Dev Log: The Future- A Detailed Str8!? Proposal and FAQ

Hey all, I wanted to touch base with the all the fans in the wake of v0.21 and give you all a more detailed picture of what happens next. Please forgive some of the writing in this particular post because I know it's going to be long so I'm going to try to quickly summarize things to avoid turning this into it's own novella.

Also, this is a public post so please don't include v0.21 spoilers in the comments and ruin it for the free peeps. 

This outline will give you a brief overview of my initial plans with Straight!? as well as the future of the Patreon page and my thoughts for the future. It will also serve as somewhat of a FAQ page for things that I anticipate that people may ask or have asked already.

The Plan and Future Update Content

The public FREE version of Straight!? will drop August 3rd here on Patreon as well as on Itch and F95zone. This update will end the game and will conclude the story that I set out to tell. 

However, the game that you've played up to this point is version 1. This is the rough draft; a pre-alpha build-- my practice version for the first story I've ever written.

Moving forward, Straight!? will continue to have updates but these updates will focus on enhancing the earlier parts of the story to bring it in line with the quality of the endgame. I had zero experience when I began this project and I have learned a lot since 2017. I'm passionate about these characters and I would like for their story to visually look and read the best way possible. This means that the next update for the game will likely start with an all new game prologue and take us right back to the beginning where Zack and Braden meet for the first time. 

Revamp = CashGrab or Milking?

A lot of indie devs out there like to "milk." This is where you setup a Patreon page and deliberately delay content just to keep billing folks every month whether you're working on the project or not. I have a serious aversion to this and quite honestly, it pisses me off. The sad thing is that a lot of indie devs do it, particularly in the adult genre. Game supporters are increasingly aware of this and calling people "milkers" is a pretty common accusation, even when it doesn't fit the situation. 

Because of the prevalence of this within the game development community, I want to publicly address it here with this project's revamp.

The revamp is not designed nor will be it be a way to milk money off the same project. It's a serious attempt to fix what I think sucks about this project based on what I've learned. I want a serious chance to fix the things that truly hold me back from being proud of this. However,  I'm not a professional developer and I have no education or training in this beyond YouTube and Google. I'm still in the learning phase on all of this-- which means that I am not efficient most of the time, despite trying. I offset that by making the game free. If you find yourself losing patience with the project movement, you should feel comfortable adjusting your support accordingly, however, the development pretty much never stops around here.

It's also a passion project so I would rather keep the team very small and do most of the work myself. It's my baby and I don't want dozens of people raising it for me.

Why Should I Continue to Support? I Already Know the Ending

I've stated that I will finish this game. While it does have an ending now, it is not finished so my work is incomplete. I fully understand that some people will drop support for the project now that they've seen the ending, but I'm also serious enough about this revamp that I will do it with or without Patreon financial support. With your support, my budget will increase and this will likely be reflected in the finished project (faster updates, more images and writing, and likely better sound). But without the financial support, I will still continue to work on it, it just may take longer. 

I believe in this story and this project and I think it has the ability to be something memorable and great within this genre. When I began, the game used a similar structure to other adult games but that didn't accurately reflect my own vision at the time. Much like the  story, the project itself came of age over time and I think the progression of the game shows my own ability and growth. The beginning sorely needs this same attention. If you continue to believe in this project and are in a position to help support the revamp, I will put it to good use and will give the beginning everything I have.

Focus of the Revamp

This section will outline some bullet points on areas that I would like to look at for the revamp.

Cinematic Picture Enhancements: Increased lighting and textures. Images will also be rendered in 4k and then reduced to 1080p like they are in the endgame. I will likely use Depth of Field throughout the entire game to give that background blur that we saw in v020 and v021. Early game images were very generic. The revamp will have many new images with updated facial expressions-- particularly with Braden. I want Braden to be a much more outwardly expressive character to help offset Zack's interior monologue. We can't hear Braden's thoughts so I want to be able to see them on his face like we do increasingly in the last couple chapters.

I've attached some Before and After early wips (works in progress) above for you to see early in-game shots with a quick replacement to give you a more clear idea of how this thing would look. These were also done pretty quickly so the finished images would be further improved. These are raw images so there's no correction or Photoshop magic done here yet.

The first shot is a Before/After of Zack on the dorm room bed and is like the 4th image used in the game. We see some massive lighting differences as well as enhanced skin tone here that was missing from the original. The biggest problem here is going to be dealing with the intensity of the white colors as you can see. 

The next Before/After is the underwater pool scene. I wanted to play with this scene a bit more and actually have it feel more underwater. While the image you're seeing now isn't completed, it shows some early concepts that I'm toying with for one of my favorite scenes in the game.

The final Before/After is from the Prologue (more on that later). The first image shows a static real world picture of a locker room that was used in the original game and honestly I didn't even know where this came from at the time so I probably shouldn't be using it. The image after it shows a shot from my new version. It's also intentionally in Black and white to help hide some skin tones and flirt with the idea of who the speaker actually is.

Additional images would be added showing multiple camera angles never seen in the original draft, hopefully continuing with that cinematic feel that we saw in the later chapters.

More People: I've joked about this in game before but the early parts of the game have nobody but the main characters in them. This is because 3D rendering is very resource heavy. My newer computer allows for quicker and more complex renders, which is why we see more background people in the later scenes. I would like to do this during the early game as well. The downside to this is that figure placement takes forever so that can slow things down a bit but I would like to see more people in the cafeteria or classrooms. Small things like this should help with immersion.

Streamline Writing: As the game progresses, it gradually moves away from very generic writing to much more emotional and descriptive writing. This is because I started to get braver and I want that reflected in the beginning. I can do better. The ending shows that and I want the beginning to reflect that as well. I will not change the story or canon. The writing will not attempt to "fix" anything about the story continuity. I just wanna polish it so the writing quality in the early parts of the game will be more maturely and descriptively written.

Eliminate Game Aspect: The "loops" at the beginning of the game are annoying. Originally, the game was stat based, like most adult games were at the time. In order to progress the story, you gained points from doing early actions over and over until you unlocked the next tier of scenes. Early updates removed that and the easiest change was to use loops rather than go back and redo the entire game early on. I want to eliminate the loops and streamline the game to make it consistently story based like it is starting with chapter 4. I think the loops chase most people away before they even get to the good part of the game- it feels more like a bug than it does an intended mechanic. It's also why I don't promote this story very well. I hate the beginning and it's embarrassing now.

Music: I'd like to get sound in-game including music throughout. This music will be purchased legally and I will have licensing rights to use it. I'm aware that this could cost me thousands and I'm fully prepared to deal with that if I have to if it's within a budget or will enhance the story. The focus is on the story and these characters and I plan to look into music and sound support that will accurately reflect the vision that I wanted. If you've shed a tear during this story at all, just imagine what it would be like if there was sound. That changes everything.

Voice Acting? Probably Not: So I know some of you may be disappointed here but I'm going to tentatively say that voice acting is off the table. The amount of work it would take to fully voice act this game out would be hard for a AAA studio to pull off-- this is just a Patreon page. We easily have around 45,000 lines of dialogue in this game-- all of which would have to be recording separately and coded in individually. That's a lot. I also worry about finding people to accurately portray the voices for these characters in an ambiguous way from which to satisfy all of our own individual interpretations. Perhaps the most concerning, for me, would be Zack. His character is very much ethnically ambiguous and I worry that a voice, accent, tone, etc. could change a reader's ability to relate to him. That's dangerous to play with and the risk isn't worth it to me. My mind could be changed but it would take a lot and it will not be something I'm pursuing, if at all, early on.

More Patreon Exclusive Updates with no Spoilers: With the revamp, I'd like to offer more consistent Patreon updates like Before/After pics and sneak peeks regarding development. We didn't see a lot of this up until now mostly because I wanted to avoid spoilers. That will matter less in the revamp since we already know the story. So I should be able to include the community more. This will likely also include streams. I've never streamed in my life so I can assure you that watching me work and stumble around in real-time will be everything you think it would be. But for fans of the game that want to see more behind-the scenes stuff, I'm open to doing it and looking like a completely idiot for your general amusement. This could also include more regular question/answer periods and stuff like that. The audio equipment that I purchased last year was specifically bought with this type of stuff in mind. I was so excited for the ending that I honestly didn't trust myself not to just blurt it out in the middle of a live stream.

Patreon Page and Tier Overhaul

With many of these changes in options around here, we will likely see a change in Patreon tiers and the content for them. I will make this very public and very transparent to give people time to adjust accordingly. But in short, we're only going to see an increase in the things being offered around here.

I'm also going to redo the visual look of the Patreon page to focus on the revamp and include many of the points outlined here. The current page was about the rough draft and no longer accurately depicts what I will be working on. Most of that stuff will just be information covered in this post but will likely be modified and concise with more Before/After stuff as I start churning finished product out.

Patreon Content like the Selfies and other Stuff

Patreon content will continue to be pushed out on the page. However, this may not be every month and the game revamp will take priority. Sometimes these sets allow me a "break" from the game and other times they allow me to practice things that I can then use in-game (we'll see that in August btw so stay tuned). So it's still technically development on the project, but I don't want to get too far off course.

Also, if you have ideas for the Patreon sets and stuff, feel free to contact me on Discord, DM here, or leave comments below. I read everything and try to respond to every comment.

What about Future Projects?

I get this question pretty often so I'll briefly state that finishing Straight!? is my first priority. If I say I'm gonna complete something, I want to be a developer that sticks to that. That should be the norm with development, but sadly it's the exception. So revamping this game will be my main priority but I'm likely going to look at future projects as well. Development on large scale projects will likely be slow in the beginning due to the number of early changes needed on Straight!?, but after I'm through the initial organizational work needed here, we could see some new bigger stuff start to leak out. In the meantime, we could see some smaller projects that return to the Straight!? universe with new or existing characters.

But let's not limit ourself to what we already know...

One thing that I've openly talked with the other devs about is writing and needing a few opportunities to practice writing something else besides this game and this world. So we could also see some other things that are completely new including characters, stories, worlds, or genres of writing.

I'd like to stick with this if I can so any future projects would be featured here as well.

TimeFrame For the Revamp

This one is hard to judge but I have some initial thoughts. Right now, I'm thinking this is likely going to take at least a year. So I'm starting my bid around a year and we'll adjust from there. That being said, the beginning of the game needs the most work so we'd likely see slow progress at the beginning (due to massive coding, writing, organization, and image needs) but then very fast progress towards the ending update (mostly only rerendering shots with Depth of Field and that's about it).

I will adjust accordingly, but the goal isn't to spend years and years endlessly working on a game that people have already played. But I do want to finish it and make it consistent.

Questions?

If you have more questions or suggestions, let me know. I'm open and I love hearing from the community. This is only the beginning

-Aaryn