Hey everyone,I'm back with the progress report for V0.7.6, and I'm only one day off my originally planned schedule as promised. I don't have much to talk about apart from the actual content this time, except to make you all realize that the yearly Easter Event is currently active.
Don't miss this opportunity to get your missing Lifepath Unlocks!And now let's get right into the content of the upcoming patch. There's a lot of it:
UPDATE: Reworking Mental Effects
After the progress report was published, I realized I forgot to write about one important topic that I also wanted to discuss with the community on Discord a bit more, and that will be part of this patch. We had a great thread about it on Discord, and now I can tell you a bit more.In the current version, we have a bit of an imbalance in how consent can only be given by those who haven't received a certain mental syringe. What I'm going to do in this patch is basically a rework of how those mental effects are applied in order to make the story work better with consent rules.The problem right now is that any contestant's IQ loss results in an immediate inability to give consent, because we only have one big, dramatic effect. The new system will introduce IQ loss for NPCs in a similar way as it is for the player character - slow, less dramatic effects, so that we can still have the fantasy of it, while maintaining the ability to give consent. Instead of an effect that players apply to each other, it will be an effect the producers are responsible for, one that happens every day, little by little, unless an expensive antidote is taken that lasts for one week. Also, we still need the current DUM+ syringe to exit a branch, which will only be obtainable through a quest. It will still leave the character unable to give consent, but the naming will make it clearer why. The producer's effect, however, can be clearly described as stopping as soon as consent would be difficult to give.
At the same time, I'm reimagining all these mental effects as VR programs rather than syringes to make the distinction between the two clearer. We can theoretically have more mental programs that lead to small scenes rather than completely reshaping what a character answers every time you speak to them.
Again, this is a complicated topic, and I'm confident the new version will lead to both a better player experience for all playstyles, as well as still keeping in line with both mine and the platform's consent rules. If you want to know more about the change, there is a whole discussion on Discord to read through, and to give your own two cents to. Please do so since this format here is too short to really dig deep into the Hows and Whys.
Weekly Fashion Challenge
Let's start with the patch's main theme. A few weeks ago, I came up with a new gameplay to add to the weekly shows. For quite a while, I felt like the weekly shows needed a bit more content and a way to swing the votes a bit more before going into them. And since I'm currently really into learning about fashion and styling (who would have thought making a kind of dress-up game could be a sign of my interest in that, huh?), the idea became to further utilize the outfit system by adding a fashion show to the end of week shows. Basically, at the end of a show, you'll be told what style to present next week, and then you have one week to assemble an outfit that fits that style. If your outfit fits that theme exceptionally well, then you'll gain a lot of extra votes during the show, and if not, you may fall down a few more places. I wrote about this on Discord, and the response seemed positive, so I decided to do a test.
Now, a lot of graphical assets are needed to achieve this goal, and I'm not going to place these orders without knowing whether this new system is going to be fun. So this first version will be a sort of test case. I've ordered a bunch of new Boho-style clothes, but to make this work for every end-of-week show, we'd need a lot more styles, as well as outfits for the other contestants to wear during those shows.
Now, these example outfits obviously look horrible, but only a few of the graphics are done, and I wanted to show more patterns and such. There needs to be a jury that would tell you off for choosing these options. I'm still figuring out the exact mechanics. I'm also not sure yet if I still want to get the outfits for the NPCs for this one show this patch, but I feel like seeing the other girls in different styles could be a big part of the fun for this system. However, our artist is currently struggling a bit with the asset creation, so it might not work out anyway. We'll have to experiment a bit over the next patches. I assume this would be a system that needs to receive new content continuously until the game's final release.
Most of the work already finished on this patch has gone into the concept, the required backend, and writing and coding for this event.
Himari's True End
To conclude the true endings for our trio of allies, we'll finally see Himari's final ending story. Her story was about finding her place in the world of BDSM, so you can expect a wholesome submission story to send her off. The animations are still a lot of work but the graphics are all done this time. I'll just say that maybe it also has something to do with the patch title?
Expressive Moderator Graphics
The last character that hasn't gotten the Expression & Poses treatment yet is the moderator. It's only fitting that the patch that focuses on extending the end-of-week shows will also introduce the new Expressive graphics for him. As mentioned before, our artists is in a bit of a struggle right now, so they are not done yet, but I trust that I'll get everything on time.
Redoing the Stats UI
With the dice system we introduced over the last two patches, stats have taken on a whole new meaning, but the UI doesn't yet reflect that. So another important feature I want to achieve in this patch is to make it clear how your stats are reflected in the actions 0-7 system. This also includes showing all relevant stats in the UI, like the sexual abilities. I'm still experimenting with whether these numbers should just replace the old numbers entirely to make it less confusing. I'd love some feedback on this front once the patch is out.
Traps in Social Actions
With the new Dice Actions, we also added Talking and Flirting as basic new Actions. These are currently much better than other Actions because you cannot end up trapped when doing them. I'm experimenting with a few ideas to change that right now. The obvious one is that if you have a bad relationship with your conversation partner, they might just trap you during the Action, and you can already be trapped if you're doing a trapped activity together.
Improvements for new Action UI
Obviously, the new Dice Actions are new and still need more work every patch. For example, this patch I'm definitely bringing a way for the player to adjust the animation speed, or skip them entirely to make the whole system feel more snappy. There are a few more things I'm planning to change, but I guess there's no need to list them all. Just know that I'm still working on that system, even if it's just in the background. I also still need a lot of feedback, especially for balancing.
And that's the feature list for this patch. As always, I hope you can feel the amount of planning and work that goes into each patch. I'm really looking forward to getting these new features into your hands.Best,Kim