Author: Skye

I’ve set up a quick test discord chat here.  I’ve opted to leave the invite link public for now, but I may limit new membership in future or leave it open and set up an additional room for the Patreon <-> Discord integration.  Or get rid of the whole thing if it’s not useful — this is just a test for now.

I’m AFK most of the time so you may need to hang out for a bit to catch me!  The standalone app is nice for this because you can just leave it running in the background.

In Patreon news, it’s now the first of the month.  A quick reminder for new backers that it takes Patreon several days to process all the payments so please be patient during this process.  Also, there’s sixteen hours left on the August feature vote, and I’ll make a post once the poll has officially closed.

Slowly getting more systems in place for chapter 6.  This build contains:

• Roughing out several NPCs for chapter 6, namely Swick & Hanako.  No dialogue for them yet though (expect lots of “COULD NOT LOAD TEXT” messages!).
• Added a warning not to overwrite save games from stable builds with save games from WIP builds.
• The beginnings of the ‘Ride an NPC’ system:
  • You can now mount & dismount our main Dinoian NPC, Hanako.  Head to the north of Haven and talk with Swick, then you’ll be able to mount Hanako in the room next door.
  • You can ride her in any of the Underworld areas, but not in overworld areas like Mulberry.
  • Still needs flavor text, as well as all the planned actions / scenes Hanako will do as you travel together.
  • It does not work with the save system yet.
• Standing on the hot sand of the desert areas will now damage you unless you’re either riding Hanako or are a Dinoian yourself.
• 64 character password support.
• Fix for room tags not being loaded during load from save file — this manifested as sometimes respawning in the wrong place after loading from a save file (a fresh start worked okay).

If you backed at the WIP backer level for the July 1 Patreon cycle, head to the employee intranet to download your copy.

I just posted a community vote over on Patreon.  The primary focus of current development is on chapter six content, but I’ll try to get one extra feature done.  What should it be?

• Rework intro so you can choose your reaction (affects initial acceptance rate).
• Shop where you can sell loot.
• Succubus class or status or item: Gain HP via sex, but not via health items or rest.
• Click on minimap for larger map.
• Catgirl voice for chapter 5.
• Frog TF.

If you’re a patron, vote here before August 1.  There’s only six patrons currently, so you have good odds on getting to choose the next feature!

If you saved during chapter 5 and are encountering a problem loading the game, try the new r20.01 build.  This is otherwise the same build as r20 but with a fix for this savegame issue.

Available now in the Employee Intranet in SWF & APK.

Build r20.3 is now uploaded to the employee intranet for WIP patrons.  It includes:

• Dinoian TF, UI/DPI Scaling and Multiple Map / Large Map Support.
• A new settings page, where you can adjust the scale of UI elements vs size of text, and toggle on/off touch controls.
• A bug fix for an issue where save files in chapter 5 could become unloadable.

Because the load bug is particularly irksome and chapter 6 still has a ways to go, I’m going to see if I can backport the fix back to the existing private build this week.

For the backers who pledged last month, private build access has been granted if your card was successfully charged yesterday.

If your card was declined, then you did not receive private build access (but also weren’t billed anything either).

The WIP build should be up for WIP backers by end of weekend.

Pulling together the first WIP build to be available to the researchers currently pledging at the WIP or higher tier on Patreon (all of this will be coming to the Chapter 6 Private Build eventually).  It will include:

Dinoian TF:  The Dinoians are a race of scaly, sentient beasts of burden, engineered to carry people and supplies across The Underworld’s vast desert biome.  You can find the TF items in the debug room if you want to try the saurian life.  Putting any one of them on will allow it to self-replicate over your body, destroying any other clothing in the way.  The Dinoian bindings are primarily simple black leather straps and a saddle which don’t leave anything to the imagination — expect to be fully exposed in public.  Due to it replicating faster than you can uncurse it, there’s currently no way to get them all off once you put one on — trapping you forever.

No eggs… yet!  But expect female dinoians in future to have a chance of laying eggs multiple times if a mating session is fruitful.

UI Scaling:  The monthly feature vote was tied, so I chose ‘Improved text scaling for android devices’, which somehow feature creeped into ‘redo the UI.’  The new layout is DPI-aware, and is much better for mobile devices and high-DPI PC screens.  The extra width on the buttons is easier for fingers, and gives a bit more readable button text space on PC too.  Also, when you start the game, the character stats are no longer shown until you’re in gameplay.  The map and self description panels size themselves intelligently, and at low res, the self description panel becomes a separate button.

Android Phone UI

PC UI (web resolution)

Tablet UI

There is one bug where on starting the game the map is half rendered until the next screen refresh (it fixes itself as soon as you move).  Will fix this before the final Chapter 6 release.

Multiple Map + Large Map Support:  In north Haven is a passageway into the desert.  It’s entirely empty at this point, but the new desert area demonstrates map switching and how large maps can get now.

~

The release plan is to have the build be available to WIP backers within the first seven days or so of June.  Once $20+ backers are successfully charged on June 1, I’ll update permissions for them and upload the WIP build to the intranet.

Not expecting much progress next weekend as I’ll be hanging out at Furlandia (swing by if you’re in Portland!).

I just posted the first vote over on Patreon.  The primary focus of current development is on chapter six content, but I’ll try to get one extra feature done.  What should it be?

• Shop where you can sell loot.
• Improved text scaling for android devices.
• Succubus class or status or item: Gain HP via sex, but not via health items or rest.
• Click on minimap for larger map.
• Rework intro so you can choose your reaction (affects initial acceptance rate).

If you’re a patron, vote before May 15.  (And since there’s only two patrons, you two have good odds on getting to choose the next feature ;))

I’ve got android builds building again, but in the process of updating the build scripts, I realized I’ve only ever been building for ARM devices.

x86 Android devices are rare, and are supposed to support ARM emulation — but if you have an x86 android device that doesn’t run the game, let me know and I’ll start making x86 android builds.