Author: Skye

First – transformation mods are coming along well and should be available in a new release in the coming week or so. At least initially, it’ll require LUA coding to make new transformations, but maybe in the future there will be a WYSIWYG editor for it if there’s requests.

Second – there’s only a couple more chapters until the game’s storyline is complete and I can start in on some of the DLC chapter ideas people have suggested. This has gotten me thinking about how these DLC would be priced. As I started thinking more about having to manage a whole set of individual DLC packages, or come up with some sort of ‘Season Pass’ sort of thing, I came to conclusion it would be simpler to just offer everything (base game + dlc) as a monthly Patreon tier (and via BMT subscription also). Even now, I still get comments from people who assume that we’re already on a monthly business model since we have a Patreon.  So it seems simpler and fairer to just have one price and you get everything.

As for what that price point is… it’s TBD and I’m taking input. Please check out the survey and feel free to leave longform comments here also. I’m leaning to $10/month for this, although I think there are compelling arguments for both $5 and $15 as price points, too (I do want it to be accessible to everyone, but I also know that the game’s focus is extremely niche and only appeals to a small number of people. So in order to be able to spend more time on making game updates, a higher price point than average would be necessary).

If this change happens, there’d be no effect to existing purchasers or anyone in the upcoming Patreon cycle for Feb 1 — you would still have access to updates to the base game as always. This is affecting new purchasers, as well as people who want to get DLC whenever that happens.

Also, I’m thinking of removing the custom clothing + cameo tiers from Patreon. Now that modding is available, they’re a bit redundant since you can do it yourself for free.

Your feedback in the survey link above and in the comments below is welcome!

PS – Happy New Year~

r23 broke loading certain saves from r22.01.  At least two cases of this is now fixed in r23.01.  If you can’t load a save file in r23.01 from r22.01, please let me know by posting here or on discord with your account name and save slot number.

r23 is now released to all private backers and includes the ability to mod in your own items and clothes into the game!  These can be simple text-only mods, or can be driven through LUA code.  The new build can be downloaded via the Researcher Intranet.

There’s a number of new sample mods available, including the cursed weight gain pendant which will cause you to gain weight continuously.  Try them out, and then make your own.  If you get stuck, ask questions on discord.

Note that while the mod system supports well over a hundred game functions currently, there’s still a lot of stuff it doesn’t support yet.  Notably, species TF support isn’t in yet, but is planned.  If you run into a wall due to functions not being exposed to LUA, please leave feedback on what you would like to build with the mod API but can’t due to current limitations. This helps inform future revisions of the mod API.

r22.5 WIP is now released to WIP backers via the Researcher Intranet.  It contains the basics for LUA modding.  It’s not full featured enough for any serious modding, as there’s only a handful of exposed functions, but it lets you poke around with the new modding tools and create code mods for the game.

To get started, try a sample mod or learn about how to create a new entity.

Also, editing on the wiki was broken for some amount of time, but it’s fixed now.  Sorry if you ran into that issue!

Here’s a little demo of the upcoming modding system, still very much a work in progress.  In it, you can see me exploring the possibility of mods that include… custom code!  This feature would allow modders to have a great deal of power and flexibility on what custom items (and eventually transformations) would be able to do, beyond the current limitations of mere text & variable substitution.

If you backed the project on Patreon before November 1st and don’t have access as of today, please send me an e-mail (the address is listed in the support category in the intranet). Everyone’s access should now be enabled, except a couple people who haven’t linked their accounts yet.

(For Patreon backers after Nov 1st, you’ll get charged on Dec 1st and receive access then (see FAQ).)

If you backed on Patreon for the billing cycle on Oct 1st, that’s now been processed and you should have access to your builds in the employee intranet.  Thanks for your support!

The caveats there are: 1) a couple people still need to link their accounts, 2) several accounts with declined cards, and 3) several accounts that are still in a processing phase.  Reminder messages have been sent to #1, I believe Patreon sends messages already for #2, and #3 should hopefully autoresolve in a few days (sorry for the delay!)

With nearly double the number of votes of any option, player created transformation mod support has won the backer feature poll.

This is going to be a large feature to implement, and I plan to develop it in two phases:

Phase 1 (WIP) – the initial release will be a proof of concept build that contains the core ability for the game to read transformation mod files and create transformations based on them.  I will also release one or two sample transformation mod files.  As this will not contain any instructions or easy modding tool, this initial release will only be for adventurous WIP backers.  However, if you’re crafty, you can try looking at the plain text JSON file format and reverse engineer how it works and maybe make your own mods based on that.  Be warned there may be some changes to the mod file format before Phase 2 is released.

Phase 2 (Full Game) – I will create a system similar to SCLab for defining transformations so you don’t have to write code.  There may also be some updates to the file format to add support for additional transformation types, etc.  Once the tools and file format are complete, I’ll make the full transformation mod system available to all full game purchasers.  (Similar to the monster mod system, it will not ever be available to the demo version).

I expect this feature request to take a while, so look for a WIP build with Phase 1 sometime next month.