Research Blog

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.

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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.

The Patreon page is now live, and you can link your Patreon and SkyCorp Global accounts via the Researcher Intranet.

Patreon supports PayPal transactions, so if you only had a PayPal account, you can now buy the game.  It’s the same price as via the existing BMT method, and functions the same:  purchasing once will unlock private builds forever.  Other than payment methods, the main difference between the two options is that since Patreon doesn’t actually bill until the 1st of the month, it’s not an instant unlock.  Granting private build access for Patreon users is currently a manual process, but I’ll endeavor to do this within the first week of purchases being successfully charged.

There’s also some more traditional monthly Patreon rewards to thank users who want to support the game on an ongoing basis.  Since the preview page, I added some suggestions as rewards and the unstable build reward option got changed to a WIP build option.  (I didn’t really feel comfortable with a fully automated build pipeline yet).  I’m hopeful the WIP builds give me some additional forward momentum to have some new content out each month — although most users will prefer to wait for the full chapter releases in the private builds, as it’s more fun to experience a full chapter at a time instead of in pieces.

I’m expecting May’s WIP build to be the Dinoian TF items.  I also need to set aside some time to get Android builds building again, as it looks like they account for about 25% of r20 downloads from the intranet — a much higher percentage than I ever thought.

On a personal sidenote, I recently attended a furry con for the first time.  I had a great time, and even got to meet some others in the TF community.  So inspiring to see others share passion for the genre!