Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays


Whether you're celebrating Christmas, Hanukah, Yule, Kwanza, the winter solstice, or even no holiday at all, we send you our best wishes for a merry time!

We've been hard at work like normal, but it's currently Christmas Eve here in Guam so I'm going to keep this post short with a few images. Thanks for all your support this year!







Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Portrait


Hello everyone, time for another update.

First, let's get the pregnancy fix out of the way... In my focus on making the AW_Fixer Powershell script, I made a mistake in the actual solution. When I realized today, I nearly slapped myself facepalming. There were two problems in that tiny snippet of code, basically two places the wrong value was used... and I only fixed one. Check Patreon/SubscribeStar/Discord for updated fixes. Sorry about that!

We've been working on the same things as before, some refinements, bug killing, balancing, and different types of portraits. Basically, the things I talked about in the last update. Rather than repeating that, I figured it'd be better to show you some of the results.

First up is the status record:


You'll find this in the main character menu page. Click a stat button and you'll get a pop-up like these:



Basically, you're able to see the last ten changes to that stat. Some of the descriptions are rather amusing, I had some fun because there were literally hundreds of descriptions to add for all the ways these stats can change in the game. :D

On the portrait front, we've come up with an alternative from the more simplistic SVG face avatars. They haven't been very popular, but luckily we're able to create better-looking SVG portraits. It's more work, but I think you'll approve. We're focusing on females for now, who currently don't have portraits at all.


I think it's a pretty significant improvement over the older style. Thanks will have to go to Besty though because I'm pushing all the extra work onto him. 

That's all for this update,

ThaumX

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Holiday Erections


Hello everyone, it's time for another dev blog post!


Despite the delay to fix a certain bug where you could pass out while at work, we felt pretty good about the v29 release. This seems to be a sign of bad things because we've ended up getting plenty of bug reports over the last few days (thanks for those, btw). Luckily most of them have been pretty simple to fix so far, though we've gotten some reports related to mental stats that have been tough to track down.



This has led me to the realization that because there are so many different things going on in any single AW day, it can be too difficult for the player to recognize what's going on with their character. When something isn't working properly, the player generally doesn't know what's going on. So, for example, we get a report about vigor not recovering during sleep. When I try to replicate it by playing through several days with multiple newly-created characters, focused on sleep... I find nothing wrong.



Something is obviously going on in that case, most likely a bug... but there are also problems that happen simply because a player doesn't realize. For a while, we had a problem where players were ripping their character's orifices apart, causing a host of negative mental statuses and health issues... but it wasn't clear that that was what was happening. We 'fixed' that by dialing back the penalties and preventing penalty stacking, but that still feels more like a workaround.



Anyway, what this rambling means, is that I've decided that it'd be good to have a simple reporting system that tracks the most recent (10?) changes to different status variables. I've already figured out how to implement it, and I'll be doing that this month. It's pretty simple and straight-forward, so it should only take a couple days. In practice, you will be able to click on the different stat buttons in the character menu to see the last 10 changes to that stat. You'll see a basic label for the cause of the change, for example, "torn vagina" or "working at job". In addition, you'll see the amount of the change, and probably color-coding to make it easier to interpret at a glance.



This change should give three benefits:


  1. The player will be able to see more information about what is affecting their character if they wish.
  2. When some bug is causing incorrect/overblown status changes, it'll be easier for the player to see the cause, and for us to track it down and eliminate it.
  3. Balancing the game will be easier, as player feedback will be more valuable/actionable by being related to a specific mechanic.
We're also looking into some other balance and general issues this month, with the goal of making the version 0.30 release as playable and bug-free as possible.

Aside from that mechanical work, we're still looking at adding new fun stuff as well. One of the bigger items is character body portraits. We had a poll back at the end of summer, and you all decided that you'd like to use Koikatsu-generated portraits. It's about time to get those into the game.

While generating the body portraits is simplified by using software to create them, there are still some technical challenges I'll need to conquer for the best results. Things like ensuring consistency of pose/position/shading are important, and I think I'm pretty close to getting that solved. The most challenging issue, however, is what I call the multiplicative problem. The variables we choose to represent in the portrait are multiplicative rather than additive. Each variation has to be taken together with all the other variations.

To show how this becomes a problem, consider a very basic character representation:
  • 4 different skin tones.
  • 3 different shoulder widths.
  • 2 different waist widths.
  • 4 different hip widths.
  • 8 different breast sizes.
  • 3 different weights
4 * 3 * 2 * 4 * 8 * 3 = 2,304 different images!

To work around this, I am hoping to use a layered approach to cut down on the number of images required by isolating different segments of the body portrait, as well as creating different "overlay" pieces. This will require a decent amount of photoshop work, but the total amount of work should be considerably less.

I'm not certain how much detail I'll be able to get into the body portraits during this month, but we should at least have some basic body representations finally :)

That's all for now, it's time to get back to work! :D

ThaumX



Friday, December 6, 2019

The Happy Hucow Release v0.29 Changelog


Hello everyone, we're finally here with the version 0.29 release!

We had a few last-minute issues with system interaction bugs because we made several changes to the sleep and job systems. They're resolved now, but they can be a bit of a pain because they usually only happen when things interact in a certain way. 

This release ended up going off on something of a tangent, as mentioned in an earlier dev blog post, but that has probably led to more content overall than we would have had. I'm pretty proud of some of the events and content we've got in this one, such as the Seedbed event at the Bureaucratic Corps, the Mermaid event if you stay awake and pass out too often, and some of the hucow events in the new Dairy Hand job. I'm pretty proud of the creation I'm calling a "hecow", something of a submissive male hucow.

You'll find out all about them in the dairy hand job, though they're still pretty rare compared to hucows at the dairy. Speaking of cows, you can now get the bovinex gene mod that will give you some cow features and bigger udders. There are a few other new transformatives in the breast/milk department, and some revision/improvement of the existing Lactamax drug. We've also got stronger milkers, as well as improvements to and fixes for the lactation/breast system in the game in general.

We discovered an overlooked problem: some players just wouldn't go to sleep. Because high fatigue was penalized, and we had other things to encourage sleep, we expected players to go to sleep at night, which is important for the game mechanics. We didn't expressly force the player to sleep, we figured that the penalties and encouragement would be enough. As it turned out, some players would just skip sleep, perhaps using naps or other methods to regain a little fatigue as needed, and mostly ignore the penalties. This caused plenty of bugs for them, along with difficulty with maintaining their stats, which couldn't be replicated on a game where the player sleeps... So now we have the player pass out if they stay awake too long. If they are at home, they sleep normally with a minor penalty. If not at home the player will pass out wherever they are and can be treated to a number of different surprises when they wake up. (The 'worst' surprises won't happen until passing out for the third time.)

As usual, we've got a lot of minor improvements and miscellaneous additions such as the new rape scenes that can happen. It's been a rough month personally, but I'm still pretty happy with what we've got to show you in version 29. I hope you enjoy it!

Change Log

Known Issues:
1) In certain NPC interactions where they contact you, clicking the "send" button after the conversation is over will result in an error popping up. This won't break anything, and you can continue as normal. 
2) There may Bestybugs present in certain <<has>> macro uses he has created.
3) The comparisons for weekly changes in the end-of-week summary are pretty flakey

Statistics:
Words: 2,074,134   Characters: 12,429,975   Lines of Code: 189,561

Changes:

ThaumX:
  • Added the Bovinex Gene Therapy to the game.
    • Adds hucow ears and tail to the player.
    • Increases breast size and lactation ability.
    • Has a number of varying effects including nipple enlargement and sensitization, gaining certain kinks, libido gains, and minor fertility increases.
    • can be found at the Farm Coop Dairy
  • Added Mammarex transformative to the game.
    • Primarily increases breast size, can cause nipple sensitization, increase lactation training, and increase your bimbo score with enough use.
    • Becomes more effective at breast growth the more you use it, also causes more bimbo gain the more you use it.
    • Breast growth is primarily proportional to initial size, so characters with larger breasts will see more absolute growth.
    • Can be purchased from the Farm Coop Dairy
  • Added Teat Enhancement treatment to the game.
    • Gives larger hucow-friendly nipples and makes them more sensitive.
  • Modified Lactimax.
    • Growth amount is now more proportional to initial breast size.
    • Growth now increases somewhat with mulitple uses.
    • Lactamax can now cause risky kink and nipple sensitivity if used twice.
    • Libido can be increased if used more than 3 times
  • Added Lactation Training session to the Farm Coop Dairy to increase lactation training (this can normally be increased with milking).
  • Added much more detailed description of treatments and services available in the Farm Coop Dairy, including ad images for drug treatments.
  • Added 3 new scenes that occur when you are given Bovinex, Teat Enhancement, or do Lactation training at the Farm Coop Dairy.
  • Increased available lactation ability level to 6, for full hucow milk production. (The variable ranges from 0 to 6, 4 is the max level from character creation.)
  • New Lactation guide explaining how lactation in AW works in the game encyclopedia.
  • Numerous balance tweaks and fixes for lactation:
    • Lactation training will now properly increase
    • Altered rates and limits for lactation training with different pumps
    • storage capacity/production has been increased for higher ability levels.
    • other changes involving too much math to discuss...
  • New data validation added to Tits Class and certain other data objects.
  • Added Job-specific side images to job events.
  • Relabeled the button for the Cumming Soon Store in the medical district from "Cumming-Soon" to "Cumming-Soon Store" to make it more clear that it isn't a placeholder button.
  • Fixed Besty's TimeCock in date scheduling. Scheduled dates and hangouts should no longer disappear and do other random things.
  • Fixed the lactation training status display in the character menu.
    • Added a number value and better descriptive words
  • Added a bimbo and corruption status bar to the character menu.
  • Changed the Universal Bimbo Parser so that it replaces two and too with "to" instead of using the number 2.
  • Really big Institute B-Corps event has been added (the Seedbed event).
    • Includes 11 art images that go along with the event.
    • Includes a unique bad end depending on the player's choice.
    • The player must be at a higher rank/promotion level for event to trigger
  • Changed the Tingler App as planned to present random partners.
    • Lily is no longer always available from the Tingler App.
    • Women are now included in the list of potential partners.
    • Total number of available partners increased by 2 for more choices.
    • Added a Tingler App Logo, lol
  • Added the current date and time to the school pages and date scheduling pages, to make it a little easier to plan when to schedule a course or date.
  • Fixed Besty's fudged milk capacity and lactation values in predefined hucow NPCs.
    • Also gave them more reasonable breast sizes...
    • Gave Zoe "Cupcake" Kagawa giant teats to correspond with a job event.
  • Added the Dairy Hand job working for the Farm Coop
    • Custom descriptions, job wallpaper, job image, and event side image.
    • Includes 8 full-size daily-job-content items, the first full-sized ones in the game (2.5k words).
    • Three single job events (4.5K words).
    • Other standard job content such as custom tasks, hiring messages, etc.
  • Added Bukkake function to give the player a thorough bukkake!
  • Fixed bug where Besty failed at running sex system scenes at work. can now sex at work with confidence.
  • New location images for the Farm Coop map
  • Fixed bug where certain transformatives were not initializing from backward compatibility
  • Sleeping is now forced upon the player.
    • A player at home with max fatigue (0% Vigor) can now pass out and sleep normally with a minor mental state penalty.
    • Players still awake after 0245 will receive a warning message about being sleepy.
    • Players in their home and still awake at 0350 to 0400 will pass out and sleep normally with a minor mental state penalty.
    • Players outside their home at 0350 to 0400 will pass out where they are, causing some fun potential events.
      • Passing out in the street only allows the player to sleep for a couple hours, leaving them still very tired.
      • There is a negative penalty to certain mental statuses for passing out this way.
      • The Player may simply wake up unmolested or can have one of six events happen to them while they are passed out on the street.
      • Likelihood of more extreme events happening increases with the number of times you've passed out in the street.
      • Special Mermaid event can happen, involving being abducted for some interesting experimentation followed by an escape. This event has a low likelihood of occurring.
    • This fixes the "health decline" issue caused by constantly high fatigue levels.
  • The sex system has received some attention!
    • You can now have sex with the ladies.
      • There are currently no custom lesbian sex positions, so as a temporary measure you may "have sex" with them in a normal sex position... just imagine it as tribadism for now.
      • Women obviously won't ejaculate, and the sex scene won't be ended automatically because you can both keep going.
      • New action is available to end the sex scene in a friendly way once everyone has had an orgasm.
    • Doggy style sex position has been added
      • How was this overlooked in the first place?
    • Anal sex is now a thing, there are two anal sex positions.
      • The lubrication system has not been added, so the game assumes your ass is as lubricated as your pussy is. This is temporary, obviously.
      • NPCs can cum in your ass, but this doesn't necessarily mean they won't pull out and cum somewhere else such as your ass or groin...
      • Anal sex is significantly less likely to bring the player to orgasm.

Besty:
  • Small events are everywhere now.
    • 5700 words, oh my!
    • These are small events that happens in all areas of the valley, you can check them in the main window right before the main location text.
  • 3 new BDSM sex actions! 
    • Not sure if usable right now though but you can try.
  • Cooking system properly works now.
    • 14 recipes ready to be cooked.
    • You can add additional ingredients like drugs to the dishes.
    • You can replace store milk with your own if you have some in the cryo container.
  • You can clean your clothes from wetness and some stains using action menu.
    • Effectiveness is not that good but it can help you to remove harsh contamination quick.
  • Some more older text were proofread.
  • New map for gov district.
    • Map passages will be added later but you can already look what area will be. 
  • Random raping can occur now in more juicy parts of the town.
    • 4300 words of various scenes including one assaulter, a gang bang and around 8 various endings. You can even shoot the bastard if you have the gun.
  • NPC display was updated to show normal parsed values instead of raw numbers.
    • Works for main body description as well as junk information.
  • A lot of stuff regarding date scheduling and other thingies was fixed!
  • A little event for Maid job (around 1000 words).

We hope you enjoy the release, thanks for your support!



The Records Release - v1.25.0

  So immediately after I practically kill myself on version 1.24, and promise to be more reasonable... I went and set myself another crazy s...