Hello everyone, I hope you had a nice (or at least tolerable) set of holidays.
For us, I guess you could say it was the normal mix of dealing with family members and all that. Personally, even though I took a "vacation" between Christmas and New Years, I feel more worn out now than I did in the middle of December... that's the holidays for you. =D
The first thing I have to share here is that things didn't exactly go according to plan this month. So, everyone gets paid vacation time of course, and this includes a yearly holiday vacation. Now normally I do the sane thing and just give everyone their own totally disconnected somewhat random tasks that they can go off and work on on their own. This way other team members being away doesn't get in the way of their work. This year, I really wanted to wrap up the Card Game framework and keep going on the Hucows... so I didn't do the sane thing.
So, here we are, working on some complicated stuff, with everyone leaving at different times to go on vacation. Sure, technically everyone had their own "piece" of the work to do, but they were puzzle pieces that had to fit in with all the others. Long story short... this wasn't exactly a big brain move. A good chunk of what we did this month isn't integrated properly so had to be left out of 1.23. Another chunk of stuff is untested and unimplemented, and we ran out of time to implement it, even if we said "damn the bugs, full speed ahead."
We definitely did better than the all-to-common "skip a release" or "do a release with almost nothing new" move that many crowd funded games do around the holidays... but it's still not our finest moment. Still a lot of new stuff, but not as much as I wanted. Definitely won't be trying this insanity again next year, that's for sure!
What we do have for you is a solid improvement on the sex card game, with new mechanics, framework, and cards. We also have a new setup for player character portraits, allowing the player to select which kind of portrait they want, and even use their own by saving over an image in the resources folder. The way AI portrait images are handled was totally reworked by expanding AW-SugarCube for another resource pipeline. Loading times are significantly reduced as a result. In addition, we did a lot of work in the weeds with the portraits, so now pretty much every female NPC has an AI portrait. We also did a good amount of bug fixing, including the NPC suicide bug that has tormented us for ages.
I'm gonna get on to the actual change log before this headache gets any worse. Thanks so much for your support, it really means a lot to us.
ThaumX
Changes
- Fixed the cup size string so that it shows the player's real cup size, and not raw cup size.
- Changed the text in character creation breast size so that it no longer shows the raw cup size string, because this just confused most people (understandably).
- New effect framework added to the card game.
- Allows wide ranging effects such as drawing a bonus card or gaining extra pleasure from a certain card to be easily implemented from a central location without adding new code all over the place each time we want an effect.
- In terms of game design, it allows us to represent a lot of details about the character and situation without having to add a card.
- Just adding cards bloats the deck, making balance and deckbuilding more difficult.
- Cards are mostly optional, meaning the player can just not play negative cards that come from status conditions like being drunk or mind broken (for example). The same is true for the NPC.
- Cards have a limited range of possible effects unless you want to start adding in code to other areas outside the card library, which is both a pain and prone to bugs. The effects system allows more effects and less bugs.
- Currently there are 5 possible status effects, basically a limited sample. Effects are quite easy to add/define, and we hope to be able to use them for numerous aspects of the character and npc.
- Some things will still add special cards, or do both! The effects system is more to add capabilities than change plans for some of the cool things already discussed.
- Effect system has 32 effects programmed in, though not all are "hooked up" yet to the relevant code.
- Effects are: "startArousal", "maxArousal", "minArousal", "addArousal", "subArousal", "startOrgasm", "goalOrgasm", "addOrgasm", "subOrgasm", "startDesire", "addDesire", "subDesire", "maxHandSizeCap", "minHandSizeCap", "startHandSize", "addCardDeal", "subCardDeal", "addResist", "subResist", "stopResist", "blockCardDraw", , "blockPlayItem", "blockPlayPosition", "blockPlayKink", "blockUseItem", "blockCard", "blockBodyPart", "blockPoseType", "limitPlayItem", "limitPlayAction", "orgasmPerTurn", and "arousalPerTurn"
- Effects have their own card-like items that can be viewed by clicking the "effects" button.
- The view shows both the NPC and PC effects at the same time.
- The "cards" show an image and the details of the effect.
- Hovering over a card shows what causes the effect.
- Fixed some inappropriate text concerning exposure inserted by the enemy in some recurring conversation text. (various conversation tag content)
- The hucow breeding cumflation event now takes into account whether the player is wearing a diaphragm or not, with different possible outcomes based on the age/effectiveness of the diaphragm and whether spermicide (or sperm helpers) were added.
- The player is informed during hucow social content that a diaphragm is the best way to avoid getting knocked up while pregnant. This makes that a reality.
- Fixed the dreaded NPC suicide bug.
- NPCs you have a relationship with will no longer be killed needlessly.
- Came down to a minor value flip... never noticed it until I sat down and read through each step of each line of code. =P
- Fixed an unrelated issue that could cause the total NPC inventory to swell very slowly with time, despite npc population limits.
- New build of AW-SugarCube, the twine format we use (v1.17).
- Allows use of local image files not stored in memory while maintaining the use of passage wiki notation and the special 'data-passage' html property. This keeps all forms of AW images interchangeable in the code.
- AI portrait images are no longer stored in the browser memory.
- Tiny decrease in amount of browser memory.
- because local file access requests are limited to just portraits, the speed of image display and passage change is not affected. (the whole reason we load images into memory in the first place is to avoid this portion of the "chuggy" nature of other twine games, particularly because we utilize far more images than found in other twine-based games.)
- Image loading process has been sped up.
- Partly by optimizing load process.
- Partly by allowing some images to continue loading after finishing the loading screen, thereby reducing perceived loading time.
- You can now choose your player character's portrait!
- There are 5 options presented to you when making a character in a new portrait selection page that appears after the physical review page when making a new character.
- AI Portrait: using the stable of AI generated portrait images we've built up.
- Selects image based on race, skin color, eye color, hair color, hair length, & age.
- Female NPCs will not use the AI image that is selected for the player, no doppelgangers!
- SVG Portrait: The system we've been using up until now that updates regularly and displays a simplified character portrait based on several traits.
- Custom Portrait 1, 2, or 3.
- A selection of animated portraits with blinking, breathing, or boob shaking.
- These portraits can be easily replaced with an image of your choosing, without bothering with an AW image mod. (Instructions in the game.)
- Once you choose an option (1, 2, or 3) that is the option for the rest of that game. Otherwise it defaults to 1 if you choose later in the game settings menu.
- Multiple options are there so you can have custom images for different characters you want to make, so you can change between saves/playthroughs without changing images each time.
- The choice of portrait can be changed from the game settings menu at any time.
- For users playing a save from an older version:
- The custom option will default to 1.
- The AI option will show an easter egg portrait. :D
- The portrait won't actually update to the new one until you move to a new location, because of the way portraits are loaded/handled.
- Card Game Stuff!
- Default orgasm points number was changed from 9 to 13 to make the game a bit longer and prevent the "You were standing in front of each other saying something sexy and occasionally fapping until you both came" situation. Optionally, you can change it back to 9 or 21 in the CG settings menu (it only affects the next CG sex scenes, not the one you are playing already).
- Action delay option added. You can choose a pause between NPC's actions so you can see better what they are doing now. Changeable in the CG settings menu.
- Desire mechanic. To make the game a bit saner we introduce the "Desire" points. You have 3 of them and they are spent on every action. Desire points replenish every round but they force you to think more strategically and remove the insanity of doing a long string of nonsense actions on the same turn. Also, note the cool violet flame animation!
- Lesbian sex added. It is a major change to the system which affects a lot of mechanics. To my surprise, I noticed at the last minute that it seems to work with futa NPC too. Sex with futanari partners is not tested though and can result in some errors. Lesbian sex should be stable.
- Card removed: Cunnilingus. This is a temporary solution, we probably will make some changes to the system next month so the same pose cards can be played "in two ways" via the menu, i.e. "Would you like to be a top or bottom partner?". For now, I replaced it with two different pose cards as a workaround.
- There is an ongoing design debate about card targeting. if a single card should be usable for either character, like items, or if there should be two cards that are specific to the pc or npc that should happen for each action that could have two targets. Chime in on discord!
- New pose cards: Cunnilingus top, Cunnilingus bottom. Pretty self-explanatory, basically the old Cunnilingus pose card just in two variants so you can choose who will be the top in the lesbian sex.
- New pose card: Sixtynine. The system considers it as a universal "oral" pose so you and your partner can use any oral action cards while in this position.
- New pose card: Scissoring. A sex card for females. Basically, most of the sex-related action cards can be used in this position but I could miss something so if you notice some weirdness please write us about it!
- New action card: New action card: Not done yet! You can use it right after your orgasm if you want to continue sex and go for round two. For now (since the player's turn is the first in the round) you can't play it after NPC came. Probably will change that later.
- Suck Clit. Basically a Suck cock card, just for the lesbian sex.
- New item cards: Cuffs and Buttplug. You can apply them and other items to yourself or your partner. You can buy both at the "Prude" shop in the adult district. Items now properly restrict the body parts they are put onto\into.
- Coconut Brain (AI) was tweaked and expanded to make it behave in a predictable and sane fashion. NPCs now have their motivation levels working properly (e.g. won't play cards they don't like) and generally act in a way more fitting their kinks and traits.
- Tutorial was updated to reflect the changes.
- A new system to handle the click blocking will (we hope) result in more stable behavior of the CG system. (on-off toggle setup for html click handlers)
- As always, a rapid development of the CG requires a lot of testing and we would be happy to hear your suggestions and feedback on the new mechanics and AI in our discord server!
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