The Eating Out Release - Version 0.20.0

Whew, well it's about time. We ended up doing a good deal more than we expected to do this last month, and I think we finally have a really solid release. Of course, now that I said that... well, knock on wood and all that, lol.

This release focused heavily on some systems integration and some refactoring and improvements, as well as the integral dating system framework. It's now possible to text an NPC (or stalk them on the streets), set up a date, go on the date, eat some ice cream, and then head back to somebody's place for some sexytimes. The content is still somewhat light while dating, as expected for the framework, but it's still pretty neat. We also made the system expansible like most other things, so that means it'll be possible to expand dates in all sorts of perverted ways. Of course, there are also all sorts of other small additions and improvements, as well as SVG portraits.

I really hope you guys enjoy it!

Work Report:

So we put in 379 hours between the two of us in just 4 weeks. Whew, I feel a bit worn out. But I'm really happy with the work we got done, and the state of AW. As usual, you can check out the summary report and/or the detailed report of our shenanigans.

Known Issues and Compatibility

Unfortunately, the changes to SugarCube's save system is going to result in your saves being eaten by hungry internet sharks. If you want to bring a v19 save forward to v20, open up the game in v19 FIRST, load the save you wish to keep, and then save to file. You can then import the save from file in v20. There may be minor shenanigans from v19 saves, but for the most part, they should work okay. We hope.

Autosaves... seem to be persnickety right now. There's some delicate balance to get them to save properly in the convenient overnight spot. They seem to be working, but there's still a possibility that they may not execute properly on some machines. Check out an overnight autosave from v20 before depending on them.

Slavification. There is some less-than-stellar grammar in a few areas where new content was added at a rate faster than we could proofread. Don't worry, it's not permanent or anything, I just rather not block out a bunch of content just because of grammar.

Version 0.20 Changes

Words:    1,685,590     Characters:     9,796,421     Code Lines:     167,718

• Expanded and refactored the alcohol intoxication system.
• You now properly gain intoxication from drinking, and intoxication decreases with time.
• high levels of intoxication cause dizziness and nausea, and there's a chance you'll throw up (which decreases alcohol level slightly).
• The "puke scene" has an interesting image.
• Russian-level drinking will cause alcohol poisoning, which is no bueno.
• Refactored the Omni System.
• Omni events are much more stable.
• Expanded error handling to prevent game crashes/bugs from an error with an Omni event or the system itself.
• Some event bugs have been fixed, existing Omni events work nicely.
• Omni system performance has been improved.
• Added a massive amount of data validation and verification into the game's data storage objects.
• Values are inherently kept within allowable thresholds and attempts to set an invalid (bug) value are rejected and reported.
• Improved tracking of player data for better analysis of game balance and bug hunting.
• Save file size reduced.
• Inefficiencies in SugarCube's game save system mostly eliminated.
• Saving the game and loading the game is not affected by the number of existing saves.
• Time to create a save slashed dramatically (takes only 10 to 15% of previous save time), the time required to load a save improved as well.
• Save display menu inefficiency still present, so opening the game save menu can be slow with several saves present (it's on the to-do list).
• Created image display tool to assist players in customizing game images.
• Available from the mod loading page.
• Shows all game images in thumbnail format with their image data key and the dimensions. Makes replacing or reusing image assets easy.
• New Arcanist Codeworks logo. (Basically, me deciding there should be some sort company/brand name for the project beyond just "that guy ThaumX". I'll discuss it later in a dev blog post.)
• Improvements to the Scenario System.
• Easier to use for content, with some fixes/improvements for stability and performance.
• Slightly updated appearance to look 32% less ugly.
• Phone UI menu improvement
• Available shortcut buttons on the phone UI menu are now customizable.
• Several new shortcut icons with direct access to commonly-used menus are now available, such as the "Inventory" and "Actions" menus.
• Access customization settings from the game settings/theme menu.
• Fixed the padding issue with the storefront display causing text to use a limited portion of the screen even in locations without a storefront area.
• Added SASS (SCSS) to the game's compile process, allowing the use of SCSS for more consise and consistent style sheets, as well as making more dynamic displays easier to create and maintain.
• Added the Date System to the game, which is for dating NPCs, not a calendar.
• You can now properly go on a date with an NPC when you meet them at the place and time you set for your date.
• Dates affect your relationship with NPCs, with gooey things like love and friendship. (note, proper scenes for switching between relationship types, such as becoming engaged and etc. are not implemented.)
• Date Spots system of expansible locations around Appletree added.
• Includes special activities as well as potential events and other mischiefs.
• A limited set of date spots are currently available.
• Dates can end in sex, or your date can reject your sorry ass.
• System for suggesting locations or following along with your NPC date's choices allows for varied date progression, as well as allowing some interesting relationship dynamics later on.
• NPC AI System partially integrated into the date system.
• NPCs will form opinions using the game's tag language and learning software, to determine how much they like certain things.
• Systems are in place to expand the authority of the AI System as the AI behavior becomes more reliable. (basically, it's set up, we just don't want to turn dates into chaos courtesy of crazy AI behavior)
• Made some basic style improvements to the game.
• Splash screen is now more subdued.
• "disabled" buttons no longer glare at you angrily.
• background patterns darkened and unified to be more consistent across some menus.
• The default pink headers will continue to taunt you until you bother to either pick your own colors from the theme menu or pick a preset from the system menu.
• Tummy Hugger item added to the game, available from a pharmacy near you.
• Allows you to check on your future bundles of joy without resorting to cheats.
• Implements the Jerry Springer cheat so you can see 'who's the daddy' of each child, should you have that cheat enabled.
• Another fine product from Wayland Industries.
• Added SVG portrait system to the game.
• Added data to allow for billions of unique portraits. So male NPCs are now fairly distinguishable.
• Added function to generate SVGs for individual NPCs based on their data so NPCs will reflect the proper skin tone, hair color, and other features. 
• Added demo function to the 'name your character' screen, allowing you to view the portraits of some random NPCs from your upcoming game.
• All sorts of other little things required to make this conversion possible, such as changes to css and a spiffy data interleaving function.
• Created new async resource loading initializer, to prevent issues with slower machines without causing undue delay in resource loading for others.
• Lots of new AW art things added to the game in my spare time, and a few important ones.
• Get your first clue about the mysterious BPCORP in the corporate campus downtown.
• When spending time reading on your phone at home, there are a whole set of images with some text that appear. Items range from advertisements to news items and more.
• Some new location images, such as Boobies restaurant in the adult area, and hot loads in the amusement district.
• several new items to find around town. Don't miss out on the Tsar Pluga or renaissance fair.
• 4 new game area maps added to the game work Muschi Valley locations
• Clicking on an area from the world map will open up a dialog with the map and some description.
• You can now text NPCs, allowing you to set up dates with them.
• Several game fixes and improvements
• Improved time system stability and error recovery.
• Removed the timecocks from sleeping so that you don't wake up missing an entire day courtesy of anal rape.
• Removed the ability for the player to be fucked to death by a cock, thereby removing the potential for an unexpected bad end after a lot of ill-advised dry sex as a virgin in a sex scene. (it wasn't a tsar pluga, so the bad end usually took the form of depression or another cause, as there wasn't enough health damage from a standard-sized cock.)
• Some general fixes to the sex system, including the repeat action button, and certain positions not properly registering as sex.
• Created an improved content gate function and inline content gate macro to make gating content easier.
• Other stuff that I forgot to write down, as usual.

BESTY'S CHANGES:

• Making those fancy maps.
• date appointment system rewritten to fit new time unix-like time format
• reminder, calendar systems for new time format too.
• processing of appointments, cleaning the old ones and other mechanical functions.
• new possibly sexy maid events on ignoring the dress code
• new sm maid event on failing to fit the obey the company standards
• reminder system reworked
• 7 dating spots with events and activities
• some assets (mostly location pics) for date spots
• written 54 story threads for npc
• story threads was threaded into the dating events
• some new drinks available