishing up before release, it's a big chunk of content that I'm pretty proud of.

(If you're a Senior or Graduate who hasn't played the dev build yet, you can find the post here!)

With that done, I've moved into the final phase of creating the next release. Let's take a look at where we stand.

Script

What remains for the release itself are the two hookup scenes that end this section of the game. These were mostly written quite some time ago, so now it's a matter of finishing up where I left off and then doing some edits/rewrites. After writing literally 70,000 words worth of dialogue/monologue for the party, writing a few sex scenes definitely seems easier by comparison!

Art

This is where my focus will be as I wrap up this release. As I did with the hookup ending the hangout with Matt & Leo, these two hookups will be illustrated with many CGs—37 planned, which may be more or less in the end. I've actually got a CG rendering while I write this—I will basically be creating and rendering CGs nonstop for the next while.

There are also some sprites needed to expand the expressions of the new side characters and a few more backgrounds to liven up the scenes. These generally don't take too long, in particular the sprites since those render very quickly.

Coding

Oh, man, coding. My new nemesis. The dev build came out a few days later than I wanted for one specific reason: the program I use to code in decided to stop highlighting syntax in the script file for day 2. Apparently the file had grown too large for its liking. 

Basically, what highlighting does is tell me at a glance what part of the script is what, like this:

Instead, it started to look like this:

This may not seem like a big deal, but highlighting/color-coding doesn't just make it more readable. Importantly, it tells me if I fucked up the code. For instance, if I typed "hide screen" as "hide scree," it would stay white instead of turn orange, and I'd know it was typed wrong.

This became an issue for the dev build right at the end, specifically for dialogue. When syntax is highlighted and I don't end a line with a quotation mark, everything below the line stays green. That makes it very easy to know I need to fix it.

When everything turned white, what happened was this—I missed a closing quote, which meant the game tried to load everything as part of that one line and immediately crashed. Which then meant I had to comb through literally thousands of lines of code to find the problem.

I'm not kidding when I say I had to scream into a pillow a few times.

BUT I soldiered ahead and got it done, and I'm now using a new program to code with that doesn't have this problem!

Looking Ahead

I've basically just got art to make and some simple coding left. Where does that leave us for a full early access release for everyone on Patreon?

As usual, it's my ambition versus reality. I have a schedule planned that, if everything goes perfectly, would have an early access release by the end of this month. But as we can see from the coding debacle above, things don't always go perfectly.

So I'll say I'm aiming for the full release later this month but definitely cannot guarantee it. Just know I'm working as hard and as much as I possibly can to bring this to you.

I'm also increasingly thinking ahead to the club hangout and beyond. I've learned so much from creating this frat party, importantly how to simplify without sacrificing too much. My outlines and plans have been adjusted accordingly. 

Lastly, I wanted to mention I've started creating an official CG unlock & relationship guide for the game. This has been requested a number of times, and with story paths branching out and CGs are taking specific choices to unlock, I figured now was the time to make it. Once that's finished, I'll be sure to share it with all of you first!

Thank you for reading! I hope those of you who played the dev build had a fun time. I can't wait to share the full thing very soon!

- Danny