Game Update #6

Hi, everyone! It's time for our mid-month game update.

The third part of Day One was just released publicly on the 13th, which is a pretty big milestone. We now have one complete day out in the world for everyone to play. The first half of the next update was also released as a dev build to Seniors a week ago. Things are moving along!

I was hoping to get part one of Day Two out on Patreon at the same time as the public release, but creating this portion has proven to be a little bit more complex than I expected. I'm going to break it down a bit more below, but I'll say up here that I'm looking to have this update released to Juniors and Seniors sometime in the next week.

Script

I was always aiming to make this first part of Day Two pretty substantial. I viewed Day One as a time for first impressions, and Day Two is where we start going a little bit beyond the surface level by having the option for one-on-one chats with a lot of the guys.

To that end, each one-on-one scene is around 2500 - 3000 words. As a comparison, the introductions were all around 1000 words. This is due not just to longer conversations, but to writing unique dialogue and scenes based on earlier choices and choices made during the chats.

For Matt specifically, I had to account for if you went to his apartment previously, if he went to orientation, and if you promised to hang out, among other things. Each additional variable extended his scenes--for instance, if you didn't visit the apartment earlier, there needs to be a new introductory scene for Leo at some point; if you didn't bring Matt to orientation, you need to explain who you're talking about if you mention him to other guys and vice versa, etc.

This has been a great learning experience and will help me better plan the timeline for each subsequent update. But the side effect has been a little longer development time, especially since I want everything to be as polished as I can make it.

I currently have a couple more one-on-ones to write, and I'm pretty pleased with the ones already completed. I think how the characters respond to Connor may paint them in a different light than what you might expect.

(For those curious, the script is currently around 90,000 words. If you're a writer yourself, you know that just this early portion of the game is the length of a full novel!)

Art

The art is coming along very well. I've come up with a pretty solid workflow, so it doesn't take me too long to set up each scene or do post-processing. There are at least two images per one-on-one convo as well as new sprites; not just to change the clothes, but additional expressions as well. The as-yet-to-be-written convos don't have their CGs rendered yet, but I don't anticipate there being any holdups on that end.

Coding

Now THIS has been has been a, let's say, interesting experience. It took me quite a bit of time to wrap my head around traveling between different areas when choosing who to talk to, accounting for where the player is located, who is in the area, how to get certain backgrounds to load correctly, how to trigger location dialogue correctly, and on and on. 

I eventually managed to figure it out, but the amount of testing to make sure everything's working certainly took up a good amount of development time. Luckily, with this knowledge now acquired, coding future scenes won't be quite as daunting.

Looking Ahead

The sole focus now is getting this next update polished and released. I'm very determined to get this out to not just Juniors and Seniors this month, but also Sophomores. 

But I have done some thinking beyond that and have a plan for the releases to follow. This is what we're looking at, with dates TBD:

Release #4 - Day Two, Part One - The story branches out from here in three directions.

Release #5 - Day Two, Matt path - This will pick up in the evening and will focus entirely on a night spent hanging out with Matt and Leo.

Release #6 - Day Two, Party path - This will lead to an evening spent instead at the frat party. The update will feature Marco, Riley, Owen, Julian, Dominic, and a new character, Evan.

Release #7 - Day Two, Club path - Finally, you can choose to spend your night at Atelier 54. The update will feature Asher, Alex, Isaiah, Mafia, NC17, and another new character, Griffin.

It's possible I might get releases #5 and #6 both out in May since Matt's path is pretty straightforward. But I do have a snag in that my day job is bringing us back into the office partway into May, meaning the time I have to spend working on the game will be reduced. I hope it doesn't affect it too much, but we'll see how it goes.

Thank you for your continued support, enthusiastic responses, and your patience as I work to make the best game I can for you. I appreciate every one of you for chipping in to make working on this feasible for me. For all its challenges, I'm having a lot of fun creating the game, and I hope that's apparent in the final product :)

Danny