Research Blog

Here’s some updates on some behind the scenes work I’ve been doing on the project:

New Engine in Development

I know there’s been a lot of (justified) concern about Flash games no longer being playable at the end of the year, thanks to browsers dropping support for them.  Even well known web games like Farmville are shutting down entirely.  For us, the most important thing to note is the end of Flash is not the end of The Underworld.  This is because two reasons:

1)  The Flash version of the game client will still run, just not in browsers. On desktop you will still be able to play the game’s SWF via the standalone Flash player projector — slightly inconvenient, but still definitely playable.  And the Android APK will continue to work as normal.

2)  I am in the process of doing a full rewrite of the game.  This is a massive undertaking, but already there’s been tremendous progress.

Currently, the first five chapters are all fully playable in the new engine, using a test UI.  If you’ve been following the backer channel on Discord, you’ve probably already seen a bunch of early dev screenshots leading up to this latest one:

(Don’t worry dark mode fans, this is just test UI for now)

Currently, most all the core gameplay features like player state, maps, items, enemies, fights, transformations, acceptance system, visibility, pathfinding, etc are all in.  The remaining stuff is the additional chapters, DLCs, mod support, getting a proper front-end, save/load, and so on.  So there’s still a lot of work to do, but it’s getting there (no ETA yet).

For whenever the initial release is, I am planning for the first release to support HTML5 / web browser only.  If I do it right, you’ll be able to play the HTML5 version on Android/iOS web browsers, too.  But once the HTML5 version is working, I’m planning to get a version made for Windows EXE & Android APK.

The whole codebase is moving to C# now, which has a lot fewer idiosyncrasies than ActionScript and has already helped me find and fix a number of old bugs in the source code.  Flash has always had a lot of strange unfixable bugs based on which version of Flash player you’re using, and so I’m looking forward to those no longer being something to worry about.

Poll:  New Mod / Mini DLC

It’s been a while since I got to work on any content, so I’m planning on taking a break from engine rewrites and make some new (small) content.  I’m leaning towards mods and stories, since engine-independent content I wouldn’t have to immediately re-port from the old engine to the new engine afterwards.

You can help me decide how to spend the break in the current poll.  It’ll be the same total amount of time spent regardless of medium, so that means depending on which option is chosen, the amount of new content will vary with complexity.  Example:  For something like clothing, I could make a bunch of small clothing mods.  Whereas something like a complex scripted monster, would probably just be one enemy.  Alternatively, I could just write a TF fiction or something like that, which would be the most amount of content by wordcount, but be non-interactive.

Active backers can vote in the Researcher Intranet as usual for polls.

In terms of specifics, I’m still thinking over what I want to make.  Feel free to share your ideas in the comments and on our Discord server.

Patreon – International Billing / Multicurrency

(If you’re using BMT, nothing in this section should affect you)

Patreon is requiring all projects to support multiple currency options as of today, Oct 5th.

The upside is that if you’re in the UK or EU, you will soon(/now?) be able to pledge in your local currency.  If you are currently in those territories and pledging with USD, you won’t experience any change.  However, once the change rolls out to you, you’ll be able to opt into changing to your local currency.  At that time, any new patrons in those regions will be able to sign up with their currency, too.

Since this happened after the existing charge cycle for October, it shouldn’t affect anyone until next month’s charges on Nov 1 (and only if you opt in).

Please note that Patreon doesn’t charge the exact same for international currencies as the USD equivalent, as there’s an international transaction fee included in the cost.  It may be slightly more or less than what your bank would charge for the same service, so you may want to compare closely and see what’s the best deal for you.  (Based on my own personal credit card’s 3.5% international transaction fee, it looks to be about a $0.14 markup for their conversion service)

Unfortunately, supporting this change necessitated a complete and total rewrite of the pledging backend for our website.  It was fairly time consuming to do, but it’s now finished in time for the upcoming conversion.  It’s already up and running, and appears to have handled the October payments without issue.  However, please do contact me on e-mail or Discord if you have paid for October but not yet received game access.

Additional info on the multicurrency change can be found on Patreon’s website.

Thanks

Finally, I want to thank everyone who has continued to support the project during the engine port over despite there not being any new content while I work on rewrites.  The rewrite is a long and arduous process, but it means the game will be able to have a longer term future outside of Flash’s death, so it’s important to get it done.  Your continued support allows that to happen, so as always, thank you for both your financial support as well as the encouraging comments on the blog and on Discord. <3

Cynneste has made a whole set of great fan art for us!  Check out each one below:

Dragon Queen TF

Catslut TF

Cowgirl TF

Short version:  If you previously had a problem entering text into the game, this should fix it.

Long version:  (If reading on main Research Blog, click Continue Reading to read a lot about keyboards.)

Continue reading →

In Part I, you met Valery, a shortstack drakeling that turned you into her succubunny pet.  Now in Part II, you can explore your new life with Valery.  Your new mistress expects you to heed her every command and satisfy that powerful drakeling libido of hers.  Of course, with your mix of bunny and succubus genetics, you’ll be eager to please her over and over again.

Thanks to all those piercings and changes, escape from your new life is impossible.  However, you can at least be a useful pet.  Perhaps you can work out how to fix Valery’s flat screen TV, so you can cuddle with your mistress and watch Underworld Public Access TV together.  An intrepid pet will also figure out how to acquire batteries to power those vibrators you found in Valery’s closet — with those erogenous, pussy-like orifaces of yours, three of them will feel quite nice buzzing inside you.

Whenever you’re hungry, you need merely ask Valery for dinner.  As a succubus, your only food option is cum, but your horny Mistress is happy to feed it you.  Your slutty palate will find it’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted.  If you don’t have high metabolism enabled, you’ll need to be careful — if you continuously overeat, you might end up as an incredibly fat bunny that can barely walk under her own weight.  The eggs Valery keeps knocking you up with already weigh enough by themselves, so occasional visits to a treadmill aren’t a bad idea to lose the fat.  Since treadmills require rest between uses and succubi can only rest by consuming cum, succubi get a special 3x weight loss bonus when using treadmills.

Valery, of course, will keep putting you in your place, treating you like the lusty sexpet you’ve become.  She won’t hesitate to remind you who your owner is… not that you could easily forget as you still have to refer to yourself as ‘Fuckpet’ and her as ‘Mistress.’  Other than your leash & collar, you can’t wear clothes, and she usually doesn’t even let you sit on the couch, preferring you to sit on the ground below her feet.  It’s a bit embarrassing to have become a submissive pet for a lowly drakeling, but she’s a good mistress and will ensure your horny body gets plenty of use.  She might make you beg for it, but she’ll even let you cum… eventually.

This update adds over 10k new words of post-TF Valery & Succubunny content, bringing Succubunny to ~19k words total.  This includes five new saucy scenes — try to find each one!  You’ll need to solve a couple puzzles to experience them all.

This new DLC content is available exclusively to active subscribers at no additional charge beyond your existing subscription.  You can get it in the usual place (researcher intranet).  As with the Hydra, it will not be released later to demo or legacy players.

Full-text version: 1080px or max-res

No-text version: 1080px or max-res

No-insert version: 1080px or max-res

Pure version: 1080px or max-res

Art by the lovely Ghostbun.

High Metabolism

There’s a new free tattoo available to both active subscribers and legacy players in the tattoo shop.  Wear it, and you’ll be immune from the effects of overeating (which happens when you consume fatty food when already at full health).  This works for both regular species overeating food as well as succubi overeating cum.

Pick this up if you want to mostly avoid weight gain content for the succubunny.  You’ll still get knocked up with eggs, but won’t have to also contend with fat.  (Unless you dislike weight gain though, the intended play style for her is to play normally without high metabolism.)

Sell System

Active backers have access to a new feature: you can now sell certain items!  The trading outpost has been upgraded to also accept sales of milk and eggs.  This allows players, such as succubunny, to still be able to earn money even though their submissive nature prevents them from fighting enemies.

One fun way to play with this feature is to become a Dragoncow Queen — head to the debug rooms and down a bunch of cow’s milk until you’ve grown an udder.  Then, add any bovine growth hormone depending on how much milk you’d like to produce.  You can also add extra rows of breasts if you like, but that (currently) does not affect milk production.  Then, equip a dragon queen collar.  Soon you’ll be producing milk and eggs regularly (possibly near constantly depending on how many bovine hormones you took).  Find a milker in the trading outpost and go into business for yourself, selling your milk and eggs.  It doesn’t pay much, but come on — how much did you really expect a glorified farm animal like yourself to make? 😉

Elijah

Along with his new buy/sell abilities, our shopkeeper at the Trading Outpost has also been upgraded with a backstory.  You can talk to him early in the game (before chapter 3) and meet the human male early in his Underworld career.  He’s been making frequent trips down into The Underworld to start a burgeoning import/export business and corner store.

When you meet him later on (after chapter 3), he looks a bit different.  The human male is now a female anthro raccoon.  The shop keeper didn’t heed the warnings, and is now stuck in The Underworld like so many others.  In addition to Elijah’s story-development scenes, one of the new saucy succubunny scenes features Elijah trying out his her new body.

Perhaps later on, we’ll see more of her?  Elijah’s two backstory scenes are available to both active subscribers and legacy players.  The succubunny scene is only available to active subscribers.

Bug Reporting

This was previously covered in an earlier blog post by itself, but in case you didn’t see it, there’s now a way to attach save files to bug reports.  Especially for any soft-lock bugs, these can be very useful for finding and reproducing them.

Misc

• If you have multiple rows of tits, [[BREAST DESCRIPTION]] will now reference that.

Bug Fixes

A number of bug fixes are included in this build — thank you for the bug reports.  The bug database includes more details on this release’s bug fixes:

• 15/51: Softlock at Pound’s Bouncer — This one is tricky, but essentially there were various conditions which could either cause the bouncer to lock you in the pound’s entrance and/or make it seem like he is.  New build basically prevents you from getting stuck here, and if he does lock you in place for an item you’re not allowed to bring inside, he tells you what you need to drop.
• 19: Expired (BMT) subscriptions don’t show renew link right away.
• 27: Game considers tattoos suspicious items.
• 48: Cannot milk udder with milking machine without breasts.
• 35: Hanako scene collects eggs, but they are left in desert.
• 40: Sex with Dawn does not reset lust.
• 45: Whale Show Typo.
• 49: function speciesNatureTick() not triggering.
• Proactive fixes on save/load issues to hopefully head off a number of future save/load bugs that haven’t manifested yet.