DevLog Update (Patreon)

Yo,

So it's been awhile since I did a Dev Log and over the past month a lot has happened so I wanted to catch you up because I know of you have a lot of questions about the update status so here we go.

Business Update

So the past month has been my first month focusing solely on game production. While this has allowed for more time to work on the story/CGs/etc., it also presented some new challenges and organizational efforts. Essentially, I have a lengthy list of things that has been put off that I really wanted to better organize and streamline; so a lot of time has been focused on creating that. This includes boring shit like accounting but has also included things like upgrading hardware in the computer and purchasing other equipment to increase the Patreon services in the near future. While I wanted to get changes in the Patreon tiers done this month, I have chosen to chip away at the organizational list and focus on the game production itself instead. But things are looking better and I'm hoping to have things fully operational and running more efficiently by the end of September. If things are done correctly, you won't see much change on your end, but on my end, it will mean one incredible thing: it means I'll actually get days off! So I'm looking forward to that but in the meantime I'm still juggling things and trying to plan more for the future. I did anticipate that it would take me about a month to get through that and I'm still on schedule for that.

Patreon Content

Hopefully, you have been enjoying the more consistent selfie pictures over the past few months. I do want to say that I want to continue Patreon content like that more consistently. In the past, when I was working multiple jobs in addition to this, working on Patreon exclusive content basically meant less time to work on the game itself sometimes. Several months included me getting help from the other dev team guys just so we could keep things interesting on the site but still continue to focus on the game production, which is what most of you care about anyway. 

The new focus will be to continue to try and keep consistent Patreon content as well as introduce some new features in the coming months. I do want to say this will not inhibit the game production, I will still work on it and prioritize it over everything else. However, given that this is my sole income now, I want to keep people engaged and keep things interesting as well as give you something back for the donations. Hopefully, the extra time I have to spend on things like this will increase the quality of the stuff I'm putting out, too.

I don't really have people complaining about this but I did want to address that more Patreon content does not mean updates are pushed back. It's mostly how I continue to fund the process of game production and it's a good way to secretly practice stuff I want to introduce into the game later without practicing in the game itself or leaving spoilers.

I will address that there has been concerns about adult content around the internet in the wake of the OnlyFans nonsense. Patreon has a presentation scheduled Sept 23 that I plan to attend that will address adult content here. Right now, Straight!? does not violate any of their rules. Patreon currently allows adult content but does not allow "pornography," which they define as only using real people-- so computer generated images wouldn't count as I understand it. But I will be making some changes to the Patreon site and rewording some things just to make sure. If anything changes prior or during that brief, I will let you know but right now I'm not worried. Odds are, I'll put something out after the brief to summarize things and keep you in the loop.

ok... now on to the actual game stuff that most of you care about

Writing

So I know it's been forever since we've seen a Straight!? update and people are anxious. We've also seen a large increase in Patreon support over the past few months despite that. So writing is finally going well. I'm a very emotional writer on this story so I have to be in the right headspace. A lot of the last month of juggling the initial business stuff has been kinda hard on that but that's just transitional and it's doing better now that I'm getting things crossed off my list. I tend to get more writing bursts of energy than I used to and I anticipated this month would be kinda crazy.

I will say that this update has grown longer than I anticipated and it's sorta hard to describe where I am with the actual number of scenes that I have but I'll give it a shot. Originally, I was anticipating about 6 scenes, which is pretty normal for most updates. However, a lot of transitional scenes have been added so it's a little harder to count the actual number of scenes I have now. So I may have had a dorm room scene then another dorm room scene but then they walk between to the two rooms and have a short conversation-- so now it's turned into 3 scenes instead of 2 (stuff like that). So if I count transitional scenes (which are usually shorter) we're looking at around 8 or more scenes this time (depending on what you want to count as a transition or not--that could actually bloat closer to 10 or 11).

As it stands right now, I have about 2.5 scenes left to write of varying lengths. I ended up adding some stuff that wasn't in the outline and things sorta just grew from there. In the past, that's been a good thing. For example, in the last update, that shower scene at Mikhail's dorm room was never in the outline--it just came  off the top of my head and I'm really glad I added it for about 40 different reasons, lol. The good thing is that it's more world building but the bad thing is that I just created more work for myself. I do think the additions added to things though, so I feel good about them. 

Overall length right now of what I have written is around 3k lines of code so that's longer than most updates have been alone and there's still 2 longer scenes left to write so this update should be longer than normal. 

While we got some closure at the end of the last update, this one will be more setup and will begin the end. It's going to be hard to top everything that happened in the last update so we'll see how it goes but obviously you gotta set some stuff up before you slam dunk it, right? 

CGs

So update 20 is going to be really image heavy and that has been what's been taking the most time. I mentioned in a past DevLog that I had originally wanted to do more animations and start practicing that more for v2 but I'm not ready for that yet so I had to scrap it. That misstep pushed me back some and I had to readjust. However, things are going smooth now and I've been cranking out images daily. I currently have 500 images done with 2.5 more scenes still to write and do images for so I'm going to break the record for CGs again. Lighting is continuing to improve and a lot of the Selfies shots that you see on Patreon monthly allow me to try out new techniques that sneak into the game slowly over time. I've been trying to work more with Depth of Field (DOF) as we've seen in last month's and this month's Selfies series. Jordyn helped introduce me to this and now I hate him on an existential level for it, lol. DOF creates that blurry background you see that focuses the eye more on certain important aspects of the image the way a cinematic camera would. It's interesting and it makes certain things pop. I'd like to learn a bit from that and see if there's emotions I can generate from just focusing the camera in certain ways... we'll see... but that's my new craze.  There's a few shots in the new update that I've been trying to use this on but we won't see it a ton yet. Honestly, it may seem jarring when you start to see it this time just because it's not consistent throughout the game but keep in mind this is still very much pre-alpha stage and I gotta start somewhere. It may become the norm in update 21 as well as the overall revamp of the entire game, though. Overall, shots look pretty good though and I'm relatively happy with them and the progress. I do anticipate things will speed up in the coming weeks though and in the future.

Release Date

This is always the big question with people and I've always been reluctant to put out a release date until I know for sure. Usually when I do put out a date, it's when I have all the writing done and I'm just working on images. So with 2.5 scenes left, I don't feel real confident to put anything out yet. I don't know that it will get out this month but I feel fairly confident it will be released by October sometime because there's not a ton left. I do plan on posting a few more teasers maybe but most of the shots have been spoiler heavy so it was harder to share stuff. I think one of my favorite things about this game is how unpredictable the story has become and i enjoy that and enjoy sharing that. Teasing images should help create more unpredictability and not ruin that so hopefully you understand why I'm not sharing as much--it's why I didn't share much last update either.

I do want to continue to thank you for the ongoing support, especially this month as I've transitioned over. I've said it a million times before but having no previous experience with any of this was pretty crazy to start with. This most recent step, of actually focusing full time on something that I had no experience with was a huge step. Now it's starting to slowly become a business model and I find myself trying to run my first business so here we go again with all new stuff. It's crazy but I'm enjoying it and I couldn't do it without the ongoing support (and patience) from the community. I'll continue to be thankful for this experience and for these characters who someone brought us all together.

Until then, enjoy the selfies set and I'l have some more updates on more Patreon news in the very near future.