Iceland

 

Happy Winter Solstice everyone!

I hope you're all able to make the best out of the holidays despite the circumstances. While I know that everything isn't going to magically return to normal in 2021, I do hope things will start getting better.

The 2020 craziness continues to affect the AW development team. My parents and my brother's family have all come down with covid, they're in a different state so my immediate family is fine. It's hard not to worry about my parents given their age and health, but the odds are in their favor. Besty is in the middle of his own little shit snowstorm, with a family member being very ill with a non-covid situation. I won't go into any detail in order to respect his privacy, but it isn't looking good. Thankfully, Anenn has been spared any new craziness this month.

What we're working on for version 42 is going to see a little shuffling due to everything going on, but we should still have a fun release for you to enjoy. The big thing will be new prostitution content for street walking and working for The Oldest Profession. There will also be some new orgasm content and some other fun content here and there. There was also an expansion of nightlife content planned, with a new club and more activities to do in clubs, but this will likely be significantly curtailed temporarily due to Besty's issues and the holidays.

We'll keep plugging away at the next release, thanks for your support everyone, it wouldn't be possible without you!

Happy Holidays!

ThaumX

The Snow Bunny Release - v0.41

 

Hello everyone, it's finally time for the release, and I think you guys are going to like what we've added this time.

We added a lot of content to the sex scene system, supporting more kinks and variations for individual actions. It's a huge update, with about 35,000 words of new sex scene action content. Because the generic sex scenes are something players see more frequently, we want to keep adding more to it to keep it interesting. We also expanded the body portraits, adding male body portraits for male NPCs, and adding support for skin color. Female body portraits now have 713,687,040 combinations to match your characters. We've also added some other fun things, like a new roleplay challenge mode that requires you to get pregnant often enough or you'll die, along with three characters to try it out with.

We're going to keep working on making AW better and better, and it's only possible thanks to you. From Anenn, Besty, and I: thank you so much for your support! We hope you enjoy the Snow Bunny release!

Changes

Words: 2,688,555 (16,314,619 characters)

Code Lines: 207,021

Body Portrait Combinations: 713,687,040 (female) 975,744 (male)

• Skin color options are now represented on the body portraits.
• Uses css image filters to dramatically reduce resource size.
• Male body portraits are now available.
• Currently represented: cock & ball sizes, pubes, shoulders, hips, limited weight, and limited muscle.
• You can now view NPC face and body portraits during sex scenes.
• You can now preview your portraits during character creation.
• Please note that because a lot of calculation and determination happens after your character choices are made, only the most significant things are shown.
• There's a new location you can discover in the club area downtown.
• Little Shop of Tentacles has your initial meeting with the shop owner but needs more content.
• New roleplay challenge mode that requires you to get pregnant often enough or die due a strange mutation.
• Three different premade characters are available to try it with.
• Nipples on the PC and NPCs will now grow a little when pregnant.
• New event in the changing booth at the Hoden Springs area.
• Sex action libraries have been expanded by a total of 35,000 new words.
• More kink variations in different actions.
• More variation possible for standard (non-kink) action text.
• This is a LOT of words. It's nearly half the words found in the first Harry Potter novel.

Cooking

 

It's getting close to that busy time of year with lots of cooking, decorating, and family visits. Well, this year the family visits may be a bit constrained, but a lot of the overall hectic atmosphere of it all will probably remain. In any case, there's nothing to do with cooking actually planned for version 0.41, so don't worry.

The main thing we're adding this month is a big expansion of the sex scene library content. Adding more variations to actions and including versions of actions for more kinks should make the general sex scenes more fun.

The other thing that we're working on, which is a bit overdue, is the character body portraits. Besty is going to be working on adding male body portraits, and we're going to try and improve and expand the female portraits together as well. I'm really curious to try a couple things to see if we can get a better result than what we already have. 

The rest will be a mix of smaller misc items as usual, adding minor content and some neat things. Without any major changes to code, I'm hoping we'll also be able to get a little caught up on some of the bugs that have been resistant to pesticide. There's a couple reports that crop up that we have a hard time replicating, just because they seem to have some preconditions to occurring that aren't always obvious. We also had someone kind enough to submit some typo reports right before the last release, so we'll be working on those as well. (thanks!)

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

The Honey Release v0.40.0

 

Hello everyone, it's time for a new release! There's a lot of new stuff in this release, with new content and some new code items. Normally I'd talk about some of the big things in detail, however, I ended up taking longer than expected to squash bugs the cats left for me in the code. That being the case, I'm going to jump straight into the changelog!

We hope you enjoy this release!

Changes

Words: 2,648,121 (15,959,102 characters)

Code: 205,730 lines of Typescript

• A difficulty system has been added to the game.
• There are now 4 difficulty levels: Fap, Easy, Medium, Hard.
• Fap difficulty is currently only available for $5+ supporters.
• The details of each difficulty are spelled out when you choose your difficulty level. 
• If skipping the prologue, there is an info button you can click to read more
• Saves from previous versions will be set to Medium Difficulty by default.
• It is not currently possible to change the difficulty during the game.
• If this is something you'd really like to see, let us know!
• Difficulty has effects in many parts of the game, from income adjustments to changing the rate of skill gain.
• Some additional balancing will probably need to be done on the new difficulty levels to have the best effect. Please send us your impressions if you try one out!
• The amount of money earned from the "birth bonus" has been increased somewhat.
• It is now possible to use sabotaged condoms during sex scenes.
• The French Saboteur is now available for purchase at the Cum & Go
• This is a device made for sabotaging condoms, it is more effective  than the 'paperclip' method.
• Some furniture in the room can have effects on sex scenes.
• This needs more testing, according to Besty.
• Some tutorial images have been revised/improved
• New alerts to help warn the player about bad things.
• Sleeping without a bed warning
• Going outside naked warning
• High stress warning
• Low companionship warning
• Low satisfaction warning
• Dirty house warning
• Main Quest component retrieval scenes finished
• Initial Roleplay Challenges hav been added to the game.
• There are currently 4 premade characters that come with a challenge.
• This is an initial/demo offering and will be expanded on.
• Choosing a Roleplay Challenge character is like selecting a premade character, all your attributes and stats will be chosen for you based on the character.
• Roleplay Challenges add new win or lose conditions to the game, and can make the game more difficult. The primary objective is to provide interesting ways to play, rather than actually increase difficulty.
• Various activities and events have been added to the Lake Clitea Resort area.
• You can find a golf ball on the golf course.
• Enjoy a refreshing swim.
• Some special alcoholic beverages now have unique effects. 
• Hucow Content Expansion!
• About 38K new words of content at the Farm COOP. 
• A total of about 27 new events that can occur in the farm area.
• Many are connected to the Dairy Hand job, occurring either while at work, or after a certain event (hucow breeding assistant) has happened.
• Some don't have requirements and are totally random for when you're in that area of the map.
• Extensive buggery and polishing
• A lot of bugs have been fixed, typos corrected, and things generally improved. 
• You will now properly get paid upon delivery when working as a surrogate.
• Money from surrogacy will be tracked properly.
• Money earned from camwhoring will be tracked properly.
• Several adjustments to camwhoring in general

Halloween is Coming

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and it's effectively canceled this year due to the pandemic. Instead of moping about it, perhaps I'll come up with a spooky and sexy event for AW. If you have any ideas, or feel like writing something yourself, you're more than welcome to send it our way!

We've done a good amount of discussion among ourselves in the development team, and have decided to implement a difficulty system. While we like the "normal" difficulty level in the game as it is, we also acknowledge that it can be too much work for people mostly interested in the story and adult content. I like the slightly strategic element myself, but it can also make it more 'work' to explore different characters, jobs, and other content on subsequent playthroughs. 

So rather than adjust a single difficulty one way or another that will always disappoint some people, it makes more sense to just add different difficulty levels. Thankfully, I built methods for tweaking the balance of the game into most of the major systems. This means it's fairly straight-forward to add different difficulty levels.

The new Medium difficulty will be essentially the same as the normal game as it has been, while hard will take the place of "organ donor mode". Easy will be what it says on the tin with lower difficulty across the board, though there will still be challenges and the possibility of getting your character into trouble. Fap difficulty is the easiest, removing any real challenge from the game beyond needing to earn money if you want to buy things for your character.

For now, Fap difficulty will be limited to the [backer] ($5) build of the game and above because of it's nature as a sort of sandbox mode. In the future we'll probably have it be unlocked once you've completed the game on a higher difficulty (in the [public] and [patron] builds).

That's it for now... I'm in need of some sleep!

ThaumX

Beautiful Palette

 

I don't know about you guys, but I feel like it's time for some more hucow stuff. Let's talk a little bit about where we're headed for the 0.40 release. Since it's a nice even number and divisible by 10, I'd like to make it as bug-free as possible. Of course, we'd be doing that anyway, but I hope to put in some extra effort to resolve everything erolichly possible. It'd really help us out if you could report any bugs you've encountered in the latest version. After all, we can only fix bugs that we know about, and deliberately testing all the possibilities for play would take ages if we tried to do it by ourselves.

Aside from exterminating bugs, our work this month is going to focus on two main areas. The first, of course, is going to be new content. We'll be adding new hucow content to the farm coop area, with some new encounters and ways to interact with the people there. We'll also be adding content to various other places (such as the resort area) and hopefully more interaction/conversation content with the main characters in Lily's lab.

The other area we want to work on is some improvements to our tutorials/guides and some outdated interfaces. We want to make all of the guides accessible at any time in the game, rather than just during the prologue or the first time you encounter something. We're also considering some sort of mechanics to help new players who haven't read the guides and are encountering some common issues. Most likely this would take the form of some tips or hints if certain criteria are met. There are also a few areas that would likely benefit from a soft barrier, such as warning the player before they go somewhere naked. The general idea is to provide some more polish to the existing systems while we continue to add content.

As far as code is concerned, outside marriage and married life (coming in 2021), most of the game's code is finished. Some systems still need some additional content, but the underlying mechanics are essentially complete. The largest "unfinished" segment is the general sex scene system, which needs to have support for multiple partners added, and a little more refinement of the AI and things like pregnancy risk, birth control, kinky things, and non-consent. We also need to continue expanding things like body portraits, both for females and for males as well. We'll be working on these things in the coming months, along with adding more content, of course.

In the near future, I'll be doing a pretty big survey to get everyone's opinion on several things. We need to see what sort of content you want more of, of course, but we also want to gauge what areas of the game feel hollow, what needs revision, and where the game's UI/UX needs polish or even revision to be more in line with what you'd like out of a "finished" game. Basically, it's time to create our roadmap for the final stretch to 1.0 in 2021. :D

Dev Team Update:

Besty seems to be feeling much better now and is back to working pretty much full time. He still has doctor appointments and tests to figure out some secondary issues that cropped up, but the worst part seems to be over. Thanks to everyone who sent him get-well wishes :D

I'll be closing on my new home in the states in a couple days, and all our stuff will be delivered the week after. From there it's the nightmare of unpacking, but at least I won't be living in a hotel room anymore. I can say that working in a hotel is far more difficult than I thought it'd be. Aside from the close quarters, interruptions, and distractions, there's just the fact that it's not very comfortable. Being in my own place will make it much easier to get things done, and hopefully will prevent my wife from asking me irrelevant questions about a TV show I'm not watching. Speaking of the wife, she's doing as well as can be expected, though it seems she is likely to end up with a permanent colostomy due to complications from her surgery. At least there are no signs of cancer coming back so far.

I think that's enough writing... See you with a new update next week!

ThaumX

The Hero Release - v0.39.0

 

It's been one hell of a month for the AW team, though to be honest it hardly seems like it's been a whole month since version 38. Mrs. Besty had to call him an ambulance this month, though thankfully he's on the mend and feeling better. I've been swamped with work while living out of a hotel room. Luckily it seems that we'll finally be closing on my new house next week, and I've got most of the fires put out.

At the beginning of this month, we spent a lot of time focusing on bugs, and we've continued to fix bugs even after the 38.1 release. I'm afraid that it's another month with a shorter-than-normal change log, though there's still a lot of new content in the game. We've got over 30,000 new words of content for you, with a lot of it focused on pregnancy, birth, and children. Things will be picking up again, and we'll be returning to our normal break-neck development pace soon. Besty is finally back to full time, and I'll be able to start dedicating more and more time to development tasks as things settle down here.

Version 39 is looking to be quite stable, as we've done some extended testing yesterday and today. Of course, please report any bugs you find! Without your help reporting bugs, we'd never be able to get them fixed!

Changes

Words:  2,582,406   (15,577,952 characters)

Code Lines: 204,323

• New end-of-game system added to the game.
• Displays the official ending to the game after sufficient progress in the main quest is made.
• Currently has only basic content.
• You can continue playing in a non-canon 'free mode' after the ending if you wish.
• Expanded special component quests in the main storyline.
• Includes new art for one outcome.
• You can now visit your children in the government district.
• Visit the creche to check out your crotch fruit.
• Some activity scenes of visiting your children are now available.
• The giving birth scene has been expanded
• Now has additional content if you choose to call a friend or lover.
• Unique content for couples as well as for Lily supporting you. A scene exclusive to spouses has also been created, but can't be viewed without artificially setting yourself married to an NPC.
• If you call your lover when giving birth, there is extra content in the child naming scene. This is particularly true if the child obviously doesn't belong to them.
• Additional pregnancy events have been added.
• These will occur randomly while pregnant.
• One arousal-based event is pretty large and allows you to contact a partner for some sexytimes.
• A lot of bug fixing and some general polish has been done.
• End-of-game statistics improvements.
• Some editing and correction of content.
• Some additional utility features (for writing) added.
• Lots and lots of bug fixes (check out our Mantis bug tracking page!)

Uniform

 

There are plenty of uniforms out there that could be made more interesting with some strategic changes. Besty and I probably would have enjoyed our recent trips to the hospital a bit more if the nurses all looked like this...

That'd just be impossible in practice though, sadly. Ignoring the fact that real people have varying levels of attractiveness, you're still left with something like a stripper hospital. Probably not the most reassuring place to be with serious health issues.

We're both okay, so no worries there. My wife had a CT scan done for an upcoming surgery and the radiologist noticed something strange in the images. One emergency ultrasound later, and we discovered she has a massive blood clot in her left leg. It's apparently something pretty common in people doing chemo, it's probably been slowly growing in her leg for nearly two months now. She's on blood thinner medication now, which seems to be the standard course of treatment. We just have to let her body dissolve the clot and hope none of it breaks off to cause havoc elsewhere.

Besty's trip to the hospital was about him, but out of respect for his privacy I won't share the details. Something painful and unpleasant, but not life threatening or long-term, he's already feeling better though. :D

We discovered that the 38.1 release introduced a new bug that causes problems when trying to have sex. I'm posting instructions on how to fix the issue below, until I can get a 38.2 build done. Life has been extremely hectic between living in an airbnb, working at a new job, medical stuff, mortgage/home buying stuff, trying to sell our old home, and of course working on AW... it takes some extra effort to squeeze in a new build.

For now we're going to keep plugging away toward version 39. I'm excited that we'll finally have something resembling an ending in this release, though it'll be lacking a bit in terms of content until we flesh out all the various pieces. 

Thanks as always for your support, it means the world to us, now more than ever. AW wouldn't be possible without you!

ThaumX

Sex Bug Fix for 0.38.1:

Using a text editor such as notepad, use find (ctrl+F) to find the following text:

(null!==aw.npc[e]){var t=!1;if(!1===aw.npc[e].clothes.worn.top&&0!==aw.npc[e].clothes.outfits.casual.top&&!1!==aw.npc[e].clothes.outfits.casual.top)

You can then replace it with this instead:

 (null!==aw.npc[e]){var t=!1;if(!1===aw.npc[e].clothes.worn.top&&!1!==aw.npc[e].clothes.outfits.casual.top)

Then save the file and you're good to go!

Fresh Milk

 

So it's just a quick update today because today we're doing the first new incremental bugfix release. By waiting a few days, we were able to collect new bugs from version 38, get them fixed, and now have a more stable release for everyone. The new bug tracking software Mantis has been working really well for us to keep track of things. Odrson deserves a special thank you from us for helping us out with Mantis and bug reports!

As you can see, we've fixed a lot of bugs. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to report them!

A Polish Erection

 

It's time for another update!

It's somewhat challenging to come up with post and release images that involve zero nudity, but it's pretty fun to find suggestive images that are still technically allowed. I'm not really a fan of the censorship stuff, especially when any public post is behind a "you must be 18 to view" warning. I mean, it's not like patreon is going to prevent teenagers from finding porn on the internet if they want to. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In regards to "the crazy developer has moved back to the mainland" front, things have started to calm down a little. We have an offer on a house, and will hopefully find out soon if the seller will accept or counter. My day-job has everyone teleworking right now (except for a skeleton crew) due to covid concerns, which actually makes things much more difficult for me. I haven't even seen the servers or hardware I'm supposed to be in charge of, and VPN access is very limited. I see problems but have no way of fixing them yet... it's incredibly frustrating.

As far as the game goes, we're working right now on getting as many bugs as possible eradicated for a 38.1 release. The goal here is to get a nice stable base to start from for version 39 and the following versions. After that happens in the next couple of days, we'll start back in on the content expansion and starting to assemble the game's ending set up, specifically the programmatic portion determining the different pieces of the story to put together.

At this point, it probably won't be possible to trigger an actual ending, because the main quest isn't complete, but we'll see what we can do in terms of a demonstration. The writing isn't going to be complete, of course, so you'll probably just see filler notes like "joined-in on Marta's sexcapades". or "Befriended Dr. Titten" for the various things that can happen in the game.

One change we're going to make is a change to our release schedule for the various builds. This is partly because it's too damned easy to forget the date for the [patron]($1) and [public] releases, and partly to streamline how we do builds. We may start doing re-releases of the [backer] and above builds with bug fixes reported during the month applied, at the same time we do the standard new release. This will let players choose to play a more stable build, or try out the newest content.

The biggest impact this will have is that it will be slightly longer for the [patron] and [public] builds to release, 1 and 2 months respectively. These changes should make it a little easier on us, and also allows us to make releases a little more reliable. By using a git branch specifically for previous version bugs, we will also be able to improve quality as well.

That's it for now... as always, thanks so much for your support. We'll all keep doing our best to deserve it!

ThaumX

The Device Release - Version 0.38.0

 

I had to get a little creative with this month's release image due to Patreon's policy against implied/censored nudity. This month features some quests to obtain special devices for Lily's machine, so at least it's relevant. 

This has been a hell of a month for me, so I'm really putting a lot of trust in Besty and Anenn for this release. We had that fast-paced move where things were all happening at once, followed by a lockdown for our last week there that made everything 5x more complicated. There was a massive surge in covid leading up to that lockdown, and since the island only has 15 ventilators the situation doesn't look great for them.

Arriving in Minnesota, the weather has been beautiful, but there has been so much to do. We haven't had much luck on our house hunting yet, most of the available places sold shortly before we arrived. Between house hunting, and a million other little things that go with moving such as getting my wife's medical care reestablished, it's been hectic. Thankfully things should start settling down over the next month, and I should be able to get back to spending more time on AW and hanging out in Discord.

That said, there are still plenty of neat things to see in this release. There are 36 thousand new words of job content, that's about half of a YA novel. There are also special quests to obtain 4 unique devices Lily needs for her machine. These have all sorts of cool things in them, with different ways to approach obtaining them, choices to be made, and the potential for failure.

Thanks for your patience with me during this move, and thanks for your support of AW. Without you, it never would have been possible!

Changes

Words:  2,544,764 (15,259,630 characters)

Code Lines:  204,024

This month's list of changes is going to be a little more compact than usual. This is because developer effort has been more focused on writing, I haven't been as active/involved with everyone's work, and because I'm feeling lazy and don't feel like totally re-writing the lists from Besty and Anenn. The list will return to normal as life returns to normal.

• The Poll Riders VIP client scene was redone.
• It is now a unique written event rather than using the sex scene system.
• New daily job content for the janitor job (Services Division) (320 words).
• New daily job content for the massage parlor job (Fairy Tail) (110 words).
• A new stage of the main quest has been added.
• Quest is to obtain unique/rare components needed to complete Lily's machine.
• Quest Into text (1250 words).
• IR Field Coherer quest (2500 words).
• Oscillator quest (1900 words).
• Capacitor quest (1500 words).
• Spectral Lenses quest (600 words).
• New events for the game's jobs.
• Two new events for every job, totaling approximately 36,000 words.
• Some minor events for various classes at school.
• They are small occurrences meant to spice things up a bit.
• NPC Generator settings now persist between game sessions.
• The settings are saved to the browser cache automatically.
• If you wish to return to default settings for the NPC generator, use the "default" button in the generator settings menu.
• These settings should be retained across future game versions.
• A lot of bug fixing!
• We now use Mantis Bug Tracker software which has been working very well to keep track of issues and help us get them fixed.
• It's still new, so it's a learning process.
• Some bugs that are fixed or partially fixed haven't been closed/updated yet, we'll get that done soon.
• You can check out the bug tracker here.
• You need to make an account if you would like to report bugs. 
• The "real name" field is totally optional, and your email address can't be seen by other users. Your email address lets you keep informed about a bug you reported (if interested), but more importantly is useful in case we need additional info about your bug to fix it.
• If you would just like to view the bugs, you can use the username: Guest with the password: Guest

Relocation

 

Hello everyone, it's been a little while, hasn't it?

I was busy with the thousand things that need to be done when you're relocating, but now things have calmed down somewhat. It took about 27 hours of travel, but I made it to my new location stateside. It was busy the first few days as we got things established like transportation and cell phone service, but now things have started to calm down.

So here I am with a new update to the dev blog. To be perfectly honest, I haven't had the time to do much of anything AW related over the last week and a half, and when I did have some time, I was pretty much exhausted. That being the case, I haven't been following the work of the AW team very closely, so I don't want to start sharing previews into the next release just yet. One of my first things to do as I get back on the horse is to review the new work that's been done over the last several days.

Don't worry though, we coordinated everything beforehand so it's really just a matter of me catching up on everyone's progress. I can tell you that there should be a lot of exciting new content for the next release, particularly when it comes to the main quest and various jobs. We've also started using a new bug tracking tool, which should really help with tracking down and fixing our reported issues. 

A random photo I took while we were driving yesterday.

So in my last blog entry, I promised a look into what we'll be working on in AW over the next several months. I ended up getting busy a little sooner than I expected at the time, but now's as good a time as any, right?

The major thing we'll be working on over the coming months is wrapping up the game's story along with the main quest. Basically, adding an 'ending' to the game where the results of your actions and decisions are described. First, of course, is finishing the events of the main quest. Of course, we'll probably also add some minor content and missing items while we work on this, but the main focus is going to be the main story.

Afterward, our focus is going to shift toward finishing and polishing various areas of the game. Some areas need some more rounding out with content, and in general, there's a long list of small items we need to take care of. This ranges from adding writing to sex scenes to adding planned minor events and scenarios, as well as just putting polish on the rough edges of various systems. We also want to get the body portraits sorted out, at the very least adding skin color details.

Later on, we'll start some of our planned UI refinements and unification, to get the game looking as nice and polished as practical. We also have the big wedding expansion to work on to add marriage and married life into the game. 

As the AW Project has progressed, we've been able to get new developers working on things, and we've also been able to add bonus content from freelance writers and even some content submissions. We're going to continue looking at how we can get more bang from your buck. The world of AW is big, so I'm always happy to find a way to bring more of it to you.

I wanted to go into a little more detail about our plans, but time being what it is... I think I'll talk a bit more about the remainder of cursed 2020 in the blog post after our coming release.

Thanks for your support!

ThaumX

Spoonful of Semen

 

In the most delightful way!

Okay, that was pretty random.

First of all, despite my best efforts, some bugs creeped in from the Besty Quarter. It seems I was too focused on our newer developer Anenn. In retrospect, Besty was super excited about the tentacle-monster-in-the-woods 3-day LARP thing he was going to. (He apparently had a lot of fun, and managed to protect his orifices during 48 hours of geurilla combat.) So first things first, I'll share a fix for the Besty bug.

Besty Bug Fix:

For a bug that causes the game to stop working on the job screen if you work at on of the Institute jobs. 

Using a text editor, open your .HTML game file for editing. Notepad works, but I personally recommend something like Notepad++ which is a nice tool to have available. Once you have the game file open, use the find function (default Ctrl+F) to search for this text:

<<= either("news","events")>>. <<= either("@@.npc;Have you heard about new security rules?@@","@@.npc;...those changes in corporate policy piss me off so much, god damned! I mean this is so unconvenient...@@,"@@.npc;Yeah, well so they said I need a level five security clearance for that, can you imagine?@@")>>

There should be three matches total, you'll want to replace it with the following text:

<<= either("news","events")>>. <<= either("@@.npc;Have you heard about new security rules?@@","@@.npc;...those changes in corporate policy piss me off so much, god damned! I mean this is so inconvenient...@@","@@.npc;Yeah, well so they said I need a level five security clearance for that, can you imagine?@@")>>

Basically a missing quotation mark ruins everything.

What's next

In regard to bugs, it's been a while since I've done a thorough check myself. For the most part Besty or I have been fixing bugs as they are reported. Besty isn't the best bughunter though, so it's about time for me to go through and do a thorough sweep.

This works out pretty well, because I'm not taking on a lot of large tasks this month due to my move back to the mainland U.S. at the end of august. So much is going on with that, that it's hard to put in the sort of concentrated work needed for a major task. So this month in addition to working on some more administrative/managerial type work that needs done, I'll also be working on testing, fixing, and balancing. With any leftover time after that is done I'll work on adding more story content for the main story.

Besty is going to be working on a series of quests for acquiring rare/special components for Lily's machine, which will involve some fun situations and choices. He'll also be working on some tasks that are overdue, as well as implementing the content from our freelance writers.

Anenn is going to be working primarily on content in the form of job events and some items from the more common game areas.

With the blog post next week I I'll cover a bit more about where we are in a big picture sense, and what we'll be doing during the remainder of 2020. The answer is mostly "content", but there's also reaching the end of the main story and some other things that deserve a more thorough discussion. :D

That's all for this post, as always thanks for your support!

See you next week,

ThaumX

The Floating Release - v0.37.0 Change Log

Sorry for the delay everyone, but now version 0.37 is here! We have a neat release for you guys, with a lot of new stuff downtown along with some long-awaited surrogacy content.

This month's efforts have been somewhat spread out, but they all come down to content or polish. For polish, it's things like making the outfit/makeup/hair choice options after sleeping more functional and actually adding a game statistics page.  We've also made it so that story characters that aren't full NPCs have their name attached to any sperm deposits. Of course, there's been a lot of bug fixing, and further improvements to the game's save system and other areas.

For content, things are spread out a bit. Several new stores are open downtown, and you can even buy some new supplements from Nature's Treasury in the mall. There are new map events, new whoring scenes, and the "book club" is now available if you explore the Phoenix Nest book store. There are some new minor job events, a whole set of content for being a surrogate mother at the Progenerate Surrogacy Center in the medical district, and even a much-expanded set of scenes for the infamous double donger sex toy. The main storyline tasks have been expanded to include tasks 3 and 4, though they don't have all the content I'd like yet. You'll be able to see 'the machine' starting to take shape though. 

This has been a pretty crazy month for me personally, finding out that I'm getting a promotion at work, and relocating back to the mainland. Island life can be fun, but it does wear on you after a while. Of course, moving means tons to do, so it's been plenty hectic.

Unfortunately, our erotica writer has been having a bad month with writing. It has been quite hot and unpleasant this month in her hometown, and because AC isn't very common in Europe, the heat has made it difficult for her to write coherently. She should be getting the child content finished for us in time for the 0.38 release. 

Compatibility

There were some issues with loading a save in versions 35 and 36. For the most part, saves from older versions should work okay. If you experience issues/bugs while playing with an old save, please try starting a new game.

Changes

Words: 2,489,980  (14,941,883 characters)

Code Lines: 203,439

• Improved the hover text display that utilizes jQueryUI for hover text on icons and map locations.
• Should be less intrusive now, particularly in phone UI and map navigation.
• Added high-resolution map of Muschi valley.
• Shows more areas outside the valley.
• Click map has been improved to be more representative of actual locations.
• Improved the process for loading game saves and running backward compatibility.
• The game will now properly load unique game state variables, and initialize new ones.
• The game will now properly load temporary variables from the time of the save.
• Modified SugarCube yet again because that's how it has to be.
• Expanded the Clothes class to have a property that automatically considers clothing wetness when returning exposure value.
• Clothes now naturally become more revealing when wet instead of requiring additional checks.
• Added tracking feature to stress, arousal, anger, and milk production status values.
• You can now see just how much stress you accumulated or milk you produced in the game stats page.
• Created the "Liter of Semen" inventory item to refill certain sex machines and possibly some other uses in the future.
• Can be purchased in the adult district downtown from Prude.
• Added a new menu and several scenes to the Double Donger sex-machine.
• The machine can now inseminate the player.
• The machine can be refilled using a "Liter of Semen" item.
• There's a lot of different text possibilities with this one.
• Fixed the game cheats so that they run properly when using the prologue skip feature.
• Added the father's name to the social menu's simple child display.
• Story characters (such as Tyrone from the main quest) now have their names tracked when inseminating the player.
• Zygotes/babies/children from these characters will no longer show as "unknown".
• Fixed the button placement issue in the male prologue that caused some players difficulty with continuing.
• The amount cum/creampie/sex addiction that reduces each night has been adjusted slightly.
• These addiction values will not drop quite as fast as before.
• Added an image and description for the Sultry Eve Enema Kit.
• Automatic showering when going to bed now works as intended.
• A new Fertiseed ad can be seen when wasting time at home.
• The main story quest has been expanded with two new stages.
• The first stage is creating wire coils for electromagnets.
• The second stage is mostly carried out by Lily, and functions as something of a 'break' for the player.
• While there are no work tasks during this stage, you can still see the machine coming together if you stop by the lab.
• Prep work for the following stage involving obtaining unique/rare components has been done. 
• We still need to add unique dialog items to the characters for the new stages.
• Premade characters have been expanded with several new characters.
• The selection menu has a better appearance and is more functional.
• The description of the characters is a little more detailed.
• A new game statistics page has been added to the game.
• You can view it from the bad end page to view your final game statistics.
• You can also view it from the character menu during the game.
• Contains a lot of interesting details about your stay in Appletree.
• The "getting ready in the morning" controls have been improved.
• Your previous choice will be remembered so you don't need to select an option each day.
• Generally functions as expected, having your character get dressed, do her hair, and put on makeup automatically.
• You need to create presets for these in the wardrobe and grooming menus before they will do anything.
• You can now be a surrogate at the Progenerate Technologies Surrogacy Center located in the medical district.
• Visit the center to sign up as a potential surrogate.
• You can't be a surrogate while working in the Fecundate Division at Progenerate, they already have the rights to your womb.
• You'll be contacted when there is a client available for you.
• You'll be able to choose whether to accept the client or reject them.
• Different clients are willing to offer different rates.
• Many clients are interested in a more natural breeding process and will want to inseminate you themselves.
• Some father and mother clients will want to inject zygotes.
• You will be paid partially up-front and will receive a delivery bonus for each baby.
• Over 12,000 words of impregnation content.
• Hanna event chain finished (5,000 words).
• Additional small map events (2,000 words).
• New whoring scenes (2,000 words).
• New little events at various jobs (around 500 words).
• New bigger map events (1,000 words).
• The Phoenix book club is now open! (1,400 words).
• Look around in the Phoenix Nest bookstore...
• The downtown area received a lot of love and is more fleshed out now.
• New food supplements in Nature's treasury shop as well as food components.
• Fastfood places downtown are working fully now.
• Several setting/ambiance stores are now open, such as the Squash store, Pen Island, and hardware store.
• You can now buy groceries at Bullseye.
• Some more info status icons showing up on different occasions to inform you about what is happening to your character.
• I don't know what this means either -ThaumX
• Relationship "time to advance" is now shown in the "serious conversation" menu during a date.
• Lots of bug fixes.
• A bunch of fixes we forgot to write down, of course.
• Tanning on the balcony action was fixed.
• Hangouts location suggestion fixed.
• FairyTail leaving the massage button fixed.
• You won't be blocked in the shop if some scene or event interrupted it now.
• Tingler and CoerceMe apps don't throw an error when you click "GO" button without selecting a mate first.
• Fixed one-piece swimwear exposure bug.

Is the opposite of Microsoft Office actually Macrohard Onfire?

Floating three

It's pretty obvious that this is the third 'floating' post, and you've probably noticed that they've all been one after another. Given the years-long tradition of coming up with semi-random post titles and images, this may have some of you wondering what's going on. Basically, nothing. This is pretty much the result of me randomly deciding to make three images instead of one. I have to admit, it does save time. Perhaps I can name version 0.37 the "Floating Release" but with a new model. In any case, I'll probably go back to my normal randomness after the release because it's fun. :D

The good news so far is that Besty and Anenn have been faithfully chugging toward a happy release next week. The bad news is that I've been falling more and more behind. I'm hoping a last-minute death march will get me caught up by release time. Unfortunately, I've been slammed with things like filling out 200 pages of paperwork (literally, thankfully mostly digitally) and getting fingerprinted. Taking care of things that depend on local offices/services is extra slow because of covid, and it's already Guam I'm dealing with...

The worst part is that it's a rush to get all these tasks done as soon as possible, only to wait for other parts of the bureaucratic process to be completed. We'll be flying away from Guam for good in about 4 weeks, but we have to wait on our travel orders to get finished before we can really do much like start real estate paperwork or schedule the movers.

The process of moving sucks, it's basically some sort of unwritten law.

Our freelance erotica writer has been having some writer's block, which isn't great news, but she also has a tendency to come through once pressure mounts, so I'm hopeful. We've also found another freelance writer to help us out with some sexier content, but she's just starting now so her words probably won't make it into version 0.37. That brings our stable of freelance writers up to 4, though we may go back down to 3 soon.

Freelance writing has been working out for us, especially when it comes to adding conversational content and more generic things. We pay pretty standard rates for freelance writing (with rate bonus for erotic content), so some people get to make some money, and we get extra content. It's a win-win. If you're interested, you're always welcome to drop by the discord and ask about it. You're also welcome to submit whatever kinky content suits your fancy, and we'll be happy to add it to the game as long as it follows some very basic rules.

Anyway, we should have a fun release for you guys in a few more days. The scheduled release date is the 5th. Because of my tight schedule, I haven't had much time to check over everyone else's work, so a lot of bug checks will be left until the last minute, which I hate. Rather than needing to do a bugfix release though, if it's bad, I'll just push the release back a day or so and let you guys know. I figure it's better to wait a day for a better release than get a buggy version and have to wait more days for a fix.

Thanks for reading my rambling, and thanks as always for your support!

ThaumX

Floating Two

Hello everyone, it's already time for another blog post... time really flies.

We've all been hard at work on version 37 as expected, as well as working on the reported bugs. I discovered an issue caused by the earlier changes I made to improve save stability, because of course changes to make saves more stable would result in them being broken. That's all fixed up now though, and I've loaded a ton of saves from random places and via backward compatibility to test. Everything seems to be working exactly as it's supposed to for once.

Anenn has made good progress on his work, so now he's able to start writing the surrogacy content for version 37. His tastes run that way, so I have high hopes for some fun content.

We also got some bonus writing done by Shadowkeeper for the Double Donger sex machine. It was originally supposed to have an insemination function, but that ended up not making it in. Thanks to Shadowkeeper's writing, we were able to make the Double Donger function as intended. You can now even buy bulk semen from the Prude store to refill your machine.

Besty has been adding a slew of neat things all around town, particularly when it comes to some of the stores we have downtown that have always been closed up until now. Nature's Treasury for all-natural supplements, the Squash Store for your ePhone needs, and others. He's also added some new job content for some of the main jobs to help keep things interesting at the daily grind.

I also think we'll have some fun interactions with the player's children, possibly including some fun things like breast feeding, coming from our freelance erotica writer. I'll be adding that stuff in as it gets written, I know it's something many of you have been interested in for a while now.

In more personal news, it seems my promotion and relocation is now official. We'll be moving from Guam back to the continental U.S. toward the end of August. Moving basically always sucks, but we're excited to live somewhere new. It's also good news for my family, because we'll finally have access to the medical resources we need.

In terms of game development, I'll probably have to limit myself to a more supervisory role for late august and early September. I expect things to return to normal once we get moved into a new place sometime after that. We'll still have two full-time developers and our freelance writer/s, so there shouldn't be a major drop in productivity; it won't be like work will grind to a halt or anything. Still, I'll be doing some planning and prep to keep things rolling forward smoothly. :D

I'll share some more details as we learn more, of course, but that's all for now. See you next week!

ThaumX

Floating One

We had some issues with the version 36 release, with some v35 code not being included in the builds which caused a plethora of bugs. Once we had the git issue resolved and some new v36 bugs fixed, it was time to get started working on v37. This month Besty and I are going to be focusing on content, content, content. :D

Anenn will also be working on some finishing touches in different areas, and then pivoting to adding some more content if there's time.

• We're going to expand the main story/quest line with more activities and dialog. 
• New events all over the place, focusing on jobs and game areas you see often to improve variety.
• Interacting with your children at the Appletree creche!
• A full stable of premade characters to choose from.
• Game Statistics to view from the menu or after a bad end. Now you'll know all the crazy things you got up to during your play through.
• Updates to the outfit selection controls after sleeping to remember your previous choice and make them look a little more attractive.
• If time, some of the surrogacy content.

It should be a fun update! 

On a more personal note, we're still waiting to find out more info on my potential relocation, we just have to wait for the wheels of bureaucracy to grind forward a bit more. We're preparing as much as possible so we can try for a smooth move; if it does we won't be moving until late August, perhaps early September. I'll likely be taking time off work, and we'll be using a moving company to transport our household goods back to the mainland, so it shouldn't have a giant impact on my AW time. It'll be really good in the long-run though, so it's definitely worth it.

That's all for now, thanks for your support and take care!

ThaumX

The Special Forces Bugfix Release - v0.36.1

There was a problem with the version 0.36 release, so here we are with a bugfix release. The issue stems from mistakes that Anenn made in git when he started working with us. Basically, he was switching back and forth between the development branch and master and pushing everything to the master. This caused no shortage of headaches for me at the time, but it also returned again to mess up our release. 

After we got the master branch under control, Anenn pushed some changes to the version 36 working branch that basically reverted it to the very beginning of June (because he didn't properly pull [update local files] from version 36, and instead pushed his out-of-date source into the branch). This resulted in our work from the last few days of version 35 development, including bug fixing, to be excluded from version 36. This, of course, caused several bugs to reappear that had been fixed in the version 35 release, but it also caused several new bugs because it had unfinished work for version 35 as well.

This bugfix release addresses all those issues, fixes the reported bugs in content new to version 36, and adds a few minor new things. Oh, and Anenn didn't listen and probably broke premade characters for now. He's a new code kitteh, so... it's a learning process.

Thanks for your patience with the buggy release, and thanks for your support!

New Stuff:

• New minor job events at several jobs (institute, poll riders, fairy tail)
• Some new location event text items
• Updated full-screen Muschi Valley map

The Combat Release - v0.36 Change Log

Hello everyone, it's finally time for the version 0.36 release!

We've got a bunch of new stuff for you in this release, a mixture of relationship content, world content, and new game functionality. This release also marks the end of the relationship phase we've been working on. There are some minor things that will see some attention and possibly some assorted relationship content added, but we're mostly done with relationships for now until we revisit them for marriage and other material at the beginning of next year.

The game functionality we've added is a mixture of things, all planned, but none considered critical. The biggest item is the addition of the NPC Template system, which allows you to create NPC templates by setting individual NPC variables, which the game can then use when generating NPCs instead of using the procedural generator. We've also cleaned up the settings menu for the NPC Generator, added some premade characters, and added banking to the game for savings, loans, and credit cards. We also made the changes to the AI discussed in this blog earlier in the month, improving the experience in dates and hangouts. 

Content-wise, we've added a variety of new things. A lot of it is related to relationships, kinky and otherwise, like some BDSM activities as well as marriage proposals and making vows. The "psycho in the woods" event had erotic content added, and Hanna the drug dealer now has a quest/storyline involving the owner of the SlavSquat Academy. Anenn has also fleshed out the cam-whoring side job with content to explore.

We spent a lot of time the last 4 weeks working on code, for both relationships and the game functionality additions. Still, we're still getting back into the swing of tracking time properly (or learning, in Anenn's case), so take these numbers with a grain of salt. Our goal for next month will be to actually track all of our work time :D

We hope you enjoy this release, and thanks for all your support!

ThaumX & Team

Change Log

Details:

Content: 2,421,604 words,  14,745,303 characters, 3,037 images

Code Lines: 202,638 Lines O' Code

Body Portraits: 64,880,640 combinations

Changes:

• Added the NPC Template system to the game.
• Allows players to create and edit templates of most NPC variables.
• Template groups can be exported as a single file for sharing and reuse.
• Templates are used to generate new NPCs using the same exact variables, rather than using the procedural generator.
• You can set the ratio of new NPCs that are created from templates rather than the procedural generator.
• Templates can be disabled and enabled during gameplay from the game settings menu.
• Individual templates can only be edited before starting a game.
• NPC templates will not be available in public releases prior to version 1.0.
• This is partly to reward our generous supporters, but also because the system allows the player to create all sorts of chaos if they wish, and that isn't suitable for a public-facing release yet.
• Updated the NPC Generator Settings Menu.
• The menu has a nicer appearance and is hopefully somewhat easier to use.
• The menu will remember the settings when you leave the menu and return.
• NPC Generator Settings can now be changed during the game!
• Players can now have their IUDs removed at the Gestique Clinic in the Medical District.
• The Government District of Appletree has had area descriptions and "look around" content added. 
• Four new logos for important facilities such as the public school system and creche.
• NPC class structure adjusted slightly to add on-demand calculated personality information.
• Premade Characters are now a thing (in a temporarily limited way).
• Currently, you can choose from three pre-made characters to start the game with rather than creating your own character in character creation.
• More options are planned, this is the first part of what is necessary for "Roleplay Challenge" modes. 
• A new Camurbate advertisement can be seen when using the "read something" activity in your home.
• Banking has been added to the game.
• The player can perform banking actions at the Faust and Indigo Dragon banks located downtown (east of the corporate park).
• The player can open three different types of accounts, each with its own functionality.
• The savings account will keep the player's money safe while slowly accruing interest.
• Like with a normal savings account, this interest rate is quite low, only a little over 1% annually.
• Currently, there are no events or situations where the player is robbed, this will change in the future. Savings account money is safe from such events.
• The player can apply for a credit card account, which works much like a normal credit card.
• Your credit card is used for purchases automatically when your funds are low,  and can also be used for cash advances.
• Interest is charged weekly, and paying off your balance before the end of the week will prevent interest from being charged on it.
• The interest rate is quite high, though the specific amount depends on your credit check results.
• The mandatory minimum payment is quite small, it will take forever to pay off your card if only the minimum payment is made.
• The player can apply for a personal loan, which gives them a one-time lump sum of cash.
• The loan is paid off with structured payments over the course of approximately one year.
• The interest rate is a good deal lower than with a credit card, but mandatory payments are likely to be higher because of the fixed loan term.
• The amount that can be borrowed, along with the interest rate offered, depends on your credit check.
• Added a credit check to the game that simulates the bank checking the player's credit score. 
• The player has a brand new identity and thus little credit, so the final credit score is largely based on existing assets and the player's income to expense ratio.
• There is no significant difference between Indigo Dragon and Faust, except that their offered rates and such can vary slightly from each other.
• Banks in Appletree definitely don't collude with each other, because that would be illegal. Perish the thought!
• Addiction has been modified to improve realism and playability.
• Addiction levels for non-drug addictions will decrease a limited amount every day. This will make it less likely for normal behavior to cause an addiction to cum/sex/creampies.
• Heavy sexual activity will still cause addiction, as intended.
• Drug addiction levels will decrease at a slower rate each day, but only while the addiction level is below 50.
• Addiction levels 50 and above must be reduced by going through withdrawal.
• Will allow the player to sample drugs for their benefits on an infrequent basis without starting an addiction.
• This hopefully will help solve the issue where players unintentionally end up with addiction despite fairly ordinary behavior. We will likely need to tweak the rate of decline, which is based on a math function.
• Downtown events will no longer occur while in Lily's basement and should be much less likely to occur in the area outside Lily's house.
• When making a move to a new home from the Apple Cleft Realty office, the moving robots will now pack all your home items back into your inventory. 
• You will need to place your home items in your home again from the home inventory menu.
• This prevents certain errors from occurring due to potentially decreased room size and rooms not being available in all home tiers.
• Tier 4 home added to the game.
• Available only to players who move in with their romantic partner.
• Has three bedrooms and additional storage space. 
• You can now live together with your romantic partner.
• You can suggest moving in with your lover once you've reached the "lovers" stage of your relationship.
• You will have to go to the realtor's office to fill out paperwork and perform the move into your new tier 4 home.
• As long as your romantic partner is not poorer than you, you will see a reduction in your weekly rent amount.
• A wealthy NPC will decrease your rent by a larger amount.
• The quality and traits of your new home are based on your existing home at the time you move. Your partner's financial status can modify the quality of your home from there.
• A wealthy NPC will increase the quality level of your home the most, and also increases the quality cap somewhat so you may end up with a home nicer than it's possible to find while single.
• An average wealth NPC will give a modest increase to your home's quality.
• The player is still responsible for keeping the home clean.
• Interactions and setup for sharing cleaning responsibilities haven't been created yet.
• I forgot to do this, it's not a design decision, lol.
• Normal interactions with your lover are possible from within your own home, and your partner will move about according to their own schedule.
• We will probably need to add a "Hey You!" function to call the NPC from a different room so you don't need to chase them around or wait on them... Let us know!
• Added some NonCon events to home dates.
• If you have the BDSM stocks from the Prude shop in your apartment you can trick NPC into getting in them and torture them.
• There is a strapon option (requires possession of any dildo).
• There is a caning option.
• NPCs will now visit your apartment occasionally.
• Various interaction options are available such as starting dates or hanging out with the NPC.
• The Player Character's "self-thoughts" have been expanded with new things to think about.
• 3,200 words of new situational character-based contemplation.
• The new CB System has replaced the old AWAI System in hangouts and dating.
• I don't know what CB stands for because Besty came up with the name.
• It has been suggested that it may mean "Cock & Balls System", but I can't confirm this.
• It may actually stand for "Cognitive Behavior System", but this seems too reasonable.
• The system uses traditional game AI methodology combined with detailed character data to make decisions.
• The system is also used in some other locations as well, such as determining whether to propose advancing a relationship (or accepting a proposal), as well as vow negotiation.
• While the AWAI system (learning software) hasn't been deleted from the game, links to the AI training have been removed.
• Marriage can be properly proposed by NPC or PC now.
• Details of the marriage can be discussed right after the proposition or on the next date.
• You can set the date for the wedding.
• NPC will list some vows they want you to follow through the marriage and you can propose some too.
• You can't actually get married yet. A nice sexy ceremony and other fun marriage-related things are slated for 2021.
• Some earlier blog posts discussing the poll results explain what's going on with marriage in more detail.
• The Screen-Reader-Friendly Interface option was improved for our players with vision difficulties.
• Breast size slider which is hard to use with a screen-reader software is accompanied by simple [smaller] and [bigger] buttons.
• PC preferences now replaced with simple drop-downs instead of the standard fancy selector element.
• Added final scene for the Psycho in the woods event chain. (1300 words)
• A Skin color chart is now available during character creation that shows the skin tone associated with the various words such as "fair" and "light".
• Hanna story expansion, new quest (2500 words)
• Besty didn't add any information about triggering this, so it probably follows on from the previously-existing Hanna content.
• The available cam girl content has been considerably expanded, with a number of basic shows and special request scenes.

For making it this far, I figured I'd share a sneak peek at some art that I wasn't able to get finished in time for this release. It's a map of Muschi Valley, which will occupy the entire map screen rather than having the current square map. There will be saturation gradients and such applied in the final version for a nice-looking screen, this is a work in progress.

Muschi Valley is located in West Virginia, in the Laurel Forks area. This places it about 225km (140mi) west of Washington D.C., which is the identity of "the City" in the game.