Happy Nude Year!

Wishing you the best, most erotic year yet in 2019!

I've been busy as usual working toward the version 0.18 release, so I'll stick to something simple... naked girls playing in the snow :D

You can see the following image on Imgur too.

Government Shutdown

Hello everyone,

Time for another dev blog update, this time it's the U.S. Gov't Shutdown Edition! In case you aren't aware, the U.S. Government is currently in a shutdown. Technically, it's a partial shutdown, which means that people like myself still have to go to work (we just aren't getting paid). I think we haven't actually had an approved budget in years, it's just been a succession of continuing resolutions.

Anyway, this post isn't about politics, why there is a shutdown, whose fault it is, or anything like that. If you're wondering why I'm talking about it, it's because I'm a federal employee. This is a good thing, because there's no way I could survive with my AW income, even if I wasn't paying people to work on the game. I work in IT, and my job could be likened to putting out fires in a way. I'm something of a generalist, I maintain a bunch of different things, and fix things that break. It's basically my broad skill set that makes me valuable, rather than how much I do in any given day.

So some days I do have to 'put out fires' as it were. Usually it ends up being an external issue, but the other day I did have to do some hardware repairs. And... I end up with plenty of extra time to also write code for AW. Like a firefighter, there's some training and basic tasks to take care of on a shift, but I'm not busy unless there's a fire.

At least, until this shutdown...

As pervy and silly as I may be on a regular basis, I do still have a strong commitment to public service. So when the government shuts down, and huge swaths of employees go home, there is still work the needs to be done, especially when it comes to things like public safety and national defense. So, I've been busier than usual trying to hold things together. It's more work when none of the bureaucracy is working properly, and you're trying to handle things you normally have nothing to do with...

It's been a rough week in terms of development. I find it hard to write when there are constant distractions and things going on, so instead of pounding away at that inefficiently, I've been working on other areas where I can do more good. Fixes, and smaller tasks. Finances are now properly implemented in the game, for example. 

A few previews:

A whole suite of background images for some of the various early endings. 

Vehicle Management Window - literally

Because the map system calculates travel distance to determine travel time when driving around Muschi Valley, I thought it'd be neat to keep track of your vehicle's mileage. Just a minor detail that is kind-of neat. changing your vehicle, doing repairs and the like will happen later in development, they're fairly low priority.

I'm going to keep working toward the release of version 18. On the website I have the release date listed as "Jan 1*". I added the asterisk largely because I figured all sorts of things could happen... but I will still try to get this new version out on New Year Day. I'm not going to release if it isn't ready though, so I may push the date back to the 2nd.

I hope everyone has a great new years!

ThaumX

SafeCow Gene Mods

The SafeCow girl is a modified version of "Chibi Cowgirl" by Morning Panda

HuCows have been on the collective minds of the discord server for the last week. I'm not really sure how it started, but it's been a fun week overall. Of course the Institute is happy to help with expanding the new dairy market with safe*, thoroughly-tested**, genetic modifications***!

I made the quick little gif above, and Besty got so excited that he stayed up at night making a little hucow arcade game called "Happy Hucow Farm". The whole thing hit upon some plans I have that I haven't thoroughly shared yet, so I thought I'd post some of my notes from my handy AW notebook #2. 

Besty's free-time hucow game

The concept of "job game" mini games came about as a result of some of my plans for employment at the institute, involving some fun with GLADyS or setting up some always-fun product testing when you reached a higher rank. In the case of the institute, it's more of a look inside the organization, and an introduction to some potential story chains. But then I started thinking that there are similar things that would be fun to explore in other game careers. Progenerate Technology and Managing the Farm Co-op's dairy operations. I think they'll add perverted little snippets of fun to each week ^-^

Green line art courtesy of my son, ThaumXI

Sorry for my handwriting, I wasn't thinking about showing people back when I wrote all this stuff.

In the development department, things have been progressing at the usual pace. More work on NPC conversations, several loose ends, and the addition of tier 1 and 3 homes to the game, along with the ability to move to a new home with the help of Tiffany at Apple Cleft Realty.

Christmas is coming up fast, and I'm going to try to come up with something fun for you guys here, so stay tuned. Also, don't forget the writing contest! 

I'll leave you with some older gifs I made that are related...

Cleaned up gif of Mattie by Matsu Sensei

Pixel sprite animation by unknown artist turned into larger dairy gif

... And some normal gifs...

* Probably. Remember, your farmer believes the benefits outweigh the potential risks.

** Lots of testing, though said tests may not necessarily relate to actual product safety or effectiveness.

*** At least a little, and some other things. Read the individual product labels.

Club Craziness

Hello everyone, it's time for another AW Update!

We've been getting a lot done, which is great to make some extra cushion for the upcoming holidays. I've got some neat stuff to show you, but before that I wanted to cover a couple brief things.

The first is about sex scenes in the game. I think somewhere along the way some people started getting the idea that sex scenes would be exclusively in the sex system. This isn't the case! The sex system is there for more "general" scenes, to present a lot of different options, positions, kink variation and random variation (library system) to keep things interesting. However, there is still plenty of room for scripted sex scenes that involve special circumstances, locations, events, etc. Those are for the kind of situations that don't get repeated over and over, and add spice to the sex activities of the game as a whole. Examples could be a lusty tryst with someone at work, plenty of things happening at Progenerate Technologies, adventures during a trip to the lake, some fun in a movie theater, the list goes on and on. Another example is the sex scene with Lily in the shower, which will eventually be a custom branching scene. :D

The second is just plugging a reminder about the writing contest. We've already got a couple entries, and I'm really excited to read them!

Let's do some previews!

More chapters of Gene Therapy have been added to the game, two of which have been formatted and added to fun hiding spots. (hints in each chapter lead to the next.) The chapters are now inventory items that can be re-opened. As it turns out, the whole series is about 75,000 words before the extras. I didn't remember writing so much! o.O

The Farm Coop got some attention with passages and a nice new map from Besty. 

We also added in the club Shake & Pop, complete with it's own map, different locations, and some fun activities to enjoy. It'll go along well with the new features making it into this and the next version.

The font scaling got an overhaul so that font size should be more consistent across the game regardless of browser. There are still a few kinks to work out here and there, but so far it looks a lot nicer when I ran my compatibility test w/ different browsers and machines/displays.

The first bad end has made it into the game, and comes as a form of death from excessive bleeding after a late-term miscarriage. The bad end setup is also ready to go, so we can add more at any time. As a side note, miscarriages have been added to the game. The extremely common irl first-term miscarriages (apx 20% of all pregnancies end this way) can happen, with odds reduced with higher fertility. Late term miscarriages are also in the game, but only happens as a result of consistently low health over several days. (Drug addiction interaction will be added later.) Both forms of miscarriage can be disabled in the game settings.

You can now give birth in the game! The above picture is an example, but is missing a good deal of text because it's just the display without the actual babies. 

There are some other smaller things we've gotten done, as well as a lot of interaction conversation specification (no point in pictures of that).

Hope you have a great weekend, I'm going to get some sleep!

ThaumX

Redefining Management

How do we redefine management?

With a new definition.

Hello everyone, I've got a relatively quick post for you with the results of the Avatar poll, and some notes on where we're going over the next few months. There's plenty of fun things in store, and I can't wait to get going on expanding Appletree's story!

In more mundane news, today I added another 70,000 words to the game in the form of the Gene Therapy story, along with some official Institute documentation and a few clues. I also completely redid the game's text scaling. Now text is consistently sized regardless of font, and the font-size option in the system menu applies much more uniformly to game text.

It seems that the desire to see one's character really overrides most people's concerns about the derpiness of the avatar. Most of the comments I've received however have proclaimed the dislike of that Dynamic Avatar drawing. I have to admit, that I don't really care for it myself... but I'm going to see if I can't make a few minor tweaks that will improve the way it looks. Honestly, I'd rather just draw some bodies myself with simple anime-style shading than use this thing as it is... but drawing everything would take more time. Probably not much if we're just talking breast size, hips, waist, and ass... but that falls a bit short of the level of variable representation I think people are looking for...

So I'm going to work on the avatar system, but I'm going to do it primarily in extra time, possibly with a little help from good ole' Besty. It's not something that will be in the game for version 0.18... but it should be in by version 0.2. 

What's Next

Really, the major pieces standing in the way of our complete framework is the dating and relationship framework, and that'll be the main focus of our attention over the coming months. Version 0.20 should mark the end of the framework phase, and we'll be digging into the content. It probably won't be an easy transition for me, to be honest, though I'm excited about it. I've spent so long mostly coding, I know it'll take me a little bit to get used to mostly writing. It's a nice problem to have though! It's like spending ages preparing for an epic TRPG campaign. The story and experience is what you're passionate about, but you've been working on the maps, notes, dungeon traps, and the thousand other things you need to actually play. Those things can be fun on their own, but now it's time to get the session going.

While I transition over to writing, Besty will continue to flesh out some of the open areas, and we should get a solid stream of new content coming. It'll be even better if we start getting some fun submissions in the future too. 

I have to say I'm quite happy with how quick it is to add content and places. Jobs, schools, stores, and more can be added quite easily, the most work going into the requisite writing. Writing itself is quite quick to convert from simple writing to twee ready for the game. That's the objective I've been working toward, so it's really nice to see it working!

For example, we added a sex shop in the adult district (actually, Besty did shortly after v0.17 came out). The part that took the longest was arranging the art assets. (The sex toy system is slated for later in development, so this is mostly for sex furniture type stuff.)

Thanks everyone for your support along the way! I know that the choice to dedicate most of my effort in development to framework first wasn't always the most popular choice, but it's nearly time to start showing everyone why it was worth it! :D

And a quick reminder...

I didn't mention it before, but I'll be updating the contest description. The writing does not have to be in twee. Using [brackets] (color coding is awesome too) to explain what you want is plenty sufficient. You don't need to code... just write :D

Steam Powered Loving

Hello everyone!

It feels like it's been a while, even though it hasn't even been a week. I've got some cool stuff to share with you today, as well as the usual "what's being planned for the next release" section. I'll be doing another post tomorrow or Saturday to go over the poll results, and talk a little bit more about plans for the next few months and transitioning to content mode.

Really everything we're doing at this point comes down to finishing up the essential framework, which right now means working on interactions with NPCs from conversations to romance. Here's the plan for December...

Main Objectives:

• Attractiveness calculation, normalization, and preference adjustment.

• Interaction content.

• Relationship & basic NPC processing.

• Fixing the sex scene system. 

Secondary Objective:

• Date system framework. 

Tertiary Objectives: (in order)

• Home system cleanup/refactor/minor improvements.

• Age Gate implementation…

• Adding a club for nightlife. 

It's another tall order, but I believe we'll be able to get the main objectives done along with some of the tertiary ones for spice. The date system is the main focus of January, so while we may get some more pieces done, it probably won't be ready for version 0.18.

Progress

I've got Besty toiling away in the AW Conversation Mines, where he's setting up the paths and effect code for different conversations. That'll let me focus more on the writing for those, which is a good deal faster than doing all of it at once.

I've been working on some technical items, the first being the <<has>> macro. It's really just a much more efficient way of checking the player's traits, kinks, mutations, and etc. for logic. Structurally it's similar to the classic if, else if, else statement, but it parses game variables so you can use <<has slut bitch>>Shut up and fuck me this instant<<or>>I'm ready for you now...<</has>> which is pretty quick compared to the normal format. 

After half a day with that, I dove into the sex system performance. I'm happy to say that the sex scene actions are now ten times faster. It still takes about a quarter of a second after clicking an action for the results to appear, but this is far more livable than the 2-3 seconds that it took before. The culprit turned out to be SugarCube, we were just asking it to parse too much with all the buttons and options. Basically, I cut out the middleman, and handled a lot of it with standard HTML and JS. 

Writing Contest!

You can check out the details on the link to the right. (Writing Contests, under the link to the AW web page)

The Baked Goods Release - Version 0.17.0

Baked Goods Release – Version 0.17.0 – 01 Dec 2018

Original PDF Version

November turned out to be something of a troubled month for development. Nothing specific to the game, just stuff related to that pesky real-world thing. Besty had his vacation, I caught a string of colds with a dose of flu (which somehow ended up causing me to go completely off-course and add pregnancy to the game). There was some work tomfuckery, and probably some other things my brain is actively trying to forget. We still got a lot done, it just wasn’t all the things that were planned… and some of the planned things didn’t get done/finished. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

While the overall amount of work wasn’t that much less than normal, being the wrong work for this exact point in the schedule does mean some schedule shifts. Basically, some of the stuff that was supposed to be done still needs to be done… no surprise there, really. With all the various things that’ve happened this fall, like the typhoons, as well as the extra TLC I want to give the sex scene system next month, I think our switch to “content mode” is going to be about a month behind. On the bright side, the mountainous pile of code that makes up the AW framework is working much better, and early tests of content integration have gone better than expected! :D

New Stuff Summary

The new content this month is a little spread out rather than being in one or two places. There’s an entirely new job path as a maid to explore. Pregnancy is now enabled in the game, the full process from insemination to implantation. (Note: while pregnancy will progress, pregnancy content and birth are not implemented.) Lactation has been improved (and tied into pregnancy), breast pumps are available, and breast milk can be sold for credits at the Farm Coop. The “Penetrated” piercing parlor in the mall is now functional, and you can get pierced and buy piercings. The amount of jewelry items for sale was increased by over 60 items. You’ll also notice “world thoughts” which is something of an internal monologue based on your status and location. There’s a new pharmacy, and you can talk with world NPCs more as well.

Time Card

We put in a lot of hours this month, even before considering Besty’s vacation or my illness and work tomfuckery. Unlike before, however, it’s work split between two people at a lot more sustainable pace. I’m no longer killing myself with 11, 12, and 13 hour days, and have been keeping things to 8-9 hours most days, with a few days that are shorter sprinkled in as needed. We’ve also had a pretty good ratio of coding to other duties, particularly when you consider that bug fixing is largely coding itself.

You’ll probably notice the huge amount of time spent on bug fixing for the second month now. We’ve been working on getting the framework working nice and buttery smooth, like a well-oiled stripper. A lot of this has been more behind-the-scenes stuff, as my design philosophy has been to build error handling into the game, so not all bugs are immediately obvious when playing. We’ll probably keep an elevated amount of QA work going over the next couple months until the transition to phase 3, but most of the work in that area seems to be behind us.

As usual, you can download the reports to get more information on what we’ve been up to.

Summary Report                   Detail Report

Known Issues

Templates from previous versions of the game will cause bugs during play.

The sex scene system is still on the slow side, but a fix and some improvements are in the works.

Autosaves created while sleeping seem to work fine, but there have been some incidents of traveling to the wrong passage incorrectly thereby breaking the game/save. These haven’t been reproducible enough to figure out what might be cause it. We recommend keeping a manual save just in case.

Change Log - Version 0.16.0

Word Count:  1,022,116 words        (+41,928)           Characters: 5,685,090 symbols           (+243,180)

Code:             105,327 lines             (+8,741)           (new, more accurate count method)

Compatibility:

Templates:    Templates created in version 17.0 will work fine, older templates will not.

Saves:            Saves from v0.15.0 or later should work fine in this version.

However, if any bug errors made it into your save, they will still show up in this version.

Things:

v  Added the scenario system to the game.

Ø  A simplified display existing outside of normal Twine passage navigation. It allows events, scenarios, and quests to be “interjected” into normal map-based play and can be shown/hidden at will.

Ø  The design/layout of the scenario view is rather basic for now, focusing mostly on function.

v  NPC Detail View improved [Besty]

Ø  More information about NPCs can now be uncovered and viewed.

v  Dynamic Avatar Drawer was added to the game for testing purposes, it is not accessible outside of dev and elite versions.

v  Fertility Code got a major expansion and some improvements.

Ø  Sperm is now properly tracked in the female reproductive tract, and will move and change locations naturally.

§  Additional action options are available at the end of a sex scene as well to remove them or help them along with their mission.

Ø  Ovulation now occurs, and the released egg/s can be fertilized by available sperm.

Ø  Zygotes will travel for a period of days (exact amount depending on a couple factors) before having the opportunity to implant in the uterus, and which point pregnancy officially begins.

Ø  Entire process is impacted by the numerous fertility variables and mutations, as described in the in-game encyclopedia fertility section.

Ø  Fetuses will grow over time and are affected by the mother’s health and wellbeing. !Most pregnancy content, as well as actually giving birth, are not implemented!

Ø  Birth Control got some upgrades.

§  Diaphragms now work properly as either a form of birth control or conception enhancement device, depending on use. Spermicidal gel/lube is still not enabled, so they have low efficacy as birth control devices for now.

§  Diaphragms and other forms of reusable birth control will age with continued use.

§  A DIY home IUD applicator kit is now available in a pharmacy near you. It will prevent pregnancy 100% of the time. IUDs are currently not removable.

Ø  Pregnancy is now linked to lactation, and lactation will increase as pregnancy progresses.

Ø  Several areas of initial player fertility calculation have been improved or fixed. The Fertility Goddess Mutation is once-again enabled. Max fertility has been increased, and fertility boosting products (such as fertilitea) are now taken into account.

Ø  Fertility code is character-neutral, meaning it also works for NPCs. Ovulation and pregnancy are not currently enabled for NPCs though.

Ø  New Cheat options for the [cheats] and [elite] versions of the game related to fertility. Allows you to see information about sperm and zygotes and gives some fertility commands and ability to adjust fertility.

v  The Dev Toolkit (available in the [elite] version) has gotten several improvements and enhanced functionality.

Ø  It now supports executing standard Twee code in addition to JavaScript.

Ø  New more compact menu button.

Ø  Now enables direct map navigation to chosen location, and includes a list of names/locations for ease of use.

v  The Lactation and breast systems have been expanded.

Ø  Lactation rates now change naturally, and can be increased by stimulation or decreased by disuse.

Ø  Several breast pumps are now available in pharmacies to pump breast milk.

Ø  Breast milk is now collected in cryo-canisters, and can be sold at the Farm Coop.

§  A very basic Farm Coop Location has been added to the game, it will receive expansion later in development.

Ø  Calculations involving breast milk, as well as handling of breast size, have been improved.

§  Milking time now properly affected by nipple diameter/girth.

§  Milking time also affected by the strength of breast pump used.

Ø  New milking mini-events for each breast pump.

Ø  Milk production is now more forgiving for overflows and pain from overfull breasts, and orgasms are slightly easier to achieve for players without sensitive nipples. Arousal gain is more constrained.

v  The Penetrated piercing parlor in the mall is now open and operational. [Besty]

Ø  All body locations can now be pierced to allow wearing piercing jewelry.

§  Prices are set at a temporary Besty level of 50 credits, this will be changed in a future release, with simple piercings having lower prices.

Ø  Penetrated now sells piercing jewelry for players to wear. [ThaumX]

Ø  Over 60 new pieces of jewelry (piercings) have been added to the game. [ThaumX]

v  The Oedipus Rx Pharmacy has been added to the medical district in Appletree.

v  The FITTA home goods store in the Applewood mall now has a small selection of new items [Besty]

Ø  One such kinky item has some neat text associated with it…

v  Several new permanent NPCs have been added to the game [Besty]

Ø  Primarily these NPCs are the instructors for the schools located downtown and in the adult district.

v  Conversational Tags System has been created.

Ø  System generates and maintains an array of tags that indicate different situations or circumstances.

§  Tags are primarily related to the player’s status and condition. Things like being naked, sick, in withdrawal, wet, covered in splooge, etc. etc. all result in a weighted conversation tag at one of 4 priority levels.

§  Priority levels sort tags into how obvious or important they are for the NPC to ‘notice’, so that they can be integrated into a conversation appropriately. (A stranger probably wouldn’t notice that you look sad, for example.)

§  Tags are regularly updated, rather than generated at the start of a conversation to improve overall performance, and also allow tag use outside of conversations.

§  Basic location tags are now generated, these are created as-needed based on the player’s location.

§  NPC status/mood tags are not yet implemented.

v  New “World-Thoughts” system has been implemented with basic set of thoughts.

Ø  Thoughts are based on conversational tags, and the player will occasionally “think” something based on their status and/or location.

Ø  Most thought options include a small set of variations that are randomized, additionally many thoughts are customized to the player.

v  Several new NPC data functions to make handling NPC interactions easier. [Besty]

Ø  Date/Hangout proposals/timing/scheduling functions to set up these events with NPCs.

Ø  Some tracking and info-leveling functions for NPCs.

v  New Dialog options menu to standardize the appearance of dialog choices in the game.

Ø  Menu is based on a Macro that simplifies coding/writing the dialog choice selections.

Ø  Menu includes supplemental text for each option, as well as emojis as relevant when the player has the emoji setting enabled.

Ø  Most dialog choices in-game have now been transitioned to the new look. [Besty]

v  Conversational Framework is partially in place.

Ø  System determines NPC’s relationship to player, and forwards to appropriate conversational cluster.

Ø  Tracking data is now recorded in NPC variables.

Ø  Tag conversational library format complete.

Ø  “Fake” partial NPCs are now converted automatically to full NPCs at start of interaction.

v  Hidden erotic fiction document added to the game to be discovered and read.

Ø  Part one of a series of stories that end up somewhere interesting with events in Appletree.

Ø  Over 8,000 words written by yours truly.

v  New Maid Job [Besty]

Ø  Complete with several advancements/promotions, events, and job tasks.

Ø  Also has a spiffy maid uniform with its own icon and paper doll image.

v  Numerous fixes and minor improvements throughout the game. [everyone]

Ø  New guide information

Ø  Improved event text for certain events

Ø  Lots of typos and minor appearance bugs were murdered.

Ø  Improvements to semen handling in sex scenes.

Ø  New verbose mode option.

Ø  Several new macros and minor functions for various game tasks.

Ø  Etc. etc. etc. (I seriously can’t hope to remember them all)

I hope you enjoy the Baked Goods Release!

Thanks to everyone for your support!

We promise to get better control over that demon Asa in December. Do your best to avoid staring directly at him until then, please.