Research Blog

Frog TF won this month’s poll option.  Based on how excited the comments for it was, I tried to make it extra special, so you can look forward to 4000+ words of content including different scenes when the Naga Queen defeats you based on what form you’re in.  The minions are a bit smarter too, and won’t try to transform you if you’re already a frog or slug (unless you’re not 100% in that form, in which case they’ll try to re-transform you if you’re of the matching species).  Frogs and slugs also now leave a slime trail wherever they go, which can re-transform you if you use it (it’ll eventually evaporate).  If you track slime into Nixie’s shack during the swamp quest, she’ll comment on you making a mess of her place.

Frog form is another in the all-fours category, since frogs can’t stand upright.  As frogs naturally gain weight over time to get that nice frog belly, that can eventually cause their movement to be difficult.  At larger belly (and optionally breast) sizes, it will drag on the ground beneath them and sometimes get stuck in the slime as they travel.  If you go farther and intentionally max out belly/breast sizes… good luck moving at all.

If you backed at the WIP backer level for the August 1 Patreon cycle, head to the employee intranet to download your copy.  Otherwise, the next chapter will (finally) be done either at the end of this month or beginning of next so expect private build soon (almost there!).

For the backers who pledged last month, private build access has been granted if your card was successfully charged (download at the employee intranet).

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

Thanks for your support!

Added a little links drop-down menu to the UI today:

This ended up taking longer than expected as I first implemented this using DropDown’s, only to find out that doing so crashes the mobile build.  Ended up reimplementing it using simple buttons.  I find that any time I have to do UI work, I end up tripping over weird MXML problems… AS3 is usually an okay environment to code in, but its UI support leaves lots to be desired.

In other news, Frog TF won the feature poll!

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.