Hey, everyone! April's first status report is here, and I have a whole bunch to talk about.
Today's cover image is half of a larger CG that'll appear at the start of Matt's hangout. If you choose to enter the locker room, I wanted to give a sense of what the crowd is like. So, much like I did for orientation and entering the club, I created a long image to pan across. I'll talk more about it later!
It's been a busy and very productive few weeks. After releasing the dev build for the upcoming Getting to Know Matt story update, I moved on to creating all the Matt-focused content. Let's go over it!
Writing
One of the reasons I decided to focus the update on Matt is because I already had 100+ script pages for his scenes. In the week after I posted the dev build, I wrote an additional 150+ pages.
Clearly, making Matt the sole focus of the update helped me write a whole lot more, a whole lot quicker, than I was doing before. Not having to consider a dozen other plotlines at once made it so much easier to lock in!
Combined, those script pages constitute the opening and the back half of Matt's hangout, a portion of which I posted in Sneak Peek #37 last May. (I've had to sit on this Matt content for a long time!) Now I'm wrangling the beginning of the hangout, which is trickier because, naturally, Matt and Connor will discuss what Connor's been up to. And there's a whole lot he can get up to.
Long ago, I made a big priority chart to keep track of events that would be most relevant to the discussion. That looks like this:
The three sections at the top represent Matt's apartment hangout, the club hangout, and the frat hangout. For the latter two, scenes you can play through are slotted into columns that each represent how important the events were in that scene. Below that and partially cut off is a breakdown of all the Matt/Leo interactions.
There are some events that definitely need dedicated, fleshed out conversations—the Julian hookup situation is one, as well as everything with Griffin if you go to his apartment. Losing your virginity is a big topic, of course, as is what you can get up to with Will.
For the rest, I'm thinking of how I can adequately sum things up without needing to write extended scenes for everything. As part of that, I'm figuring out what sort of "template" scenes I can create that will work for multiple guys. Basically, it'll be a sort of "fill in the blank" thing where I can reference a flag that'll fill in names for most of the convo. Then I'll add in some event-specific dialogue based on the priority order.
Planning and writing this is the most complex of what's left to do, and it'll be my focus in the coming days. I want to make sure the script is mostly if not entirely nailed down before putting all my attention on art.
One other planning thing has been deciding what choices will unlock Matt's sexual scenes. I want anyone who has dedicated time to Matt's story to easily reach the best path's... climax... to honor all that time spent building your relationship. But I don't want to make it impossible to see those scenes if you decided to play the field.
Each guy has a Hookup Level, as described in the official Relationship Guide, and those levels determine just how much a guy will do with you sexually. To go as far as possible with Matt, you need to reach Hookup Level 3. If you spent the night at his apartment and built up sexual tension, good news—you're already there (or very close).
But what if you went to the club or frat instead of Matt's apartment? What should be required to increase Matt's Hookup Level just by talking to him during this hangout?
All throughout the game, you've been building various points with each guy, so it feels like that system should come into play. What I'm trying to do now is decide how to calculate Matt's lust points so that if you hit a point threshold equivalent to bigger events like kissing Matt, you can see all the fun, sexy stuff I created.
What I know for sure is that if you never interacted with Matt past the very start of the game (meaning you didn't even go to his apartment), it'll be nearly impossible to get beyond Hookup Level 2 (outside of a few very specific situations). Not getting to the max level isn't necessarily a bad thing, though—there's a whole series of CGs dedicated to how that plays out.
Accessing all of Matt's content isn't as complicated as I may have made it seen. For one, I'll definitely update the Relationship Guide with the specific steps needed. But I did promise choices would matter, and situations like this are exactly where that gameplay will come in.
Art
Now, onto the more entertaining visual stuff!
I had two areas I focused on the past few weeks: creating a new location (Matt's gym) and making a bunch of new sprites for Connor and Matt.
The main area of the gym was easy enough since I already bought an environment that fit what I needed. (I used it in the February 2025 Guy Gallery, in fact.) Since this part of the location only exists as backgrounds, I just needed to set up lighting, place buildings behind the back windows, and add in a handful of extras.
The locker room seen in the cover image was a little more involved. I purchased the environment just like the main area of the gym, but I needed to rearrange the layout, edit the shaders of some objects, and change a few surfaces, like the floor. There was also set decorating to do, and of course, add in a bunch of guys for Connor to ogle after walking in.
Most extras in the game are out of focus in the background, so I usually just take a random figure I picked up at some point, put an outfit and hair on them, and call it a day. For the locker room, though, most of the extras are actually in focus. That meant I needed to put a little more time into creating their models.
There were a few extras I made for the club that I reused, including one who's cropped out of the preview pic above. I used him in Jordi's Grind'm scenario, actually, but gave him a little makeover so he could take center stage in this new CG.
I also plan to pop in a few other club extras, like the curly-haired go-go dancer and a photographer. They've been used in various Patreon galleries, so their models are pretty much good to go.
The most labor-intensive part of the gym, though, was making the shower set. I didn't have any purchased environments that worked for what I wanted, so I built it entirely from the ground up. I think it turned out pretty well—here's a CG of Matt using it that I first shared in February's Sneak Peek #43.
The gym is the only new location in this portion of the game. Other backgrounds like Connor's dorm room and Matt's apartment were/will be easily adjusted just by changing the lighting. It's nice to have this new set ready to play with later on, as well as a more detailed set of extras I can use to fill out future scenes!
The other art task was to figure out Connor and Matt's new outfits, then create all their sprites.
Something I'm taking into account is picking clothing clothing that can look good if I need to show someone undressing. Conforming clothes (basically, outfits that are glued to the model) are usually fine, but unless they have morphs to show things like pants unzipping or a hem raising, they can look really bad in CGs.
So for Connor's outfit, I decided to go with one I can do actual cloth simulation with via Marvelous Designer. Although it's time-consuming and often a headache, I usually love the results, and it's so much easier to manipulate how clothes drape/are undone.
Here's a CG from Trevor's Grind'm scenario where I used Marvelous Designer for both guys' outfits.
The level of detail—from wrinkles and puckering to the weight of different cloths highlighted by custom shaders—made this one of my favorite images in that entire scenario.
Connor is going to be getting naked on the regular, so making it easier to undress him was key, but that was not the only consideration. His new outfit is gonna be seen a lot in the upcoming story updates, so I wanted something we wouldn't mind looking at a bunch. Here's what I came up with:
(Please forgive his Ken doll-ness; you only see his sprites from the chest up, so I didn't bother to render him fully endowed.)
I decided I wanted him to loosen up just a little, and I also wanted him to take Cherish's advice to wear more blue to bring out his eyes. I found this style of pullover that fit his aesthetic and thought it looked pretty nice.
As for Matt, I'm still figuring out what I want his new outfit to be. His pants in particular are giving me trouble because I only have one pair of conforming jeans that is high quality and has the ability to unzip/lower, and I'm already using it on several other guys.
Other articles of clothing I tried on him weren't working well, either, so I set aside designing that outfit to focus on all the gym stuff—which includes the outfit you find Matt in when you arrive:
He's fresh from his workout, so I made him all sweaty, including mussing up his hair a bit. There's a shirtless version, too, and some of him in just a towel.
Something I haven't talked about all that much is just how intensive post-render editing can be. This Matt sprite is a good example. Here's the render on the left versus the final version on the right:
From a distance, not that different. But zooming in a little closer...
A consistent problem with Matt's model is that his undereye bags can be too prominent for someone his age, and I can't figure out how to edit it off the model itself. So I went over every single one of his new sprites to manually reduce them. (I didn't entirely remove them, though, since they are definitely part of his overall look.)
This one is a little subtle, but there's an abrupt line on his shirt's strap where the sweat stain didn't appear correctly, so I smoothed that out a bit.
Matt's pubic hair asset was sticking through the shorts, so I had to render the sprites without it, then edit in his treasure trail after the fact.
The shorts went real weird with some of the details, probably because it's a conforming piece for a different generation Daz figure (another mark in favor of Marvelous Designer). First, I tried to lesson how crunchy the waistband was.
There was also some weirdness around the seams between the red and gray, so I got rid of that, too.
Now multiply that level of editing across his 37 new sprites, some of which had their own specific problems to fix on top of the shared issues. Not to mention doing this for the other 155 Matt sprites I made/remade before releasing the dev build. And I'll have even more to edit once I have his new outfit figured out...
Thankfully, I can save things like the eye bag touchups as layers I can place on top of any sprite I make for him, which relieves some of the workload. Connor is also a big help since after his shirt was simulated, I didn't need to do anything but render his expressions and crop the sprites to the right size.
I have some more art stuff I need for the gym sequence, and then it's on to creating all the CGs for Matt's hangout. I've already set up some of those hangout CGs and am really excited for you to finally see them in context.
Coding
Lastly, after fixing a few bugs that were reported in the dev build, I coded in the real transition from where that build leaves off to Matt's hangout. Something I had to consider is how to handle leaping forward in time to this one specific hangout, especially if it's not the one you agreed to while playing.
As originally planned, there was a whole sequence with a new class and Evan's hangout that took place before Matt's stuff, but since it's not going to be in this update, I decided to do a little pop-up asking if you wanted to skip to Matt's place or just end the game. Not the most elegant thing, but hey, it won't be like that forever!
I haven't programmed all the gym stuff yet since I was waiting to have finished art, but that's next on the docket.
TO-DO LIST
Okay, let's look at the updated to-do list for the remainder of this update.
For anyone new, I don't guess at release dates since I'm notoriously bad at guesstimating. Rather, I share my to-do list in these posts so you can follow along with development in another way.
This list is focused entirely on new content and doesn't cover the full extent of all tasks being done, like programming changes and other revisions. This is, however, the bulk of what needs done before The Getting to Know Matt Update is ready to be released.
Anything that has changed or been added since I first shared this to-do list in Status Report #93 is bolded with an asterisk next to it.
WRITING
"Variants" are different versions of scenes to account for choices; there are many choice-reactive dialogue changes in these scenes that are not included in the count.
* Overnight transition (5/5 variants, completed)
* Gym transition (3/3 variants, completed)
Matt hangout, opening conversations (0/40 variants)
Matt sexual situation #1 (2/2 variants, completed)
Matt sexual situation #2 (2/2 variants, completed)
Matt hangout ending (1/2 variants)
ART
Note: These numbers will likely fluctuate with each new status report.
Sprites
* Connor, new (21/21, completed)
Matt, revised (107/107, completed)
* Matt, new (87/128)
Leo, new (0/?)
CGs
* Transition (0/2)
* Gym (2/5)
Matt hangout (1/79)
Backgrounds
* City (0/3)
* Dorm room (2/2, completed)
* Gym (2/7)
* Matt's apartment (0/2)
Character Models
Matt (tweaked, done)
Leo (tweaked, done)
Henri (new, done)
Will (tweaked, done)
* Prominent extras, revised (1/3)
* Prominent extras, new (9/10)
* Background extras (8/9)
Character Design
* Connor, week 1b outfit (done)
Matt, week 1b outfit (needed)
* Matt, gym outfit (done)
* Matt, towel (done)
Leo, week 1b outfit (needed)
Sets
* Gym (3/4)
CODING
* Overnight transition (5/5 variants, completed)
Gym transition (0/3 variants)
Matt hangout, opening conversations (0/40 variants)
Matt sexual situation #1 (0/2 variants)
Matt sexual situation #2 (0/2 variants)
Matt hangout ending (0/2 variants)
GAME PLANNING
* Connor personality states (partially done)
* Matt Hookup Level increases (partially done)
* Matt conversation templates (partially done)
* Backfill tracking to add scenes later for other characters (partially done)
One last thing, exclusive to Patreon—a new Behind the Scenes post covering lighting the game's art is on its way. It's mostly ready to go, just needs a little more editing before I post it. I get asked about lighting a lot, so I hope it proves interesting to anyone who wants to take a deep dive into all the details!
I think that covers it. I'll be back with another status report soon, and I expect to have a lot more of this to-do list filled out when I do!