Development Update 73

Hey guys, 

I hope everyone enjoyed the version 17 update. I held off on doing a post release discussion until after the supplementary 17.3 content was out. Version 17 is fully done and dusted now though, so it's time to take a look back and talk through some of my thought processes. The three major parts to the update were Faye, the twins and the staff training. I also want to discuss the way in which the animations were different this time. I will cover each topic separately then talk about my plans for version 0.18. Obviously, there are huge spoilers ahead for anyone yet to play. 

Faye (and Nina)

I want each storyline to feel different with a unique set of challenges for the headmaster. In Faye’s case this was her fear of physical pain. As the headmaster has stated previously, he cannot alter the girl's behaviour if they are afraid. The headmaster acknowledged Faye's gentle nature and agreed to modify his approach to disciplining her. From a gameplay perspective this allowed me to use a different set of punishments for the other girls. We've seen the ruler and paddle in action several times now and I want to keep things new and interesting. Plus it's a good excuse to introduce more anal play into the punishment system earlier on in Chapter 2 than would otherwise be possible. Near the end of the current content, Faye had started to think of the headmaster as a doctor; a theme I will likely continue for future punishments.

As a side aspect of Faye's storyline, I have obviously been setting up a romance between Faye and Nina. It has been heavily implied that Nina's character is a lesbian. Whilst Faye has stated that she is sexually attracted to people based mainly on their personalities, without preferring any gender more than the other (a form of demisexuality). I think it will be cute to see these two exploring their sexualities together. To put some people’s minds at ease though, I still intend for sexual activities between all students and the headmaster eventually, no exceptions. I hoped to get a little further along with Faye and Nina in version 0.17. Unfortunately, I really struggle to work on multiple main storylines at the same time. The twins were further along in their development so it just made sense to put my weight behind them. I will come back to Faye and Nina before the end of Chapter 2 which means they are high on my priority list for version 0.18.

I made it clear from the beginning of the game that Nina was a troubled young woman with difficulties socialising. She was also very closed off and refused to engage with the headmaster. He needed help to reach through to her and Faye was the obvious choice to do so. Despite being a complex topic to tackle in a comedy porn game, I decided to grab the bull by the horns and explicitly state that Nina was autistic. Herdone and I have multiple members of our families who are diagnosed with autism. So it is an issue of some importance to us. I wanted to make sure I wasn't offending anyone or spreading misinformation so I spent quite a bit of time reading up on the subject while writing this storyline. With all of that said though, I probably won't talk about it much more going forward. I wanted to establish how and why Nina is different from the other girls due to her autistic traits. However, I don't want her condition to define her character and I don't see any reason to dwell on the subject further.

The Twins

The twins were obviously the main stars this time. Mary and Louise once came first and second in a poll of people's favourite students so I knew I had very high expectations to live up to. We also had quite a bit of content with the twins already as part of Claire's storyline, so I had my work cut out for me figuring out how to fit any new content into the existing timelines. Also, we had already made significant progress corrupting the twins after their punishment of Claire on the school stage, so I wanted things to escalate relatively quickly. So we started the punishment system with the girls fully naked and we glossed over some of the early punishments progressing rapidly to bondage and masturbation. That said, starting off version 0.17 it was not my intention to get all the way to the point where the headmaster was having sex with either twin. However, after some initial playtesting with Herdone she rightly told me that I could not end the update without the headmaster putting his penis in Mary’s vagina. So I made that my unofficial goal for the end of last year. Mary had admitted she was not a virgin and she had clearly been flirting with him, so I saw no reason to keep people waiting. I decided that it would be best if Louise remained a virgin for now though as I have something a little special in mind for her first time. 

As part of the twins’ storyline, I knew I wanted them to successfully prank the headmaster at least once. Some of the dialogue for the viagra prank I actually wrote a long time ago (there is even a preview image for it in a development update from a few years back). However, I felt like that was moving a little too quickly and I wanted a slightly less extreme prank to happen first. The dildo prank only came to me relatively late in the development cycle, although some similar ideas had been floating around in my head since the game’s inception. The other advantage of having two pranks ending up in the nurses office meant I had more opportunity to develop the nurse’s character a little too. 

Given that the twins are only at level three and the headmaster and Claire are already fingering them, I am going to have to get very creative for their higher levels in the punishment system. Obviously, I don't want to give away too many spoilers about my future plans for the twins. However, I will say that they are not done switching identities yet. Sadly, that won’t be for a while yet, as I need to end Chapter 2 and start Chapter 3 first.

Staff Training

Claire's storyline and the twins were closely linked so I knew I couldn't advance the twins storyline far without also continuing Claire's training. Until this version Claire had never witnessed the headmaster engaging in sexual activity with a student and it was finally time to cross that threshold. With Sally we saw a very gradual corruption where she assisted him spanking multiple girls in his office and things slowly progressed towards sexual activity. I didn’t really have that option with Claire so there was always going to be a big jump in acceptance between spanking the girls and receiving sexual favours from them. This part of the update was definitely the hardest to write and it took some time to figure out how to make that jump without completely breaking immersion. Claire’s confession that she had been fantasising about making students perform oral sex on the headmaster was the missing piece of the puzzle that let everything fall into place. Given everything we’d seen of Claire’s character so far, it didn’t feel like too big of a stretch and her animosity towards Debbie provided the necessary catalyst. I have just a little bit left to go with the staff training storyline for Chapter 2. We need to see Claire and Debbie putting their new found skills to use around campus. Plus, we still need them assisting the headmaster and Sally giving the next stage of the whole class punishments.

Animation Improvements

Between version 16 and version 17 I spent some time learning a piece of software called VaM, which I spoke about in this post. I did not directly use VaM in version 17. However, I did take a lot of lessons from the software back with me to my current software (Playhome). Mostly because VaM has something which Playhome does not, which is a large community of creators and a huge library of shared content. Taking apart other people's scenes gave me a lot of ideas for things to try with mine. I believe that showed through with an increase in overall quality. Gegecucu helped with quite a few of the animations for version 17 as well, and his skills have also been continuing to improve. 

Another major change is the switch from making our animations using FK to a combination FK and IK. I realise most people will have no idea what that means. Basically, FK controls the model's joints by rotating them relative to each other, i.e. rotate the shoulders and the whole arm will move while all the other joints remain in a fixed position. IK controls the joints by assigning key joints (head, shoulders, hips, abdomen, hands and feet) a 3D position. The software then determines the model's position by combining all the forces applied to it by each joint. This means if you move the hand, the hand will move, but the rest of the body will also adjust to the force applied by the hand's new position. FK is best for fine control over poses, whereas IK is best for animating natural movements. Unfortunately, IK in Playhome is very buggy and the spine and shoulders always contort into weird positions. So, until recently, I rarely bothered using it. All animations were made using FK which made it very hard to animate movement as well as being extremely fiddly and slow. Thanks to a bright idea from Gegecucu we have been able to correct the IK bugs using bone modifiers. This means that we are now able to create better animations in less time which is obviously great news all around. Posing using IK is a completely different skill to using FK though and I am still getting the hang of it (learning VaM helped with this too). So even between the first animation I worked on in version 0.17 to the last there were noticeable improvements.

After version 17 was done, before I took some time off, I spent a little time working on some experimental animations and made a small breakthrough with the jiggle effect for the girls' butts and thighs. I posted some short video loops of various characters walking across campus naked in the Headmaster’s study section of the Discord. Those on the Head of Department tier should check those out if they haven’t already. So, I am not done getting better with Playhome with plenty of room for improvement yet. I am confident that we will see another jump in quality as we move into version 0.18.

What comes next?

My plan for the next couple of months is to focus mainly on writing along with a bit of storyboarding (setting out scenes in draft). First on my list is Ruth's exam and the subsequent Chapter 2 ending. The multi-part ending I have in mind includes another dream sequence, a visit by the headmaster to Mykocks Manor, plus another classroom demonstration. So it's going to be long and hard to write and I'm going to need quite a bit of thinking time to pull it off (no pun intended). Once that's done though, filling in all the remaining gaps in Chapter 2 should be relatively straightforward. I am also hoping I get some inspiration for our next poll along the way. I discussed the remaining content for Chapter 2 in detail in this post. In summary: I need to do a little more for Faye and Nina; a few scenes for Alice; and another class punishment; plus a few other little bits and pieces. So, there is plenty of work for me to be getting on with and we are a long way from knowing when exactly the next update will be ready. As always I will keep you posted on my progress.