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Hello everyone,

It has been a while since any news on the development of the next version has been posted.
Most important reason for this was that the rendering part of the engine was not yet ready.
Luckily that part of the engine is now ready (finally ).

First some screenshots of the new engine. After that I will elaborate more on were we stand now and a slight indication of planning.

















Rendering

As you can see the rendering is quite different from version 3.5.
A lot of the rendering techniques used in Unity and/or Unreal have been integrated into the new engine. These are e.g.:

- Deferred lighting (with MSAA)
- Physics based materials
- Image based lighting and reflection
- Screen space Ambient Occlusion
- Screen space reflection
- Cascaded shadowing
- Volumetric lighting
- Blooming, DOF

No lightmaps are being used, to make the interactivity of the lighting easier.


Gameplay

The setting of the game will be a university with a campus attached to it.
In the end on this terrain there will be a school building, sport arena, swimming pool, dormitory and a library.

We are currently developing a character creator, that will allow for a lot of characters to be available in this setting.
Each (female) character will have its own mini story that in most cases will make it possible to win her over.
The stories will be less linear, and the characters will exchange information about the progress with each other.
This e.g. will mean that if you mess up with a girl, her friends will also know about this and that can influence your progress with them.


Modding

Modding has a lot of focus in the development of the new engine. It will be possible to add new characters to the setting (as described above).
You can program their own story and by adding a pack this character will automatically be added to the game.
This will be possible without any third party software (except for a text editor).

Also new settings can be created. This will require third party software (like Maya), if the objects are not already present in the game.


Development

All in all there will be more focus on adding features to the game engine, instead of making a completely new version for every story.
The open world approach will allow to integrate new characters and stories more easily.


Planning

Building the new render part of the engine felt a bit like building a railroad through the rockies. At every turn new issues arose.
Mainly because deferred rendering on paper looks elegant, but making it look good (and practical in its use) was not easy.
Halfway through, we discussed if it would not be better to fall back on a forward renderer again.
But after fixing all the issues it's approach does pay off. And having good normal, depth and materials buffers, allow for a lot of extra effects at very low cost.

We initially thought developing the deferred rendered (with all effects), would take no more than 4 months. It was 8 months.
So making a planning is not easy if you do not know exactly what lies ahead. This is the reason an release date will not be given.
I will however update on the state of the development more frequently.

That's beautiful . The lighting looks very real. I can't wait to see what the character creator is going to be like, if this is the outcome of the engine that the creator gets to work in.

In the first screenshot, are any of those girls new to the game? Or are they just placeholder models that don't do anything, or what?

Keep up the amazing work. It's great to finally hear some development news!

See see told ya

Really can notice a difference in render quality with the scenery. I am very eager to see how this engine will improve the characters look and what new animation there will be.

I just recently purchased the program, so haven't waited as long as some of the others. But I've been checking in almost everyday to see if there is anything new.

Hope to see beta soon. Even with one girl. Explore the new engine.

Thanks for updating us.

Ohh my...... my crappy PC will probaly explode

Nice, nice! Looks like a good improvement from 3.5, can't wait for a screen of a girl to see what the new engine does there

Thanks to everybody who didn't chime into the "this game is dead" tune many people were singing

Please have a toggle for DoF. I despise depth of field in games, because there is no way for the game to know what you're looking at, and therefore no way to know whether or not it should be in focus.

That said, the renders look pretty damn good. It'd be nice to have a closer look at the girls, but I guess there's still some work to do there before a proper reveal.

Amazing!
Just keep do what you do and at some point if you need guinea pigs.... I mean Beta testers - just let us know!

PS - I kinda hate you... because of the new awesome engine... now I'll have to upgrade my crappy PC...

"Dear Santa,
I know that I was a "little bit" bad through the year... but all I wish for Christmas is just a PC, with GF 1080 or maybe 2... ..."

Dayum ! My 1080 is allready faping !

Well, this looks very good and i m super excited for the focus on modding possibilities !

Cant wait for the planning part to be filled. I m still hoping for a 2016 release but i m already prepared for a bad news

Keep up the good work guys, and the screenshots sharing obviously. I mean, we want to see the girls !!

Bonus question. Have you guys planned a "fuck" position ? So that it s not just walking back and forth ? Maybe you re not there yet but it doesnt cost anything asking.

Cheers