Venus Derby's First Demo Will Release on the 15th of February!
Demo Release will be on Vorecade and Eka's for free. Subsequent updates will be released in a Patreon first, public second manner. I'll make a forum post on Eka's this week as well.
For example, if the Patreon version is 0.2, publicly available version will be 0.1.
That's Exciting! But, before all of us gets too excited for a demo, I don't want to oversell then under-deliver. So, let me go over what will be included, what's coming and what's not included in the demo at this time.
What's Included?
As of writing:
3 Playable Characters (Aon, Ria and Suzue)
A Basic Game Loop.
Dynamic Vore Audio System with the ability to add your own sounds if you'd like. Automatically adjusts to internal/external scenes, gets louder/quieter depending on the intensity, softly plays with the relative loudness and pitch of each clip whilst mixing audio clips to make it sound more unique.
Stomach Animation System with the ability to animate non layered images, making them get bumpy and stretchy, along with onomatopoeia, impact and bubble effects.
Character System with basic facial animations and movement. Complete with its own visual editor in the game, allowing you to import your own images, set up values and write dialogue. Including tooling for quick testing in the game.
Race System with a "sports-event-like" camera system along with a commentator and supporting race UI. Including a basic racetrack editor to make your own custom racetracks.
Basic BGMs and tracks.
Visual Novel System with the ability to make your own right inside the game using a visual editor using nodes and flowcharts to do storytelling. With the ability to add in your custom images/sounds.
Scenario System with the ability to make, extend or modify existing scenarios using a graph editor using nodes and flowcharts to model gameplay and storytelling.
Hot reloading capability for most content types (Characters, Audio, Visual Novels Graphs, Racetracks and Scenarios).
A 3D Lobby, including Lobby Customization options with basic Lobby features. (e.g Changing your Secretary, Managing Your Trainees, Homeroom, Time of Day visualization, random weather events etc.)
Basic Storytelling for the purposes of the Demo.
An "ASMR Room" with the ability to record and export recordings with customization options.
Meta-progression through playing more. / Player improvement over time.
Ability to mod in your own Characters, Audio, Visual Novels, Racetracks and Scenarios.
Compatibility with Vessel Tactics character mods targeting the 0.12 and 0.13 versions of VT.
Text Support for Chinese (incl. traditional), Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Persian and Thai scripts on top of the usual Latin and European scripts. Along with translations available for Chinese and Japanese (Majority human translated, MTL used in some sections where development went fast). With the ability to add your own UI translations.
Lots of bugs.
An included bug reporting tool to smash as much bugs as possible.
This list was a bit longer than I was expecting... haha...
What's Coming?
Take this section as what's to come in the future. Depending on how the release goes, timelines and estimations will inevitably shift. But I'm excited to do them all whenever it may be!
More Characters (With some currently being drawn, and more to come!)
Vorecade Modding Integration
Modding Documentation
Character Stories Mechanic
In game shop to buy your trainee buffs and tools
Unlockables tied to game progression
Ability to translate more game content (Characters, Visual Novels and Scenarios)
More scenario mechanics (Seasonal Camps, More Game Over ends etc.)
Better Music
Better VFX & SFX for Races
Better 3D Lobby
What's Not Included In the Demo?
A Complete Game. Venus Derby is rather an ambitious game with many mechanics, storytelling and gameplay elements. Developing and making content for it will require time and funding. I hope I was able to ground the expectations for the demo to a realistic level with this post.
What about this week's progress update?
Right here!
Race Simulator Performance Improvements
I'm happy to report that the race simulator performance has been... improved by x32?!
Is that a typo... Let's see...
I've been getting around 130-140TPS before. I now get ~4500TPS... 4500/140 = 32.14...
With a slight shock of that performance improvement, races are now simulated nearly instantly!
Race Ambience, BGM and Sound Effects
I also added Race BGMs, audience and running effects to races this week. Would suffice for the demo.
A Banner For Venus Derby!
Certainly not a stranger to Venus Derby at this point, Dale9G did it again. This time, they drew some very cute chibis of Ria and Suzue for the banner! They are so cute!