Research Blog

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!

Internal company memorandum re: next private build of research materials.

Chapter six is coming along slowly but surely.  This chapter is all about one of our most useful specimens, the Dinoians.  It would be nearly impossible to travel the vast desert wastelands without the use of our scaly, saurian mounts.  Any researcher traveling to the underground R&D facility has undoubtedly ridden one.

Researchers should be particularly careful when handling any Dinoian bindings.  Although SkyCorp Global is generally able to engineer the environment of their extended workforce so as to prevent them from shifting in form once assigned to a particular location, Dinoians naturally have to cover large tracts of land during their duties.  To ensure they stay in their intended form, their bindings are specially designed to be almost impossible to remove.  The special collars, cuffs, bands, and saddle will self-replicate across the subject as needed.

Occasionally, a subject forgets their employment agreement and attempts an unauthorized transformation.  Even if they manage to remove one binding, the other bindings will automatically replace it within moments.  This safety precaution helps prevent riders from getting stranded in the vast desert wasteland.  However, more than one careless researcher has found themselves with new duties after improperly handling the bindings.

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Vis-à-vis status of chapter six: most of the introductory scenes are written.  In terms of size, this chapter is on track to be huge.  Just the introductory scenes are almost as many words as some previous entire chapters.  The desert area has so many rooms, the map system has to be updated to efficiently render such a quantity.  So it will still be a while yet until chapter 6 is playable, but it will be worth the wait.

If you were watching blog comments, you may have noticed I changed the name of these guys from ‘Lizlands’ to ‘Dinoians.’  May change them again as I feel out the best name for them.

To researcher Hido’s inquiry about Patreon (as well as a couple others who have written in about PayPal support via Patreon), I have a work in progress preview page set up here.  The exact rewards are still TBD, but the primary one is Private Builds, which is the same one-time cost as it is at BMT.  Also brainstorming potential recurring rewards, including automatic unstable dev builds.  However, since pre-release dev builds are by their nature broken, incomplete, and otherwise not of playable quality, I may scratch that idea entirely (if they were actually ready for release, I’d just post it as a private build).  There’s some more details on how those builds would work on the preview page.  Leave a comment if you have other reward ideas (or are an existing backer who is vehemently against the idea of a Patreon for this project — it’s still only an idea at this phase).