Hot Work

 

Hello everyone, it's past time to talk about the results of the expansion poll. The pick-multiple approach got us some interesting results, and I'm glad we took that approach. It allowed all of you to select the things you're most interested in, rather than having to pick only your favorite choice. While I'm here, I'd also like to talk about what we're working on this month; it's something easier said than done.

This month's work is focused on playtesting and using what we learn to fix bugs, improve balance, and generally just make sure things are working the way we want them to work. Normally, we test the specific things we work on, or play the game for short segments relevant to our work or finding bugs (and Anenn hardly seems to test at all :P) This makes it very easy to miss minor bugs, stylistic things. It also makes it very hard to get a sense of whether a thing that happens over time is balanced the way we want, for example, natural lactation training reduction and the behavior of leaking.

We've already found a bunch of things, and we keep working to fix everything we find. We're even finding some bugs that wouldn't be noticeable during play because of error handling, but that actually impact the way things work. One example is outfit coordination. The attractiveness/desirability of the player character's clothing ensemble is modulated by whether or not the clothes match. While the main portion of this works (same color, or coordination with universal colors like black, white, and denim), the code that handled complementary colors wasn't working at all because of a minor bug. In this case, players were being penalized for some outfits accidentally. It's not something obvious, so it was never reported.

That example was only about 30 minutes of work, but it's a good example of some of the things we're looking for. Another example is not getting companionship gains when at work with coworkers, and not having companionship modulated by difficulty settings. Easy to overlook, but makes a difference in balance. Similarly, we had issues with the system for choosing work events, causing many events to occur only very rarely, while others happen much too often. Not technically broken, but not the experience we're trying to give.

We're hoping that making things look better, work better, and be better balanced, we'll have a much-improved game for you for the 0.52 release. It's also an important part of getting ready for 1.0.

Also, we have Anenn working to further expand the amount of content in the sex scene system. It's a good place for more content, and it helps keep any new Anenn bugs from popping up while we're working so hard to get rid of bugs ;). FYI: The descriptive text in the sex system currently clocks in at about 96,000 words, about the size of your average novel. It's mostly split into 15 different groupings, with standard plus 14 "kink" variations.

Poll Results

Ordered from most to least votes for convenience

The results had a mix of expected and unexpected things. The futa player expansion having a lot of votes was pretty expected, that's been one of the most common and consistent requests we get. On the other hand, we didn't expect to see so much support for the sex system or transformatives, though we did expect them to get their share of support. While it's only a guess, I believe that part of the uniqueness of the results is that many people chose certain items as their second or third choice. This is a good thing though, as it helps get a better idea of the general things appealing to people compared to the pick-one approach.

As I mentioned in the poll's description, this isn't going to choose what we actually work on, we'll be having a vote each time before starting on a new reaction. What this will decide is what options we'll put effort into timing out and explaining for the first vote. I'll be doing that for the top 5 items in this poll.

This top-5 group includes some of the things I'm most excited about, and I think any of them will make a good addition to AW. You guys did tend to pick the items that require the most work though... not that it really bothers us ;)

Futa player will be a ton of work, but will also pretty dramatically alter how you can play the game. There's events to change, systems to expand, and plenty of fun things to add... such as all the things you can do with the cum your character would be able to produce... Plus, think how certain jobs like being a hucow farm hand can change when a cock is brought into the picture.

Transformatives are pretty cool, and I'm glad to see a lot of support for this expansion. For one, it'll let us start using the Institute employee enrichment center. I enjoy the mechanics of both exploring different modifications and creating the perfect character. We've got a great system for supporting these sorts of effects, so we can focus more on adding fun things, mutations, and appearances.

Improving the sex system will make it more fun to use, and that makes for a better game. Most of it will likely involve refactoring code and improving how things work, but it should make the system more enjoyable. Since it's a central part of the game, it makes sense to make it better.

Hucows are fun. There's been a lot of support for hucows in the past, and it's exciting to explore a bit more of that world. (not to mention sexy...)

The careers are something neat because the main jobs in the game were all designed with a second stage in mind, along with more content/story to go along with them. We thought it was more important to provide variety and basic stories for more entry-level jobs than it was to have just a couple full-length jobs though. It'll be really nice to add some of that expanded play to the jobbing minigame, along with some of the confounding choices and misadventures.

That's enough babbling for now...

Thanks for your support!

The Clothing Malfunction Release - v0.51

 

So now your can burst out of your bra/shirt if you hit up the Mammarex or Bovinex. The idea was too fun to skip for the name of this release, but the focus of our efforts was largely elsewhere. Pregnancy was a big thing because while a lot of work has gone into fertility and pregnancy mechanically, there hasn't been a whole lot of content that distinguishes being pregnant from not. We wanted to do a little better job of having pregnancy be represented in your character's day-to-day life.

The other big thing for this release was finishing off the mechanics of the main quest, and adding dialog and descriptions to the various areas. You can now see the machine coming together in the later stages, the game won't end almost immediately after collecting the rare components during stage 5, and there's more to talk about with the other characters in the lab.

We've also done the usual mix of other work, such as adding additional sex toys to the sex system and making sure non-system scenes take such things into account better. We also found an issue that seemed to be causing a lot of our pronoun parser issues, so the text suffering from those should be a lot saner now. Clothing sizes have been a popular request for some time, so we added some mechanics for that, though the system is optional and can be disabled at will from the game settings menu. 

The big survey has been interesting, though I'll talk about it in more detail in a post next week. It's going to help us plan out the various topics to give you better information when it's time to choose what to work on next.

Thanks for your support, we really appreciate it, and we really hope you enjoy this release!

Change Log

Words: 1,965,353 (17,467,416 characters)

Code Lines: 144,256

In case you're wondering why the numbers shrank: we updated our code used to derive these figures, in order to try and get the most accurate count we can. Basically, we excluded more stuff to give a more accurate representation.

• Key sizes are now recorded when purchasing or being given clothes.
• Sufficient changes to your sizes can result in clothing being "stretched", reducing their lifespan.
• If your body changes too much, you may no longer fit into clothing.
• Limits for sizes are relevant to the type of clothing and style.
• A tube top won't care how pregnant you are, and a skirt won't care how big your breasts are.
• Key size items:
• Weight BMI class
• Hip and Pelvis size
• Breast size (in cc)
• Bra band size
• Ass category
• Fundal height (pregnancy belly size)
• For those lactating, the sizes are based on your current breast size at the time of purchase. (milk buildup swells breasts)
• If your breasts increase in size beyond what fits into the clothes you are currently wearing (bra, top, or dress), there will be a clothing malfunction where the item breaks and you are exposed. (Toplessness isn't illegal, so there are no hard consequences to this beyond losing the clothing item.)
• You can disable clothing sizes from the game settings menu. This will stop checks for clothes fitting or stretching, as well as the bra/top break. Sizes will continue to be recorded, however, in case you want to enable it later.
• There is now a cheat in the items section of the cheat menu that will resize all your clothing to your current body size.
• OLD SAVES: Because clothing from old saves do not have size information attached, the backward compatibility system will automatically disable clothing sizes.
• If you enable the sizes manually, it will likely cause numerous errors.
• If you have the Cheats or Elite builds, you can use the resize clothing cheat to set all your clothing sizes, and then enable the clothing size option safely.
• More descriptions of the NPC's activities in Lily's lab have been added.
• Descriptions of the appearance of the lab and the state of Lily's machine have been added all the way to completion.
• You can now watch the machine come together if you visit the lab often enough.
• Several more conversations have been added for Lily and Kim/Sara to the lab based on the current phase of the main quest.
• The time limit for collecting the special components in stage 5 has now been enabled, failure to collect the parts on time will result in a bad end. 
• Text messages from lily for completing stage 5 and 6 have been added, along with a special reminder text if you haven't gotten the special components but all other work is complete.
• The game will no longer progress to the ending immediately after getting all 4 special components.
• The standard work progress much reach 100%, and then stage 6 begins.
• Stage six takes about a month, and doesn't require player interaction, Lily does all the work. This is a period to achieve any personal goals before reaching the ending.
• You can now head to Lily's home to start the end once stage 6 is complete, or wait for the timer to count down to a mandatory end.
• More sex toys have been added to the sex system. 
• Dildos have been excepted because the mechanical implementation of strapons and dildos are very close to what is being planned for the possible futa expansion. Such expansion would include these toys.
• Chastity and butt plugs will now affect non-sex-system scenes/events much more thoroughly, with alternative text and/or results for the scenes in question. No more getting fucked while wearing a locked chastity belt!
• Many scenes have been fixed so that they will properly add various liquids, remove virginity tags, apply cum/creampie/sex bonuses and addiction as appropriate, and stretch any used holes properly.
• Using drugs while pregnant will now harm any fetuses directly.
• Drinking alcohol while pregnant now has a larger impact on fetuses.
• Breasts will now grow during pregnancy (finally).
• Growth is modeled after real-world pregnancies where the fastest growth occurs during the first trimester, and then a nearly equal amount of growth happens over the following two trimesters.
• The amount of growth is proportional to the starting size of the breasts, as expected. 
• This seems to be somewhat true in real life as well, but of course, there is way more variation in actual humans.
• Proportional increases to growth rates are capped, so women with very large breasts will receive more modest growth.
• Breast growth is responsive to the overall pregnancy speed of the player.
• Characters with accelerated pregnancies will see faster growth rates so that they see approximately the same amount of growth as a character having a normal term. Accelerated pregnancy = accelerated growth hormones!
• Breast growth is aimed to be 1 to 2 cup sizes for a large portion of character sizes.
• There is no reduction in breast growth for subsequent pregnancies, but this may be added later. (Real-life pregnancies usually see rapidly diminishing growth in subsequent pregnancies.)
• For characters with multiple wombs, only one set of growth can happen at a time if the character is doubly pregnant. However, the first trimester quicker growth is prioritized over slower 2nd and 3rd trimester growth.
• Numerous events throughout the game have additional or modified text for when the player is sufficiently pregnant.
• Sunbathing, showering, biking, exercising, medititating, jogging, watching TV, reading on your phone, and several others.
• New pregnancy events for jobs.
• 4-5 events for each job except Progenerate (and the bullseye job mod). 
• Acknowledgment of pregnancy from coworkers, and similar things like noticing you've given birth, celebrating, etc.
• Lactation bonus events if the player went to work with full breasts.
• Several new "General" events can happen outside the home if you are pregnant.
• Inconveniences, some harrasment like people wanting to touch your belly, and some stranger "Appletree" things.
• Can negatively impact your mood, being pregnant isn't always easy!
• More events for strange desires and spells of increased arousal.
• Between the drugs and mental programming in Appletree and hormones running crazy during pregnancy, there's bound to be some of this!
• Unpleasant sleeping events have been added for pregnancy.
• Sleeping while pregnant can be a challenge, as anyone who has been pregnant knows. Between the weight of the belly, and kicking babies, it can be hard to get a full night's sleep.
• These events are for flavor only, and don't actually negatively impact your character.
• Includes some special events involving lactation when your pregnancy milk comes in. (Anenn didn't add exclusions, bad Anenn! Next month the lactation events will have more checks/controls)
• A new birthing class can be taken at the Town Hall building when pregnant to help you prepare for giving birth.
• Involves "limbering up" that birth canal.
• There is a new meal option for weekly spending that becomes available early in the game.
• Cumplete Nutrition is a meal replacement program similar to Soylent, but based on human semen (of course).
• The cost is slightly more than the "average" food spending level, but the benefits for environmental effects are higher.
• Gives you the mental status benefits of consuming semen throughout the day based on "meal times" (great boost to maintaining happiness and reducing stress).
• The positive effects of cum in-game last 6 hours after consumption. three meals of Cumplete per day spaced out at 6 hours give pretty good coverage.
• Ramps up your cum addiction very quickly, which can cause withdrawal problems if you switch back to normal food.
• While using Complete Nutrition, however, you receive regular doses of cum at mealtime, which removes most of the bad effects of cum addiction altogether.
• Will bump up your arousal 1 or 2 points at mealtimes, which is to be expected if you're guzzling down a large amount of semen product.
• Fixes to the pronoun parser calls in some areas of text that caused them to behave unreliably.
• Fixed the age setting issue in the prologues where ID age didn't respond properly to changes.
• Several other fixes to items in the bug tracker and reported on discord. Please remember to report any bugs you find, it really helps!