Morning After Update - Major Milestone Reached!

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I'm very happy to say that I've reached a big development milestone for the next update. What I've been working on has been a massive hurdle for a variety of reasons, but I'll be going over that in a separate post that I'll link here when it's published.

The milestone: A new dev build has been completed! A "dev build" is what I call an in-development version of the game that I share with higher-level Patreon patrons as a preview, but more importantly, its completion means I've gotten over the aforementioned hurdle that contributed to this next update taking a whole lot longer than expected.

If you'd like to check out the build by becoming a patron, you can find the post here. However, let me reiterate that this is not the full, complete Morning After Update but a preview of the completed content. This section of the game is also heavily reactive, so depending on your choices you may get a lengthy series of scenes or just fly through in 10 minutes, though of course you can experiment with different choices to see what happens. The key moments noted below are the ones with longer scenes.

Having said that, let's look at what all is in this build.

Storyline Continuations

Every single end point of the current free public release now continues through to the next morning. There are four locations in which you can wake up:

Matt's Apartment which follows up on:

Hooking up with Leo
Passing out drunk
Sleeping over sober (a new day 2 ending)

The Frat Apartment which follows up on:

Hooking up with Julian
Sleeping over to keep an eye on Evan (a new day 2 ending)

Griffin's Apartment (new to this build) which follows up on:

Hooking up with Griffin
Choosing not to hook up, then either going to sleep or watching a movie

Your Dorm Room (new to this build) which is where you wake up after every other ending. The most prominent situations followed up on include:

Hooking up with Marco
Jerking off with Marco
Allowing Marco to jerk off while you went to bed, waited for him outside, or made him go to the bathroom
Hooking up with Julian but did not accept Owen's help
Hooking up with Alex
Hooking up with Mafia & NC17
Watching Alex, Mafia, & NC17 hooking up
Ending your night by comforting/kissing/making out with Isaiah
Being walked home by Asher
Getting blackout drunk at the club
Having certain key experiences with other main characters like Riley and Dominic

Whether you wake up in your dorm room or return from another location, the story can continue in several fashions:

Outside of a few instances, you can talk to Marco about what occurred above
Alternatively, you can ponder those events on your own
If you had any other significant experiences with someone, you'll consider how you feel about them
If you hit a certain milestone with Dominic, a special scene unlocks after the ones above

You are given a lot to choose from when it comes to how Connor feels, ranging from enthusiastic to regretful. You will also define your intentions with characters and whether you're focusing more on hookups, romance, or both. None of these choices are set in stone but will determine how some stories play out in this next part of the game.

There is more story content that will be in the final version. To see the plans for the rest of the Morning After Update's content, be sure to check out the separate dev log post that'll be up soon.

New & Revised Art

A total of 96 new and revised CGs have been implemented as of this build:

22 new CGs were added in the first dev build featuring Evan, Julian, Matt, & Owen, plus Kash, Hugh, Parker, & Uriel
27 new CGs have been added in this build featuring Asher, Dominic, Griffin, & Marco, plus Andy & Connor's brother, Fane
44 existing CGs have been revised to add the newest models for Asher, Dominic, Isaiah, Leo, Mafia, NC17, & Tomas, plus Dominic's friend Ian (one Dominic CG is a placeholder)

The last 3 CGs, which feature Riley, Tomas, & Will, are included in the game files but cannot currently be unlocked in their galleries. However, Patreon patrons of a certain level can see those three CGs in a sneak peek post.

Various other art updates have been made that includes:

Backgrounds with colors changed to match CG backgrounds
New sprites for a variety of characters, though not all sprites for those characters have been updated yet
One small "Easter egg" in the content you've already played. Who will spot it first?

I have some screenshots below if you'd like a preview!

Now that all of these story choices are addressed, it has become a much more linear task to create the remainder of the final release, meaning the update is much closer than ever. Again, that'll be covered in the other dev log, so check it out when it's up for a whole lot more info about what I've been up to and what remains.

In other news, the vote for the third Grind'm hookup guy is underway!

New Grind'm Guy Vote

Graduate Patreon patrons get to vote for who gets an in-game hookup scenario. The first guy they chose, Jordi, already has his hookup available to play. The second guy, Trevor, will have his hookup in the update following the Morning After Update. To determine who will be joining them, Graduates originally culled the list of 16 contenders down to 8, and now those 8 are being culled down to 2 finalists.

The semi-finals will end at 11:59 PM PST on 15 September. There are two polls, with the top guy of each moving on. As of this writing, the two guys in the lead for Poll 1 are Alex's bodyguard, Antonio, and your herbal enthusiast dormmate, Blaze. The two guys leading the second poll are Parker, a theatrical guy with a big dick, and Professor Zeno, a boisterous buff daddy that will soon be joining the cast.

If you are interested in becoming a Graduate patron to pick which two of those guys moves on, check out Poll 1 or Poll 2. The two finalists will go head-to-head starting 16 September to determine which one will join the Grind'm Guy roster. Here are some promo pics I made of each of the four guys in contention to help Graduates choose:

Screenshots

Finally, here are some screenshots from the current build.

You can wake up at Matt's apartment in several ways—one of which involves running into Matt while racing to the bathroom.

Regardless of which situation leads to you sleeping at the frat house, you're bound to run into some naked guys. This is 21CA, after all.

At Griffin's apartment, you'll wake up either having hooked up the night before or having backed out. This is what you wake up to if you backed out—and the interactions you have depend on choices like whether or not you watched a movie together.

All storylines either converge at or begin in your dorm room, and in most cases you have the option to talk with Marco about your experiences. When it comes to experiences you had with Marco himself, some lead to you beginning the day in a romantic fashion...

...and others can lead to uncomfortable situations as your version of Connor tries to figure out how best to navigate his new living situation.

This build also introduces a bunch of art changes in the ongoing effort to bring the earliest art up to a level similar to what came later. For some characters, it was primarily a change in posing and lighting that polished up the look.

Some other characters had much bigger changes made to them. Mafia is someone who has a new body model, though the changes were made to be unobtrusive. Noir is an example of a character who got an entirely new model, since her original model did not match the more realistic-look of the rest of the game. Finally, NC17 is a combo of those two revision decisions—he has a new model (the same base model as his twin, Trevor), but by using his original assets like hair and textures, the transition is less jarring than some other revisions.